corection: No War profits in this economy, no Sir!

[pynchonoid]

...correction:

fq:
>Whoever said war was good for the economy?

It's certainly good for Halliburton, Bechtel, the
helicopter & missile & ammo & bomb makers, and other
companies that don't donate their products and
services to the War effort for free. 

...and yet another War profit center emerges (the War
With Drugs), I suppose:

<http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr/pr080903.html>

The Sunshine Project
News Release
8 September 2003

Pentagon Initiates New Research into Prohibited
Chemical Weapons

Austin and Hamburg (9 September 2003) - Recently
unearthed US government documents reveal new
information on illicit US chemical weapons research.
The US Marine Corps program on so-called "non-lethal"
chemicals has inked new deals for prohibited weapons.
The contracts include development of a new kind of
rocket propelled grenade that began at the end of
2002, only weeks after the Moscow Theater disaster.
Also last year, a senior US Army toxicologist
investigated tacrine, a close cousin of several nerve
gases, as a candidate "non-lethal" chemical weapons
payload. 

The Marine Corps contracts were granted by the Joint
Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) in November and
December 2002. Both are with AgentAI, a small company
based in Victorville, California. One contract is for
development of a new kind of rocket propelled grenade
(RPG) to be fired from the US Army's standard M-203
grenade launcher. The chemical grenade is being
designed for a 500 meter range. The RPG is designed to
strike a person (or perhaps near a person) and then to
disperse "chemical agents that can further
incapacitate or maintain the incapacitation of the
targeted individual". The company plans testing on a
"simulated human target" under the current contract.
The second JNLWD contract with AgentAI calls for
development of "non-lethal" bullets that release a
chemical payload upon striking a target. (Summaries of
these contracts are available here.) 

Another document (available here) reveals the interest
of a senior US Army toxicologist in tacrine, a drug
used to treat Alzheimer's Disease. The Army is not
interested in the drug, however, for helping disease
victims. Rather, it is assessing use of tacrine as a
weapon. In February 2002, at Aberdeen Proving Ground
in Maryland, the toxicologist ordered a literature
review on its potential for weaponization. Chemically,
tacrine is a acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, a first
cousin of the nerve gases sarin, tabun, and VX (among
others). 

The discovery that the Army is investigating close
relatives of extremely lethal nerve gases as
"non-lethal" weapons heightens concerns previously
raised that the Army's "non-lethal" chemical weapons
program is practically indistinguishable from one with
a fully lethal intent. The Army's interest in tacrine
should draw particular scrutiny from the Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and
governments who are members of the Chemical Weapons
Convention. 

In September 2002, the Sunshine Project presented
extensive documentation proving the illicit US
chemical warfare program (US Operates Secret Chemical
Weapons Program). Since then, a variety of additional
details about the program have been unravelled, most
recently a US patent on a grenade designed to deliver
biological weapons (US Army Patents Biological Weapons
Delivery System) and a 1997 research paper from
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Livermore, CA)
on the use of chemical incapacitants, including use of
opiates in scenarios similar to that which resulted in
the Moscow Theater tragedy (See the Sunshine Project's
JNLWD Document Clearinghouse). 

The Sunshine Project's Freedom of Information Fund is
filing a series of requests with the Pentagon to bring
further information about this research into public
view. 



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