Somebody help me out here.
In this article, the "AP Military Writer" engages in much hand-wringing and implied moral poo-pooing over the recent revelation that in 1948, the U.S. Army considered "using radioactive poisons to assassinate 'important individuals' such as military or civilian leaders."
I'm gonna file that "revelation" simultaneously under "And This Is Surprising Why, Exactly?" "Am I Supposed To Cry For The Memory Of Stalin And Mao?" as well as "Gee, I Guess My Country Really
Was Capable Of Some Crazy Shit During The Cold War, Who'd 'A Thunk It?"
But that's not what drove me back to the keyboard after yet another of my un-planned and un-requested 3 week sabbaticals. No sirree.
What
puuuuuuulled me back was the "revelation," buried miles under the lede like so much radioactive waste, that these assassinations were but
item number four in the Army's list of crazy-ass pseudo military tactics outlined in 1948. We're supposed to be shocked 59 years later, 60+ years after we fire-bombed Dresden & Tokyo and incinerated two other cities, that our military considered killing monstrous dictators with poison?
Yet we're not supposed to be juuuuust a bit freaked out by
the following directives? None of these are worth a headline or even a mention for nearly 2/3 of the article:
1 — Weapons to contaminate "populated or otherwise critical areas for long periods of time."
2 — Munitions combining high explosives with radioactive material "to accomplish physical damage and radioactive contamination simultaneously."
3 — Air and-or surface weapons that would spread contamination across an area to be evacuated, thereby rendering it unusable by enemy forces.
What am I missing here?
Labels: Dictators Are Expensive, Life Is Cheap, Why Do I Suspect We Did This Stuff Anyway?
