Sorry to cut out a lot of what you had to say...I totally understand this. When I lived overseas, we watched CNN World for our news, instead of just reading the International Herald Tribune (which is essentially a regurgitation of the Times and the Post). Anyway, there were things covered on CNN World that they definitely wouldn't have covered on US CNN...primarily about countries that would later on be in the "axis of evil" :rolleyes: and other countries that we don't deal with, like Vietnam and Cuba. It really bothered me how much we're being deceived...I know it happens in other countries too (maybe even worse!), but in a country where the freedom of the press is mentioned constantly, it really bothered me.

Which is why I'm glad that we get BBC World News on WGBH-Boston! :D

:eek: I don't know what this is all about. I was watching the nightly news and they had reports from some Iraqi scientists about tests they have conducted with biological weapons.

This really scares me :(

Back in the days when I served Uncle Sam in the U.S. Air Force (that was in the bad old days of the Cold War and the Soviet 'Evil Empire'), one of the first things we did in our inprocessing at the base I was stationed at in Europe was go to a mandatory NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical, not the TV network :) ) warfare briefing. We were told that the nearest Warsaw Pact air bases were only about fifteen minutes' flying time away and that any attack by them would assume to use chemical weapons, at the very least.

We were briefed on the effects of chemical weapons and learned the strange alphabet that identified the various deadly chemical concoctions... VX, GB, Tabun, Sarin, mustard gas, etc. and how to recognize the symptoms of a chemical attack. You gotta be very quick with that atropine injector... and you learned how to pack the gas mask for quick donning -- if it took you more than ten seconds to put it on, you're as good as dead. They didn't go too much into detail with biological agents.

After the briefing was the mandatory trip to the gas chamber, to experience the effects of CS riot control (tear) gas. Not a very pleasant experience with your eyes tearing, your nose running and hacking and puking your guts inside out. Once you get out of the chamber and into fresh air, the symptoms subside, though we were instructed to make sure we thoroughly washed our clothing afterward, since leftover particles of CS tend to be a little persistent.

Almost every month we practiced a chemical warfare exercise code-named 'Salty Nation'. It usually started in the wee hours of o-dark-thirty and lasted for 18-24 hours. Occasionally, the exercise would start with the playing of the 'William Tell Overture' (the Lone Ranger theme), which to this day I can't listen to without reminding me of these exercises. Luckily, when I reported in, the base had just ended a two-week long chem warfare exercise called 'Salty Demo'. Not fun.

To reinforce the fact that it was an exercise and not the real thing, the alarm signals were always prefixed with the word 'EXERCISE'; for example, the warning signal was called 'ALARM YELLOW'. The signal for an air raid in progress was 'EXERCISE ALARM RED'. (Don't ask me why, but it's called 'ALARM BLUE' in U.S. military bases in South Korea.) Whenever chemical agents were detected, 'ALARM BLACK' was issued. There was one time during an exercise that for some unknown reason the speaker cut off the word 'EXERCISE'; all we heard was 'ALARM RED'. You've never seen so many people grabbing for their gas masks so quickly.

The exercises were played in deadly seriousness and the chem suits were hot and downright uncomfortable when worn for long periods of time. Not to mention that the charcoal lining of the suit dirtied up your uniform. I was glad when the loudspeaker system on the base announced 'ALARM WHITE'; that was the all-clear signal and usually signaled the end of the exercise.

Iraq has used biological weapons against the Kurds in the north of Iraq before, as well as against Iran in the 1980's, however "based on a US Senate Committee on Export Administration report of 1994, we know that between 1984 (at the latest) and 1989, private American suppliers were exporting all kinds of chemical components to Iraq, after obtaining licensing by the US Department of Commerce. According to the report, "These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction." They included:
Bacillus anthracis - Causes anthrax
Clostridium botulinum - Source of botulinum toxin
Histoplasma capsulatam - Causes a disease that attacks lungs, heart, brain, and spinal cord
Brucella melitensis - Bacteria that can do major damage to organs
Clostridium perfringens - Highly toxic bacteria that causes systemic illness
Clostridium tetani - Also highly toxigenic
E.coli, genetic materials, human and bacterial DNA, precursors to chemical-warfare agents, plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities and chemical-warhead filling equipment were also exported (all according to this report).
The report mentions: "It was later learned that these micro-organisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program"(During the first rounds of inspections in the 90's) (Blum, Rogue State, p. 121-123). "