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The Few, The Proud, The Hopelessly Addicted

The US miltary loves to piss-test people, and use the results to ruin their lives. Alcohol use is encouraged, but even a little marijuana use while home on leave will get you a Big Chicken Dinner, a Bad Conduct Discharge. Anything other than "Honourable" is tantamount to a crminal conviction, and stays on your record forever. Forget ever getting a security clearance, as a civilian. A lot of good jobs will be closed to you.

Meanwhile, the military itself is supplying our troops with extremely addictive and dangerous illegal drugs, including Go Pills, amphetamines (speed), and No Go Pills, barbituates (downers). There is NO program to detox returning soldiers, and the VA facilities are pathetic. Those poor scummy bastards you see begging on the streets in Army jackets are veterans, many of them, most with drug and alcohol problems, often acquired in the military. Some were given drugs by the military, some had to self-medicate. But they are all forgotten victims of the system.

The ones who don't end up dead often rot in prison. Their wives and children are neglected, abused and abandoned. There are millions of veterans, and millions of active, guard, and reserve soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coastguardsmen and women out there who will be effected by this. And they are coming home to your town, your neighbourhood, your job, your school, your family.

Some in the military and civilian worlds will blame losses and failures in battle on drugs. Yet the military itself continues giving them out. In fact, studies are being done to keep ALL of our troops doped up ALL the time, with NO regard for the consequences later in life, which can be devastating, and irreversible. It's just dead wrong. If you have a Congressman, or Senator, you should write them to protest the use of drugs on our soldiers. And demand that de-tox and counselling be a permanent part of the military separation process, and the VA hospital system. You owe it to our troops.

Read This First:

"By Beauty Damned
November 16, 2004
'Bad Shit' "

"New drug may help soldiers stay awake. Doctors unsure of long-term effect."

U.S. soldiers are staying awake for days and nights on end in Iraq, and many are almost certainly benefiting from military research into pills that let them work for 40 hours straight, without feeling "wired" and without crashing afterward.

Soldiers in past wars have taken stimulants when they can't afford to fall asleep, but these have all had side effects: poor judgment, jumpiness and the need for extra sleep as soon as the soldier stops popping them.

But the new stay-awake pills appear to have no side effects, at least in the short term.

U.S. military studies found that soldiers can stay awake and function alertly for 40 hours, get eight hours of sleep, and then stay awake for 40 more, all without the impaired judgment of old-fashioned uppers.

That's beginning to scare some doctors, who say that modafinil, sold in Canada as Alertec and in the U.S. as Provigil, might threaten the health of people who abuse it.

"Al-Sadr militia pumping up with drugs"

"They give their suicide bombers barbiturates, and the amphetamines are for street fighters who are facing off with the U.S.," a State Department analyst said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

An Iraqi engineer, incredulous at reports of drugs being bought and sold by the militia inside Sadr City mosques, sent a member of his staff to purchase a sample.
"She brought me capsules filled with powder — heroin — that they are selling everywhere in Baghdad and financing their fight from this trade," said the engineer, who asked that his name not be used.

U.S. military reports also have said that members of Sheik al-Sadr's Mahdi's Army are using a local drug similar to the mildly euphoric stimulant known as khat, which is widely used across the Arabian Peninsula.
"Reports are that a large percentage, maybe as high as 85 percent of [Mahdi's Army] fighters are using a hallucinogenic drug, Arteen, to provide courage during their attacks," according to one document focusing on the security situation in southern Iraq.

"The Guilt-Free Soldier"

"It's the morning-after pill for just about anything that produces regret, remorse, pain, or guilt," says Dr. Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, who emphasizes that he's speaking as an individual and not on behalf of the council. Barry Romo, a national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, is even more blunt. "That's the devil pill," he says. "That's the monster pill, the anti-morality pill. That's the pill that can make men and women do anything and think they can get away with it. Even if it doesn't work, what's scary is that a young soldier could believe it will."

"metabolic dominance"

PROGRAM GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The Defense Sciences Office is interested in proposals to develop innovative science and technology capable of affording superior physiological qualities to the warfighter. The vision for the Metabolic Dominance Program is to develop novel strategies that exploit and control the mechanisms of energy production, metabolism, and utilization during short periods of deployment requiring unprecedented levels of physical demand. The ultimate goal is to enable superior physical and physiological performance by controlling energy metabolism on demand. An example is continuous peak physical performance and cognitive function for 3 to 5 days, 24 hours per day, without the need for calories. Continuous exertion over numerous days is currently limited by: 1) the ability to transport and ingest adequate calories and/or effectively access stored calories (e.g., adipose, glycogen); 2) available training time; extended training periods are required to adapt muscle and mitochondria to meet intense physical loads; and 3) the ability of physiological systems to rapidly recover after extended, repeated bouts of physical exertion. Metabolic Dominance (MD) is a two phase program. Phase 1 will establish proof-of-concept for four integrated areas of emphasis that together address methods for enhancing soldier performance. These areas of emphasis focus on: 1) optimizing metabolic performance by developing an understanding of how to control substrate availability and remove metabolic waste products; 2) controlling the thermal environment where energy metabolism occurs; 3) regulating the number and efficiency of cells and organelles necessary for energy production; and 4) identifying the cause of fatigue and, thus, short- or long-term performance degradation. Phase 2 will provide specific expanded deliverables based on the successful completion of Phase 1.

"Thieves Descend on Baghdad Bazaar"

In central Baghdad, just off bustling Jumhuriyyah Street and tucked in next to an old Abbasid dynasty mosque is the Ghazel market – a warren of winding streets lined with shops selling live birds, fish and animals.

On Fridays, when other markets are closed for the Muslim day of rest, Ghazel's narrow lanes are packed.

Shopkeepers exhibit chickens and rabbits stacked in cages, as well as dogs tied by chains. They offer fierce falcons, squawking parrots and huge pythons. Tropical fish dart about large, while monkeys swing from perch to perch.

Since the war, though, the shopkeepers increasingly find they have to share the market streets with drug dealers and gamblers who gather in front of their shops.

With people coming here from the far corners of Iraq to buy and sell animals, Ghazel also has become a central place to buy and sell drugs, as well as to gamble at dice or cards.

"This is not good," said Hamid Omran, a bird shop owner in Ghazel. "It has a bad effect on society and tarnishes the reputation of Iraq."

In Saddam Hussein's time, drug trafficking and gambling were prohibited and tightly controlled by security forces and police.

But in the free-wheeling lawlessness that prevails in Baghdad today, drug users, dealers and gamblers feel free to operate openly.

American soldiers sometime stroll through Ghazel market. The store-keepers hope they have come to make arrests. But they only come for sightseeing, or to buy exotic birds.

Send comments to cosanostradamus AT excite DOT com.

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