The US government has finally come clean with some of the secret testing that it did thirty to forty years ago.  In the 1960s and '70s, several chemical agents, including sarin and anthrax, were deployed on US soil and in US territories to measure how the agents were dispersed in a jungle setting.

These settings included Hawaii and the Panama Canal.  One such test was moved from the Panama Canal to Hawaii due to "international considerations."  Apparently, it's okay to place the lives of American citizens in jeopardy, but it would look bad to accidentally gas foreign nationals.

The Department of Defense has acknowledged that the tests were conducted using live agents.  The volunteers (mostly US troops) were led to believe that the agents were harmless.  The civilian populations were not informed at all.

The government claims that these tests were halted in the 1970s.  However, there has been talk recently of releasing "harmless gasses" in Oklahoma City in the summer of 2003 (July) to determine how such an attack would disperse.  In 2000, another test was conducted in Salt Lake City.  (I have to wonder what the long-term effects of such an attack are going to look like.  Some of the biological weapons dispersed in the Olaa Forest in Hawaii were "harmless."  The agent that was used was Bacillus globigii, a bacteria related to the one which causes anthrax.  This little gem can be life-threatening.

These tests are being conducted as part of a "terrorism preparedness" progrom.  The question that just begs to be answered is whether the real threat comes from beyond our borders or from the government itself.

Citizens have given up most of their rights to the government already under the guise of the "terrorist threat."  The Homeland inSecurity act is close to becoming law.  The Right to Privacy that so many fought to enact is going to be thrown out the window in a heartbeat.  The basic rights and freedoms that the Founding Fathers worked so hard to put into place are being stripped as We the People thank our oppressors.

We, as a nation, have forgotten what it means to have to fight for freedom.  We, as a nation, have allowed the terrorists to win, by becoming complacent in the face of the loss of our freedoms for a little false security.

Does anyone care that if things continue on this course well be working for the governments interests, and not our own?  That we will have no recourse if we speak our minds, that those who say anything against the ruling power will be branded "enemy combatants" and taken to a gulag somewhere near Jersey?  Or that if someone decides to fight back a city might get gassed?

These tests aren't about counter-terrorism measures.  They're about keeping the citizens in line.  By any means necessary.  (That might be an extreme, but it is possible.)  The government is acting in its own self-interest, in order to continue to keep and build its political power over the citizens.

Other parts of Project 112:  Yellow Leaf; Big Jack, Phase A; and Pin Point