Tom Wheeler wrote:
> http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2002-10-31/news_story2.php
> KILLER CLOUDS
>
> GAS USED IN RUSSIAN TRAGEDY PART OF U.S. CROWD CONTROL PLANS
>
> BY STEPHEN JAMES KERR
>
> When vladimir putin's generals pumped anaesthetic gas through the
> vents of that Moscow theatre last week, the inadvertent killing of
> 117 hostages by their rescuers became the calling card of a new era
> in chemical warfare. Russian health minister Yuri Shevchenko
> confirmed yesterday that the substance used was a sedative called
> fentanyl, in the same family as morphine and heroine.
>
> Ironically, according to the Sunshine Project, an international NGO
> dedicated to the eradication of bio/chemical weapons, this is the
> very drug that has caught the eye of American researchers at Penn
> State who are exploring potential military uses of pharmaceuticals.
>
> The Sunshine Project, which has obtained a deluge of documents
> through the Freedom of Information Act, believes the U.S. military is
> in fact deeply interested in weaponized "calmatives," particularly
> Valium, Prozac and Zoloft. Arms monitors are sounding the alarm that,
> while George W. Bush prepares to invade Iraq over its alleged
> chemical weapons, U.S. efforts to turn pharmaceuticals into
> "non-lethal" armaments are themselves in direct violation of the
> Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
>
> One of the released documents is a Department of Defense presentation
> entitled Into The Future: Non-Lethal Capabilities Into The 21st
> Century. The weapons at the top of the non-lethal list are calmatives
> that will "attack a target's senses or cognitive/motor abilities."
>
> The text, which carries the logo of the U.S. Marine Corps' Joint
> Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD), compares images of civilian
> dissenters, Serbian children protesting NATO bombing and the U.S.S.
> Cole damaged by al Qaeda -- all enemies of U.S. policy and thus
> possible targets. The presentation also describes the CWC as a
> "challenge" to the development of these weapons.
>
> "What the Pentagon planners are anticipating is that U.S. forces will
> repeatedly be put in a situation where they feel they need to drug
> large quantities of civilians," says Edward Hammond, a biotech expert
> with the Sunshine Project.
>
> "But they are also looking at these weapons in what they call "the
> full spectrum of war,' meaning anti-terrorism and anti-drug
> operations up through major-theatre-scale conflict like invasion of
> Afghanistan or Iraq."
>
> Documents demonstrate that reps from JNLWD attended a Non-Lethal
> Weapons Urban Operations Seminar in London in 2000. "Participants
> expressed a desire to have a non-lethal weapon" that could quickly
> incapacitate individuals, and agreed that "a chemically based
> calmative agent was viewed as the technology that could provide this
> capability."
>
> Both the UK and U.S. armed forces foresee increasing involvement in
> what are termed "military operations other than war," which feature
> "close interaction between the military and non-combatants." The U.S.
> Army's approach to such non-war operations and to sedative drug
> weapons was defined by the experience of U.S. forces at Mogadishu,
> Somalia, in 1992, the same report notes. Somali civilians opposed
> U.S. intervention, and several U.S. soldiers were killed and dragged
> through the streets.
>
> The U.S. military is considering just putting future troublemakers to
> sleep. And that challenges a basic premise of international law on
> war, that non-combatant civilians should not be the targets of
> military attack.
>
> The JNLWD hotly denies any involvement in plans to weaponize drugs.
> "I can tell you that the JNLWD is not pursuing anything like that,"
> says Joseph Rutigliano, a lawyer with the judge advocate office of
> the U.S. Marine Corps. But Rutigliano was a participant in the London
> meetings and admits the Marines receive applications from
> researchers. "I guarantee that there are labs out there working on
> various proposals that they think might make a good non-lethal
> weapon. They send those to JNLWD. It's obviously something we're not
> interested in."
>
> Yet researchers who do work for both the Department of Defense and the
> Department of Justice are interested. Documents show that scientists
> at Pennsylvania State University are conducting research into combat
> calmatives. In 2000, they wrote a report called The Advantages And
> Limitations Of Calmatives For Use As A Non-Lethal Technique for the
> Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies. According to the U.S.
> journal Science, the Institute receives funding from the National
> Institute of Justice, the research arm of the DOJ.
>
> Penn State researchers found that "new classes of pharmaceuticals are
> poised to meet the unique requirements of the non-lethal warfare
> arena." It's fentanyl, whose molecular diagram graces the cover of
> their report, that really interests them. Carfentanil, a derivative,
> they say, "has been used successfully to immobilize large animals."
> But there's bigger game out there, including "hungry refugees
> agitated over the distribution of food and unwilling to wait."
>
> The study also surveyed methods of getting calmative drugs to these
> new targets through "drinking water, topical administration to the
> skin, spray inhalation, a drug-filled rubber bullet."
>
> The Institute is a major recipient of JNLWD contracts, but
> directorate reps deny it is funding these particular studies. Says
> Captain Shawn Turner, "The Penn State study was an independent study,
> not funded by the Department of Defense and not requested by the
> Department of Defense."
>
> Penn State researchers declined to be interviewed about their own
> project. University rep Barbara Hale will only say that the report
> was "designed to list possible alternatives to deadly force for
> crisis situations."
>
> Paul Root Wolpe, a professor at the Center for Bioethics at the
> University of Pennsylvania and chief bioethicist with NASA, believes
> that "drugging people against their will is fundamentally unethical.
> Under what authority can you introduce medications into people's
> bodies without their consent? The answer is never." Drug weapons such
> as those used in Moscow could never be tested on subjects with
> informed consent.
>
> That seems to be the interpretation of many Chemical Weapons
> Convention experts as well. Article 1, section 4, of the CWC, which
> was ratified by the USA in 1997, states, "Each State Party undertakes
> to destroy any chemical weapons production facilities it owns or
> possesses." Section 5 states, "Each State Party undertakes not to use
> riot control agents as a method of warfare."
>
> Julian Perry Robinson from the University of Sussex and the world's
> top expert on the CWC says the legal question is unambiguous. "You
> cannot argue that a calmative or any toxic chemical lies outside it.
> The CWC defines chemical weapons in terms of the purposes to which
> they are put."
>
> For Hammond and the Sunshine Project, the prospect of war against
> Iraq over chemical weapons is especially galling. "If the U.S. is
> going to go around the world pointing its finger at other countries,
> it'd better make sure it has its own house in order."
>
> *******************************
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