You Can't Make This Stuff Up

In keeping with coverage of GLBT Pride month issues, I offer this tidbit reported by a California CBS station:

A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

... The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviewing the documents.

... Gay community leaders in California said Friday that they found the notion of a "gay bomb" both offensive and almost laughable at the same time.

"Throughout history we have had so many brave men and women who are gay and lesbian serving the military with distinction," said Geoff Kors of Equality California. "So, it's just offensive that they think by turning people gay that the other military would be incapable of doing their job. And its absurd because there's so much medical data that shows that sexual orientation is immutable and cannot be changed."

Surely this begs the question of when Congress and American voters are going to start questioning waste, fraud and plain insanity in military budgeting with the same zeal they apply to other government spending. Wanna bet there's some corporate blowhards out there who made large donations to politicos with power over military spending, and who would have made a bundle from government contracts to research this so-called "gay bomb"? 

Imagine how many other similar boondoggles are buried in our military budgets, as well as in the secret earmarks inserted into bills of every stripe. I won't hold my breath for any massive public outcries though. Americans have long been programmed to believe that all government expenditures are bad, except when they're classified as "military" or "homeland security" spending. If anyone dares to question anything in budgets related to these two classes of spending, they're accused to being "soft on terrorism" or "unpatriotic." One hand washes the other in the military technology complex. Bombs away ....