"I’m from the government…and I’m here to help you."

Okay, now stop laughing. This is really quite serious.

Because it appears somewhere in the chain of command, some well meaning military officer honestly believes "truth, justice and the American way" can be best served by spraying "irradiated" germ spores in the vicinity of understandably irate Louisiana civilians.

Townsfolk from Leesville and Deridder are up in arms over plans by the U.S. Army to simulate bacterial warfare in their backyards, up to 12 times per year. Biological test operations are set to start at Fort Polk by the end of 2000.

The army claims it needs such testing, using allegedly neutralized versions of a bacterium known as Bacillus Subtilis. But when the local guinea pigs discovered the common germ can cause upper respiratory infections as well as conjunctivitis, they began to rebel, pleading their case even before mainstream military media like Stars and Stripes Magazine.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane. Remember when our government put its own soldiers in harm’s way during nuclear bomb tests in the late ‘40s and ‘50s? How about the exploitation of GI’s sprayed with Agent Orange in Vietnam or the risky anthrax shots still in use today? Let’s not forget the inhumane government syphilis tests conducted on poor blacks in Alabama during the last century.

No wonder the skeptical among us question official explanations denying Gulf War Syndrome and mocking chem-trail sightings.

The sad truth is…where there are no absolutes…absolutely anything is possible. The fastest way for this or any government to alienate its own people is to give them the "mushroom" treatment…in other words, keep them in the dark and pour a whole lot of …inedible spores on their heads.

By the way, judging from the Army’s latest conduct at Fort Polk, this appears to be a banner year for mushrooms.

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