Brenda Stardom [ pilots SPEED their way to WAR ]

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30-12-2002 - pilots SPEED their way to WAR

Ohboy this will drop some jaws! What would you think if you discovered that from the Vietnam War to Desert Storm to Afghanistan, the US Air Force has strong-armed its pilots into taking speed and downers? Shocking, eh? It's true and I'm going to prove it. This is both unbelievable and frightening, knowing those pilots have a stash of Dexedrine, coerced to use at their discretion -- when they're beyond exhaustion they pop them. They even have a nickname -- Go Pills. When the pilots are so pooped they can't remember their names, they're given sleep aids, Restoril and Ativan, dubbed No Go Pills.

I stumbled on this while reading a report about a mother in the U.S. saying her son had no choice but to take Go Pills when he and another pilot dropped a bomb on Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan last April, who were engaged in a live-fire nighttime training exercise near Kandahar. Four soldiers were killed and eight injured. Of course the military denies the Go Pills were responsible. My head shakes, knowing first hand the dangers of speed. These guys face 60 years in prison if this goes to trial and they're found guilty. Their claim is worth magnifying. They took the requisite speed an hour before, oops, the bomb was 'accidentally' dropped. How much did they take? What's to stop the pilots from increasing the dosage?

Revving up the search engine, I raced through site after site, striking gold. Globalsecurity.org had some good stuff, a collection of articles ranging from the Christian Science Monitor to the Toronto Star. "...medical literature indicates that amphetamines can have severe side effects. The worst is called "amphetamine psychosis." It causes hallucinations as well as paranoid delusions." That's not all this drug can do. It can cause tremors, dizziness, anxiety and blurred vision and there are warnings saying to use caution when driving, operating machinery or performing hazardous activities. And this is given to pilots???

"The initial version of the Canadian incident portrayed the pilot as behaving with inexplicable aggression tinged with paranoia, and my first thought was that the poor guy had been eating too much speed," says Mr. Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. Officials are still investigating that accident, and the pilot has been questioned, among other things, about the possibility of drug use

It was reported that jet fighter pilots, responsible for at least 10 deadly "friendly fire" accidents in the Afghanistan war, have regularly been given amphetamines to fly longer hours. Could these have been cases of amphetamine psychosis?? Their minds are already in a high state of alert, adrenaline's rushing, fear's surging and the added speed combines all this into sheer madness. Aren't all the faculties supposed to be clear, clean and sharp???

When they return to base, they're singing 'I want to be sedated', before beginning the whole cycle again on the next mission, often less than 12 hours later. They're dosed with Restoril, which carries a terrifying side effect -- anterograde amnesia, meaning the pilot could zonk out, go to a brief and have no recollection of being told what to do. Man, combine amnesia with psychosis and you have the nightmare of nightmares. These guys are not people to the brass, they're government issues, made to obey orders.

Get this! They have to sign this document entitled "Informed Consent For Operational Use of Dexedrine," it begins by saying: "It has been explained to me and I understand that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved the use of Dexedrine to manage fatigue ... it goes on and on, stating, yet underplaying the potential dangers of this drug and get this, My decision to take Dexedrine is voluntary. I understand that I am not being required to take the medication. Neither can I be punished if I decide not to take Dexedrine. Ouch, I can feel the short hairs being yanked, because if they don't voluntarily sign this, they will be deemed unfit for flight, so basically by not signing, it's adios muchachos. They're OUT. You can find the complete document at the end of the memory hole.org report and read more from globalsecurity.org.

Performance medications in aviators is not a new idea. The British and Germans used amphetamines during WWII in their pilots. The British used sedatives to regulate sleep for pilots during the Falklands conflict. The U.S. Air Force and Navy used amphetamines during Vietnam, and the Air Force used both amphetamines and sedatives during Desert Storm and have used both off and on since. Use in all these circumstances was reported to be safe and effective. Well, that's if you believe the military. This is all listed in Performance Maintenance During Continuous Flight Operations -- A Guide for Flight Surgeons, exerpts of which can be found at the memoryhole.org or if you want to wade through the whole thing, an Acrobat version is available.

Some people have defended the practice of Go Pills. "If you can't trust them with the medication, then you can't trust them with a $ 50 million airplane to try and kill someone," says one squadron commander. Haha I wonder what he's on.

I found another article which stated, amphetamines are also part of a new trend that foresees "performance enhancements" designed to produce "iron bodied and iron willed personnel," as outlined in one document of the US Special Operations Command, which oversees the elite special-operations troops that are part of all the military services.

Enter DARPA with this statement. "What's called for, according to DARPA, is a "radical approach" to achieve "continuous assisted performance" for up to seven days. This would actually involve much more than the "linear, incremental and ... limited" approaches of stimulants like caffeine and amphetamines"

It gets better. ""Futurists say that if anything's going to happen in the way of leaps in technology, it'll be in the field of medicine," says retired Rear Adm. Stephen Baker, the Navy's former chief of operational testing and evaluation, who is now at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. "This 'better warrior through chemistry' field is being looked at very closely," says Admiral Baker, whose career includes more than 1,000 aircraft-carrier landings as a naval aviator. "It's part of the research going on that is very aggressive and wide open."

All this downshifted my mind and pushed it into overdrive.This has been going on for a LONG time. It's common knowledge that the guys fighting in Vietnam were on very high grade Heroin, extremely potent marijuana, and LSD, described in the film Apcopalypse Now by Mooby, "I make Koolaid that makes purple Owsley come on like piss." There's scarely a vet I know that doesn't claim the CIA was responsible for the distribution and sales of Heroin after cutting a deal with the drug lords. Top that off with the military's issuing Dexedrine and downers and you DO have Apocalypse Now.

"Given the extent of recreational drug use within the military, and the use of performance-enhancing drugs among athletes, it is very easy to imagine that warriors would consider using any manner of drug they thought would increase their chance of returning home alive," says John Pike, a defense expert with GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Va.

Mama mia. "As the US moves into an era in which national security is likely to mean wars fought from the air - using attack aircraft and small, specially trained units flown long distances to the battlefield - the issue of performance-enhancing drug use by US military personnel is likely to escalate. "The real story here is the ever-extending reach of air power," says Daniel Goure, a military specialist at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. "As asymmetric threats such as ballistic missiles become more available to our adversaries, we are going to stand even farther back," adds Dr. Goure. "That means that this problem [i.e., the need to combat pilot fatigue] can only grow."

So, today we have pilots on speed and downers, though the fighting in Afghanistan is over for the most part. My wonder is, IF there's going to be a war in Iraq, will they have these new drugs currently being discussed in addition to the ones in current use? Some kind of wonder drug that turns the men into superheros, making them more like suicide bombers than fighter pilots??

Here he comes
Here comes Speed Racer
He's a demon with wings
He's a demon and he's gonna be chasin' after someone.

He's gainin' on you so you better look alive.
He's busy revvin' up a powerful Mach 5.

And when the odds are against him
And there's dangerous work to do
You bet your life Speed Racer
Will see it through.

Go Speed Racer
Go Speed Racer
Go Speed Racer, Go!

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