The Oxford tortured faith research is not, it seems, the only bright research idea to come from the land of the free:
A US plan to develop a bad breath bomb and a chemical weapon to make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other has been revealed in newly declassified documents. New Scientist’s web site reports that the documents show the Pentagon considered a range of non-lethal chemical weapons aimed at disrupting enemy discipline and morale. The “sex bomb” idea would cause a “distasteful but completely non-lethal” blow to morale, it states. Also considered were concoctions that would be irresistible to wasps or angry rats to render enemy bases uninhabitable. And there was the bad breath bomb idea – a weapon that caused “severe and lasting halitosis” to make it easier to sniff out spies.
Wasn’t it critical theorist Herbert Marcuse who warned back in the 60s about the deformation of scientific research through military funding?
“A US plan to develop a bad breath bomb and a chemical weapon to make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other has been revealed in newly declassified documents. New Scientist’s web site reports that the documents show the Pentagon considered a range of non-lethal chemical weapons aimed at disrupting enemy discipline and morale. The “sex bomb” idea would cause a “distasteful but completely non-lethal” blow to morale, it states”
Make Love Not War! Certainly not distasteful. Give me hot homo action any day over the mass murder that is war.
If only there was something like that launched on the Yanks before they went into Iraq
So that’s where Dr. Strangelove ended up … in the Listerine lab at The Ponds Institute. (Surrounded by lab assistants, each one bearing an uncanny resemblance to Woody Allen or Lon Chaney.)
Of course, the US (and for that matter the Soviets) have had a long history of this kind of off-the-wall military research, such as MKULTRA.
I have to say, though, what kind of drugs were the researchers who came up with the idea of the “sex bomb” on? It seems like the fevered product of the conservative moralist mind that dumping a few pheromones on a bunch of (in the majority at least) straight soldiers about to go into battle could turn them into a writhing mass of hot homo action.
They probably canned it given the frightening implications of any friendly fire incident……but judging by the state of some of those on this morning’s 9.11 Cityrail service from Tempe, the halitosis number was a major success.
It’s Pynchonesque, it makes “Gravity’s Rainbow” seem like a work of realist fiction. Is this more special research from the PISCES (Pyschological Intelligence Schemes for Expediting Surrender); Slothrop and his erections must still be being scientifically monitored.
Are you sure this wasn’t overseen by Jesus’ General?