by Garry Reed

(Published 01 August 2007)

Gay websites were (no demeaning meme intended) all atwitter awhile back over a story charging the military with creating a "gay bomb." The headline and lead paragraph just about tells the tale:

"Pentagon Confirms It Sought To Build A 'Gay Bomb'"

"(CBS 5) BERKELEY – A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange US military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting."

The bill for research and development into chemicals that could transform a battlefield into a "Queer as Folk" episode would have come to 7.5 million taxbucks.

In today's world, a story once considered too idiotic to be true is now too idiotic not to be true.

Therefore, operating on the principal that where there's smoke there's a whole lot more smoke, a clandestine team of tireless libertarian anarcho-investihackers, using a variety of conventional and "alternative" analytical tools, have uncovered similar surreptitious government projects.

The following data was gleaned from heavily redacted documents obtained through the little-known Freedom of Information About Really Stupid Wasteful Military Boondoggles Act.

Fort Clonefield Genetic Warfare Research Labs developed a method for identifying and extracting the human Nationality Stereotype Gene, or NSG. Government scientists first isolated an American NSG and injected it into several "volunteer" Iraqi Enemy Combatants at Guantanamo. The American NSG caused the Iraqis to start playing poker and smoking cigars on Saturday night, lying about their sexual exploits and getting into fistfights over the superiority of Ford versus Chevrolet pickup trucks.

The project then succeeded in isolating other Nationality Stereotype Genes and injecting them into foreign troops.

A Russian NSG injected into Canadian soldiers caused them to crave borscht, drink vodka to oblivion and pine for the good ol' commie days of their youths.

After French NSG was injected into Japanese volunteers, they became rude and arrogant and began hitting on American women. English NSG injected into fundamentalist Afghani Taliban militiamen caused these fighters to begin speaking with funny Hobbit-like accents and adopting surnames like Tweedthistle and Hyde-Duckswinkie.

However, after consuming 13 million taxbucks the venture was terminated due to two insurmountable problems: (1) no one could figure out how to create a militarized NSG delivery system (individually injecting the agent into charging enemy soldiers with hypodermic needles during pitched battles seemed impractical), and (2) what good does any of this do in a war anyway?

Meanwhile, parallel research at nearby facilities succeeded in isolating the Political Ideology Gene (PIG). Low-level area politicians were easily bribed into serving as test subjects. Some odd results were achieved.

Injecting liberal PIG into a conservative city councilman caused him to advocate raising taxes on minimum wage-earners to make them pay their fair share, demand gun control for the rich, and argue for government-funded sensitivity training for global warming deniers.

Similarly, introducing conservative PIG into a liberal county commissioner's blood system caused her to demand corporate welfare for medical marijuana co-ops, a free handgun exchange program for the poor, and threats to move to France if Hillary Clinton became president.

Injecting a synthesis of both liberal and conservative PIG into a politically nonaligned subject resulted in the person acting like a libertarian, demanding both civil liberties and economic freedoms. This apparently so terrified the bureaucrats in charge that the program was immediately terminated.

Another multimillion taxbuck scheme involved projecting holograms at charging Muslim soldiers. The holographic images would consist of 72 virgins walking toward them and smiling seductively. The soldiers would think they had already been killed and gone to paradise, throw down their weapons and walk toward the images. Internal memos indicate that every training prototype proved to be too sexy, causing American GIs to surrender.

Since the military, like all government entities, hates small projects that only consume a few hundred thousand taxbucks, only two low-tech weaponry research programs went forward.

One scenario involved sowing no-man's-land with thousands of whoopee cushions. The attacking army could not avoid stepping on them, resulting in uncontrollable giggling, thereby rendering the soldiers unable to fight.

Another tactic called for covering the battlefield with Bubble Wrap. Once enemy jackboots began popping the bubbles during a charge they would be unable to resist the compulsion to stop and pop more bubbles. The unbearable urge to repeatedly stomp and pop, stomp and pop, would make them forget all about fighting.

Unfortunately, a libertarian proposal to minimize the possibility of constant warfare by adopting a noninterventionist foreign policy was summarily rejected.