Monsters, Inc.

Rock on, Chris Floyd:

Pentagon dark lord Donald Rumsfeld is shoveling billions of tax dollars into the research furnaces of federal laboratories and private universities across the land in the wide-ranging effort to spawn "super soldiers," fired by drugs and electromagnetic "brain zaps" to fight without ceasing for days on end. The work is being directed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) -- yes, the same outfit now laboring under convicted terrorist-conspirator John Poindexter to build the "Total Information Awareness" network that will allow the government to monitor the electronic records and communications of every citizen.

The DARPA "war fighter enhancement" programs -- an acceleration of bipartisan biotinkering that's been going on for years -- will involve injecting young men and women with hormonal, neurological and genetic concoctions; implanting microchips and electrodes in their bodies to control their internal organs and brain functions; and plying them with drugs that deaden some of their normal human tendencies: the need for sleep, the fear of death, the reluctance to kill their fellow human beings.

...What happens to the burnt-out husks of these "iron" soldiers after their minds and bodies have been eaten way by relentless modification and ceaseless toil is, of course, of no concern to the Bush Regime. Even now, the White House is cutting back on health benefits to military veterans -- even going so far as to order veterans hospitals not to advertise their available services, lest broken soldiers actually seek to claim the promise of support their government once gave them. For men like Bush -- protected scions of privilege who sit out wars in safety, in booze-addled luxury -- such promises are just cynical sucker ploys, aimed at coaxing decent soldiers into acting as the hitmen of empire, then discarding them when they're no longer needed.

How very strange it is: Those who want to turn American soldiers into mindless, drug-addled mutants and send them off to kill and die in far-flung wars of imperial conquest are seen as patriots, noble leaders, doing the will of God; while those who would rather see these good men and women called home, treated with honor and respect -- their talents and dedication applied solely to the defense of their own great country, not pressed into the service of a greedy, rapacious elite -- are denounced as "traitors," "anti-American agitators," "allies of terrorism."