Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Ready To Pump You Up

For some reason, reading this report immediately reminded me of the early-80's sci-fi movie Outland. From the AP:
Italian police seized 215,000 doses of prohibited substances as they smashed a ring that supplied steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to customers around the world, including American soldiers in Iraq, a police official said Monday.

The police investigation in Italy began after a post office in Trieste, in northeastern Italy, reported that U.S. postal authorities in Iraq returned hundreds of packets of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs because they were improperly addressed, according to Mario Bo, head of the Trieste police department's criminal division.

The U.S. military in Iraq had no immediate comment, but the popularity of steroid abuse has long been discussed as American troops and contractors in Iraq work out in gyms set up in bases and even in the mirrored halls of one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces.

Joe Donahue, program director for the Vietnam Vets of America Foundation, who spent 16 months in Iraq - often lifting weights in the Green Zone gyms - said steroids were on offer for those who wanted them.

Beefed up U.S. soldiers are a common sight in Iraq, where many work out using makeshift gym equipment near their sleeping quarters or in elaborate gyms at large bases such as in Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

Some soldiers have questioned how some of their more rippling fellow soldiers could have built up such bulk while in a war zone, suggesting that steroid use may have been taking place. But they had no independent confirmation to back up their suspicions.

Synthetic derivatives of testosterone, anabolic steroids are thought to enhance aggressiveness.
Wouldn't it be interesting to know whether any of those Rambo wannabes working the late shift at Abu Ghraib had recently received a package of "homemade pasta" shipped from the old country?

11 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Soldiers are the first victims of war.

8/02/2005 4:36 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

interesting question, indeed.

8/02/2005 8:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not to be contradictory, but truth is the first victim of war.

I'm not surprised. I think anything goes in war, whether we set "rules" or not, unfortunately. War is hell. I'm sure they knowingly and unknowingly take all kinds of stuff to survive physically and mentally. If physicians can prescribe and oversee torture, why couldn't they prescribe and oversee the experimentation of drugs, procedures, and technology on our military folks. It isn't like it hasn't been done before in the past. And I'm sure Rumsfeld is giddy with toys, money, and power.

The Next Generation of StarTrek showed an episode of what a future soldier could look like, and it wasn't the borg. Just an ordinary human in a uniform equiped with its personal supply of cocktail drugs.

Oprah did a story about a base where military husbands were coming home and killing their wives.

I think I might be more concerned about all the private military contractors because there is less transparency.

8/02/2005 9:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Excellent. So in addition to all of the normal stressors of occupying a 120 degree country filled with people who hate you and whose language you don't speak, some soldiers are adding roid rage to the mix.

That's going to go well.

8/02/2005 10:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, I'd rather them do it over there than over here.

8/02/2005 2:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

We'll tell out children that we spawned a generation of thugs in America who enjoyed a brief spree of drive-by shootings during the 1990s before we concocted a war to ship them overseas.

8/02/2005 7:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

thirdeye said it right.

May be Bush should engage in another war
in Iraq since he likes so much to be a war president - a war on drugs- this time.

8/03/2005 2:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Does anyone remember that the Navy was giving its pilots amphetamines, when we invaded Afghanistan? It was found to be a contributing factor when Canadian friendlies were bombed, but very little was ever heard about it, afterwards.
Jeff

8/03/2005 3:05 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's a scary time when the more you read, the more it sounds like a "B" movie. (And I say that with the greatest of respect for Sean Connery, who was great in "Outland")

8/19/2005 1:05 AM  
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