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?