> On 5/24/05, Leigh Meyers <leighcmeyers at gmail.com> wrote:Tailwind was
> looking for NLF and US deserters in the more remote villages
> along the Cambodian, Laotian and Thai borders.
>
> Oh Leigh.
> Jerry Lembcke, CNN's Tailwind Tale: Inside Vietnam's Last Great Myth.
> Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. 256 pp.
> Book Description
> Jerry Lembcke delves into the origins of CNN's 1998 story about U.S.
> soldiers in Vietnam using nerve gas on defectors and how it came to be
> believed, not only by those who told it, but by news reporters and the
> public. In his investigation, Lembcke shows that the myth of Operation
> Tailwind originated in the fiction of popular culture, the
> unreliability of memory, and the conspiracy-minded, ultra-Right wing,
> fundamentalist Christian community.
Are you saying Tailwind was a myth or that nerve gas wasn't used?
Pentagon's CNN published rebuttal: http://www.cnn.com/US/9807/21/pentagon.tailwind.02/
Department of Defense Review of Allegations Concerning Operation Tailwind http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/tailwind.html
Excerpts from the Command history http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/tailwind/
"Air Force pilots said they dropped tear gas canisters - not deadly sarin - during helicopter extraction missions to help SOG members escape the enemy." http://www.sfalx.com/h_macvsog_operation_tailwind.htm
Note: NOT the kind of tear gas canisters the police use.
Think "Wet Eye" bombs filled with it dropped from F-111s
CS is toxic in high concentration, but isn't classified as poison or nerve gas even though it causes projectile vomitting and potential eye damage, even at the wussy levels used at urban US demonstrations
What is your point, anyway?
Leigh