TICKED OFF: Pentagon may have tested a biological weapon on unknowing Americans

Americans have always been a bit uneasy with the idea of trusting their government.  Perhaps that’s just simply in our nature, given that our nation was born out of the idea that we will never again be abused by tyranny so long as we ever shall exist.

This distrust, while maybe a wee bit stressful, is still healthy.  It allows us to focus on what freedom means to us, and how much we are willing to sacrifice in order to maintain it.

This also means, however, that we have a responsibility to call our government to the carpet when they cross certain lines with us.  That’s precisely what one Congressional Representative from New Jersey is looking to do this week with an amendment aimed directly at The Pentagon.

House lawmakers passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act(NDAA) last week that ordered the Pentagon to reveal whether the U.S. military made ticks into biological weapons.

The amendment, proposed by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., requires the Pentagon to examine “whether the Department of Defense experimented with ticks and other insects regarding its use as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975.”

Smith’s language was terse.

Smith said on the House floor Friday that his amendment tasks the DOD’s inspector general “to ask the hard questions and report back.”

“If true, what were the parameters of the program? Who ordered it?” Smith said during a debate for the amendment. “Was there any accidental release anywhere or at any time of any of the diseased ticks?”

He said he was inspired to add the amendment after reading material that suggested: “significant research had been done at U.S. government facilities including Fort Detrick, Maryland and Plum Island, New York to turn ticks and other insects into bioweapons.”

Ticks are common carriers of Lyme Disease – an affliction that causes a wide arrange of symptoms, which makes proper diagnosis both difficult and rare.