Saturday’s newspaper is often the most meager of the week for those seeking actual news. After tossing aside the auto dealer advertising, the weekend’s lists of real estate open houses, general classified and help wanted ads, there isn’t all that much left of the paper. Why, there weren’t even any op-ed pieces today.
Still, even on a slow news day, the front section of the newspaper does contain stories that beg our attention.
For instance, we learned today that the F-16 pilots who mistakenly bombed Canadian soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan last April, killing four and wounding eight, were flying on Dexedrine, an amphetamine. And where had these guys scored their hits of “speed”? From the dispensary at their airbase, that’s where. It seems that the USAF not only permits its pilots to use this drug, they issue the pills to their pilots.
Apparently, it’s a longstanding practice in the US military. Their use was especially high during the Gulf War, when most USAF missions were carried out at night. At that time, pilots would be issued “Go pills” for their nocturnal missions, then get “No-Go pills” (i.e., sedatives) afterwards. Not surprisingly, this practice led to a not-insignificant number of addicted pilots. Alarmed by what was happening, the Air Force banned the pills after the Gulf War, as did the Navy. But the Air Force reversed its ban during the Bosnia/Kosovo campaign in 1996, and the Navy lifted their ban in 1999.
According to a Pentagon report, Majors Harry Schmidt and William Umbach, the pilots who bombed the Canadian contingent, “had been prescribed Go and No-Go pills for use in combatting fatigue and in adjusting to the new times zones in the deployed region.” At the time of the strike, the two had been in Afghanistan for more than a month.
The physiologic status of the pilots probably had far less to do with this tragic error than a failed command-and-control structure and poor communications among the allied forces. Still, this report does give a whole new meaning to the term “War on Drugs”.
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Posted by N in Seattle on 01/04 at 11:13 AM
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