Vets widows denied

[pritchke]

Now this is like something out of a Wolverine comicbook.

Flashback to wartime, 1941. Stewart Braden is just a kid in soldier's clothing when he suddenly finds hell, landing in the middle of a perverse military campaign that would forever scar his life and ultimately become Canada's shame.

Day after day, Braden and 3,600 other young Canadian recruits were doused in warfare chemicals until their skin peeled, jammed into narrow dirt trenches saturated with mustard gas, forced to breathe toxic poisons until their lungs bled.

Incredibly, all this suffering and sacrifice was not spent fighting Nazi armies on the battlefields of Europe, now the graveyards where some of Canada's finest hours of military heroism are being celebrated this week.

Instead, Stewart Braden and his comrades were repeatedly gassed in the fields of Alberta and in the laboratories of Ottawa as thousands of human guinea pigs in a secret, government-run program of chemical warfare testing. [entire story]

[ 05-05-2005, 02:01 PM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

[Sigmar]

That's insane.

[shamrock_uk]

We have a similar situation over here in the UK, albeit on a much much smaller scale.

Governments need a kick in the head over things like this.

[Larry_OHF]

This is the very first time I have ever had a reason to detest/hate/despise/loathe the Canadian govt.

I don't even know which word is the best to use in that sentence.

Nothing I have ever read has made me feel this sympathetic to victims of the Canadian govt.

So what can be done? Appeals appeals appeals until the day of her (and the others') deaths?

[Timber Loftis]

Sometimes government chemical tests can be fun. Like the acid tests. [img]graemlins/heee.gif[/img]

Oh, and here's a stick to beat governments over the head with ---> [img]graemlins/whackya.gif[/img]

[mad=dog]

The real problem is that the current government didn't commit the crime. Sometimes these things sound like the secret is passed from prime minister to prime minister and they all just stick together, but that is hardly so. If the article had been written differently (and with a fair deal less sensationalism) I reckon a completely different message could be send.

"Government recognises war heroes"

"For decades we have forgotten about them. Most of us know about the brave men who died on the battlefield, but what about those who were injured or died to develop the protective gear that saved many of their comrades? Well finally the current government is doing what we have been neglecting for so long. They are paying out compensation to those afflicted or in case they have passed away to their willfull heriditary.
In most cases determining the recipient has been easy, however the process is still going on as the list is long and members of that generation does not have a tendency to leave a legally binding will."

"Secret government chemical warfare programme" just sell more newspapers than "gas mask testing and fitting". ANYTHING the military does during wartime is secret. Fullstop. From what I can read they were exposed to known chemicals with known methods of dispersal meaning that they were with 95% chance involved in a project about countermeasures. We don't know if they had consent from the soldiers involved. They may very well have been asked to sign a document of agreement. It doesn't make it right for a government to do these things though. Nothing is right during war.

The only thing of slight value in the article is that beaurocracy is always annoying. However imagine if they DIDN'T check anything and some thief claimed Mrs. Bradens compensation in her name. Now THAT could get my piss boiling.