Press TV Doesn't Know Diddly About US History

There they go again! The Iranian agency, Press TV, warps, distorts, and mutilates US history as it gins out propaganda under the guise of "objective reporting."

We're all used to the media distorting fact to meet the requirements of propensity, prejudice, and predilection. Nothing new about it. US media--both mainstream and alternative--have been known to commit felonious assault upon American history. It seems to come with the territory.

The Geek usually just shakes his head sadly as he reads or hears yet one more nauseating twisting of historical reality to fit present needs.

It's different this time. This time the Geek is flatly rankled. This time the self-proclaimed reclaimer of media purity from the icky, nasty liars of the Western media has sliced and diced the realities of American history to meet the propaganda needs of the mullahocracy.

Worse, Press TV has chosen a subject--biological and chemical warfare research--which is both highly emotional and has a history poorly understood by the vast majority of even well-educated people. Choosing this subject for propagandistic treatment is a cheap shot. A low blow.

The Geek, who is, after all, a military historian who has lived in more archives than he cares to remember, pouring over the most recently declassified documents, has some expertise in the area of biological and chemical warfare. He is equipped by virtue of his education and experience to comment on the warped account provided by Press TV.

The problem is that space prohibits taking on more than a few of the specifics of Press TV's fabrications through misrepresentation. But, first take a look at the Iranian bill of particulars. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=24716&sectionid=3510303.

Now, The Geek Talks Back! Or, Truth In History Is A Good Thing.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study really happened. You can read the whole, sad, sick story in Jones, Bad Blood. This book came out a quarter century ago. It was written by a professor of history at the University of Houston. Jones and his book had a brief moment in the celebrity spotlight. It contains the cliched "rest of the story" which eluded Press TV

The lads in Tehran have the problem of pellagra wrong. In 1935, as the result of a pioneering study conducted on both black and white citizens in the so-called Pellagra Belt in the American south, the cause of the metabolic disorder was determined and effective countermeasures through diet change were developed. The difficulty came in convincing people to change time honored dietary customs.

The malaria experiments of 1940 and many successive years conducted on convicts in a number of state and federal prisons were done with the individual's consent and for the valid reason of determining effective prophylactic measures other than quinine. The results spared many US personnel in the South Pacific and other theaters of war from the debilitating disease. As the war moved toward Japan, the local populations also benefited.

You bet we, like the British, experimented in protective measures to counter toxic weapons such as mustard gas. Military personnel, conscientious objectors, and convicts were all used. While the Geek has real problems with the concept "informed consent" in this work, it was critically necessary and certainly better than the German and Japanese practice of conducting experiments on concentration camp inmates.

To show how out-to-lunch the crew at Press TV are, get a grip on this. The British, Canadian, and American governments pressed ahead with research, development, testing, and production of biological weapons, such as anthrax during World War II. Churchill had to be actively resisted in his stated desire to use anthrax on German cities in early 1944. (The winning argument was the truth. Not enough had been produced yet. And, the target cities might be uninhabitable for fifty years.)

Had Press TV been aware of history, the merry bunch could have used this one fact instead of the reams of misinterpretation and falsification they did use.

Had enough? The Geek has.

One last howler though, if you would indulge the ole Geekmo. He isn't much of a techno-wonk, but even the Geek knows that there is a vast difference between uranium hexafluoride gas used in the gaseous diffusion method of enrichment and fluorine.

(BTW, Press TV dudes, fluoride is a specific compound including fluorine. It is not a chemical element,)

Fluorine gas is very nasty since it is a highly active oxidant. Because it is active, fluorine can be combined with a number of other substances. Some are quite toxic. Others are not. The devil is in the details. Fluoridation of drinking water may be controversial but it does not and never did involve the old Atomic Energy Commission.

The Geek is officially bored with beating down the evil little straw men put up by one component of the Iranian noise machine. If you want, go over the roster of Press TV claims. Pick one you like and pass it on to the Geek.

The we can play Truth In History again.