No, this is not a joke and its not April 1st. Read this piece from the BBC or this entry to the Wikipedia: the Pentagon was really funding research into creating a “gay bomb”, which would make enemy soldiers “sexually irresistible” to each other. The BBC reports that: The plan for a so-called “love bomb” envisaged an aphrodisiac chemical that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among troops, causing what the military called a “distasteful but completely non-lethal” blow to morale.

One should not conclude that the US taxpayer’s money is only wasted on utter nonsense. Serious stuff was also being worked on, such as, for example, according to the same BBC article: a “Who? Me?” bomb, which would simulate flatulence in enemy ranks. Indeed, a “Who? Me?” device had been under consideration since 1945, the government papers say. However, researchers concluded that the premise for such a device was fatally flawed because “people in many areas of the world do not find faecal odour offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis”.

The article concludes with a statement by Captain Dan McSweeney of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at the Pentagon who said the defense department receives “literally hundreds” of project ideas, but that “none of the systems described in that [1994] proposal have been developed”.

It is most reassuring in these times of great fear in the USA (the current “terror alert level” is at a scary “orange”) that the defense establishment is exploring all the possibilities to win the GWOT (global war on terror).

No doubt – Osama Bin Laden must be terrified.