The Defense Department has just awarded $900 million in biological and chemical war contracts. Time to send in UN weapons inspectors? Ha ha.

In yet another selfless act of democracy promotion, the US Defense Department announced last week that it had awarded $900 million in contracts for "logistics and service support to the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense". Yes, chemical and biological weapons are okay, just as long as they're used for "defense".

Let's take a moment and ponder the actual implications of this.

Better living through chemistry?

The US is the world's #1 user of biological and chemical weapons. During the Vietnam War, Agent Orange was sprayed on approximately 10% of South Vietnam. No biggie, according to the US government:

While at least recognizing that Agent Orange is associated with certain cancers and other health problems of American veterans and their offspring, the US government has consistently denied—much to the frustration of the Vietnamese—that any scientific evidence links Agent Orange to adverse health effects found in Vietnam, especially in regards to specific birth defects.

Let's fast-forward to the Iran-Iraq War:

The United States helped Saddam Hussein attack Iran with chemical weapons in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war...Ronald Regan's administration, who supported the Iraqi dictator topple two decades later by the Bush government, fed information to Baghdad that helped them launch strikes.

Or how about the Endless War in Iraq?

In response to a New York Times investigation, the undersecretary of the Army apologized this week for the military’s mishandling of more than 600 service members who reportedly suffered from chemical exposure in Iraq. After being exposed to potentially lethal amounts of sulfur mustard and sarin gas, US troops often received inadequate medical treatment, gag orders, and found themselves ineligible for Purple Heart medals. Due to the fact that many of the chemical weapons were American-designed artillery shells manufactured in European countries, the Pentagon neglected to inform the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence of the proliferation of dangerous chemical munitions being uncovered in Iraq.

For the truly adventurous, just Google "Fallujah depleted uranium." A picture tells a thousand chemical warfare crimes.

Meanwhile, any country suspected of developing chemical weapons is ripe for US-led regime change.

There's a moral to this story: Only countries that use chemical weapons are allowed to have them.