Here at SNAFUBAR, we take stories from military history and particular moments of U.S. military mishaps and make them accessible to a wide range of audiences. The histories we will look at will make clear the degree to which the U.S. is a warful nation, contrary to the myth of a peaceful nation forced into combat. And we’ll try to clarify the degree to which we romanticize and fetishize the military while not really providing the support that service members need for their time in, or for their return.
This week's episode focuses on a SNAFU related to our two legged avian friends and how they have been brought into American warfare. And the result is not pretty! We’re going to introduce a theme that we’ll return to every once in a while, a theme that we’re calling “Canaries in the Coalmine.” Episodes in this theme will take us through some of the interesting, absurd and upsetting ways that animals have been used for war, by the U.S. In this episode, we take a look at Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken, or otherwise known as Operation KFC. Cluck Cluck! We hope you enjoy the show.
SNAFUBAR is hosted by Sara Hart, Chair of the Applied Humanities department Cal Poly Humboldt, and Jeff Crane who is an Environmental Historian and Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Research and writing for the show by Liam Salcuni and Roman Sotomayor.
SNAFUBAR is produced by Abigail Smithson and brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Works Cited:
Not Your Grandfather's Mining Industry
Working Conditions in 19th Century Mines
Exploring the Collection: The Canary Resuscitator
Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution
History of Western Civilization II
Singing as they go, miners' little friends head for retirement
Germans introduce poison gas
War Chickens Warn of Gas Attacks
With the 1st Marine Division in Iraq, 2003
Operation Field Chicken dies
Marines Prepare for Taking First Breath After Gas Attack
Chickens of the Gulf War – Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken
Transcript:
>> Sara Hart: Hello listeners, and welcome back to the Snafu Bar. I am Sara Hart.
>> Jeff Crane: And I'm Jeff Crane, and we're here, as always to talk about American militarization and its discontent. What's on the menu today? We're looking forward to some chicken. Am I right? I love me some fried chicken.
>> Sara Hart: Oh yeah, yeah, that's our main course, and we will get there. We'll start with something a little smaller, though, a bird of a different feather, ease ourselves into the chicken situation.
>> Jeff Crane: Quail?
>> Sara Hart: Quail-[laughs], close. In today's episode, we are going to introduce a theme that we'll return to every once in a while, and you know, on no particular schedule, a theme that we're calling "Canaries in the Coal Mine." So, episodes in this theme will take us through some of the interesting and sometimes hilarious ways that animals have been used for war by the United States.
>> Jeff Crane: Sounds like fun [laughs], especially for the animals.
>> Sara Hart: Especially for the animals-not always fun, sometimes. Okay. So! First, we're going to go into the origins of the idiom.
>> Jeff Crane: We love word histories, right, we can't get enough of those.
>> Sara Hart: That's right, and today we're starting with a deep dive into "Canary in a Coal Mine." We've heard this, most of us, right? It's an English idiom that refers to an early warning sign for danger. It's rooted in the early 1900s, when miners in Great Britain and Nova Scotia brought live canaries with them down into the mines, to serve as carbon monoxide detectors.
>> Jeff Crane: Right, so you're busy shoveling away at some vein of coal, loading it up, and you look over, and the canary has keeled over, and you're like, "Time to get out of here!"
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, yeah! And fast, right? Now, canaries aren't the only option. You'll be happy to know, for a long time, miners carried candles, because of course like humans and canaries, flames also need oxygen to survive. The idea of using canaries instead of flame to provide early detection for dangerously low oxygen levels came from a gentleman by the name of John Scott Haldane, Scottish physiologist, who invented oxygen therapy.
>> Jeff Crane: Is that like oxygen bars, like in L.A., because I know those are super popular?
>> Sara Hart: Have-have you been to one?
>> Jeff Crane: I've not. I'm kidding-I'm blue collar.
>> Sara Hart: I was kind of hoping that you had [laughter], but you know-
>> Jeff Crane: Mochas are as fancy as I get.
>> Sara Hart: Mochas are-okay. Are you opposed?
>> Jeff Crane: No, I'm not. Oxygen is good.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Abigail Smithson: We love oxygen here.
>> Jeff Crane: Everyone who believes in oxygen, raise your hand. I know that works really well on the radio folks, but we're all raising our hands. You've got to have it, got to have it!
>> Sara Hart: Woooo! We love oxygen. Right?
>> Jeff Crane: Really, though. I remember seeing these bars start popping up in the late 90s, early 2000s. You go to one of these bars, they look like one that's more traditional in nature, with seats along, you know, a bar-and you go there to stick a cannula, a little plastic doo-hickey up your nose, or to put a mask over your face, then you inhale concentrated oxygen for about a buck a minute.
>> Sara Hart: A dollar a minute! Okay, okay, so people are paying for oxygen hits now.
>> Liam Salcuni: You know how called it?
>> Sara Hart: Who called it?
>> Liam Salcuni: The quicksilver messenger service. Ooh!
>> Sara Hart: Deep cuts!
>> Liam Salcuni: Have another hit of sweet...air.
>> Sara Hart: Have another hit-
>> Liam Salcuni: From their 1970 album, "Just for Love," sort of psychedelic. You know that one?
>> Sara Hart: I know that one.
>> Liam Salcuni: Not only psychedelic, but also prophetic. And for folks who missed it, I'm Liam Salcuni, a writer/researcher here for the podcast. We're having a great time so far. We're talking about oxygen, mile a minute, dollar a minute.
>> Abigail Smithson: Absolutely, and I'm Abigail Smithson, I'm the Producer for the show, and I don't have the same level of knowledge around the subject, that Liam does, but I'm here to chime in with random banter, blah, blah, blah.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, it is prophetic. Liam, today, people are totally doing it and paying for it, hits of sweet air. And this is recreational, this is a legal high?
>> Jeff Crane: Mostly legal, it turns out. Notably, not legal in Massachusetts, because as a state has decided that "oxygen does not meet the updated criteria [laughing]-I'm sorry [all laughing], I'm going to have to stick to-clearly, I didn't read this line ahead of time. Oxygen does not meet the FDA criteria to be sold as an over-the-counter drug," [gasp]. That's according to the Massachusetts.gov website, under Professional Licenses and Permits. Nice find!
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, right? It doesn't meet the FDA criteria, and okay, this gets us back a little closer to our topic for the day. The Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, has things to say about oxygen. The FDA classifies oxygen as a prescription drug. It's regulated, it has got to be clean, produced in a facility that is licensed, regulated, trained, all this-people have to label it properly. It has to be administered by somebody who has been appropriately trained.
>> Jeff Crane: And here, I've just been breathing this my whole life, no training, no license, no preparation, just, you know, in and out, in and out, oxygen, so are you telling me I need a prescription now? Is this the future? Is this our dystopian future, to get oxygen?
>> Sara Hart: Right, I mean, we poke fun at this, you're laughing, but you do, in fact, in most cases. There is an exception for filling tanks that are intended for emergency use only. You're supposed to be a trained person to administer in emergency situations in order to get hold of these tanks, but you don't need a prescription. So scuba divers, for instance, for divers, it's a good practice to keep an emergency tank on board, just in case.
>> Jeff Crane: So we've wandered off into the oxygen regulation wilderness. I think maybe it's time to come back to the original story, right.
>> Abigail Smithson: Oh wow! Jeff is suggesting that we come back to the original point?
>> Jeff Crane: That's right, I can stay on task once in a while [background chatter].
>> Sara Hart: Okay so back to the point, folks-
>> Abigail Smithson: Like a comment or something!
>> Sara Hart: I know, we've got to mark this one [laughter]. John Scott Haldane, remember that guy? The Scottish physiologist who invented oxygen therapy. This guy dedicated a real lot of his life to studying oxygen and its effects on the body. He invented early oxygen masks. In a 2014 article, authors Sekar and Rowe called him, "a versatile genius who solved several problems of great practical significance."
>> Abigail Smithson: Like breathing.
>> Jeff Crane: Like breathing, which is a practical problem for scuba divers and firefighters and soldiers, oxygen problems, with serious problems we get that. So oxygen therapy is a big deal. Figuring out how to use it right to solve some of these problems is also a big deal.
>> Sara Hart: Right, and you know, based on our initial research, this guy really does seem pretty impressive. So impressive in fact, that he gets an effect named after him.
>> Jeff Crane: The Haldane Effect?
>> Sara Hart: You got it! It's like you studied. The Haldane Effect. Together with his physiologist partner, Priestly, he figured out that you could use oxygen to dissociate carbon dioxide from hemoglobin in the lungs. I know, sounds like a lot, right? Haldane lived 1860 to 1936. So those are his years. The work he did in oxygen therapy made it possible to treat World War I soldiers poisoned by chlorine and other gases. He invented this crazy-looking oxygen delivery contraption that four people could use at once to treat pulmonary trauma on the battlefield. And we'll turn to that battlefield later in the show.
>> Jeff Crane: It's worth noting that some of our most innovative inventions come during war [chuckling].
>> Sara Hart: Yes, and this is something we're noting right here, right [laughter], and to say that Haldane's work was not only helping those on the battlefield it turns out. He also spent a lot of time thinking about how to help people working in mines.
>> Jeff Crane: This is really fascinating. So here we are, and I knew we'd make it back to the mines, because I trust you, Sara, to get us where we need to go. Mining conditions were a brutal reality of the industrial revolution. In the late 19th, early 20th Centuries, many miners worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, in the dark, with only candles to light their way, wet conditions, cold conditions, and of course, they had to provide their own candles.
>> Liam Salcuni: It was the best of times [laughter], it was the worst of times.
>> Sara Hart: Thanks, Liam. I'm working 12 hour days underground, and I have to bring my own candle? Which I just hope never to see guttering?
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, if you're a 19th Century mine worker, you were facing so many adverse conditions that I can only imagine the list of hopes you might need to hold onto every day as you work. Now picture this, often underground roadways were only two to four feet tall. Mining companies used children to navigate the cramped spaces. They also had them sort through the coal. Dust, heat, poor ventilation and flooding were all commonplace, as were fires. In 1842, Children's Employment Commission Report lists 58 kids under the age of 13 dying from a series of nightmarish events like...drawn over the pulley [nervous chuckle], drowning, fall of stones, coal and rubbish in the mines, crushed in coal pits, gas explosions, and death by tram wagons, and I have to note that there are those people that think going back to the past is a good thing, but I would say maybe not.
>> Sara Hart: Right. Yeah, not these kids. Gee, I mean, really and that list Jeff that you just read, that's a snapshot. That's one report, on one area, in one year. Yeah, this is just a brutal industry. A real brutal scene. Not one that I would like to return to. And so, we come to actual canaries in actual coal mines that will lead us to tracing how these coal mine canaries end up on battlefields.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, it's weird how everything here in the Snafu Bar ends up in a battlefield at some point. It's almost like we do it on purpose [chuckling]-
>> Liam Salcuni: It's almost like, yeah-yeah.
>> Sara Hart: Almost, almost! Huh, yeah. Okay, so let's spend some time with these canaries, and then later in the hour, we'll turn to a more contemporary topic-an operation launched by the United States Marine Corps in 2003, an aptly named "Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken."
>> Jeff Crane: Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken, I feel like there is an acronym coming-Abigail, do we want to call it? Operation--?
>> Abigail Smithson: Uh...not me! Don't make me!
>> Jeff Crane: Say, it! Do it [all laughing]! KFC-
>> Abigail Smithson: KFC.
>> Jeff Crane: So we're getting to the fried chicken.
>> Sara Hart: We're getting to the fried chicken-
>> Abigail Smithson: But also can you share why that was so painful for me? Can I share?
>> Jeff Crane: She does not love acronyms.
>> Abigail Smithson: I hate acronyms. I think acronyms are gatekeepy, and create an inside and an outside, and also have no-there's no visual associated with acronyms. It's just letters. At least I don't have as much of a visual associated with letters, so when you say three letters to me, I don't get to picture anything in my head, I just picture the letters. And I like to have visuals associated with the words.
>> Jeff Crane: So folks, when you meet Abigail, make sure to use acronyms just for fun.
>> Sara Hart: All the acronyms.
>> Jeff Crane: OMG! So good to meet you!
>> Abigail Smithson: Okay! I love OMG, or LOL-
>> Jeff Crane: LOL, LOL!
>> Abigail Smithson: I think that those are actually-
>> Sara Hart: You're happy to gatekeep for the younger crowd.
>> Abigail Smithson: And I actually have no problem with KFC either, as like a sort of pop culture, what I think is hard in the workplace, quote, end-quote, to be using acronyms as points of communication and I am the founding member of the Anti-Acronym Club. If anyone else wants to joint.
>> Jeff Crane: I'll be a charter member.
>> Sara Hart: They call that the AAC [snickering]-
>> Abigail Smithson: Well we don't, and you can email me at snafubar at Humboldt.edu [everyone cackling] if you want to joint, I'm looking for more members, a co-President, Vice-President, Treasurer-
>> Sara Hart: Some vowels [laughing]-
>> Abigail Smithson: Vowels, whatever [laughter]. If anyone wants to just sit around and say things in full.
>> Jeff Crane: Alright folks, once again, I'm the one bringing us back, let's go!
>> Abigail Smithson: This is just unheard of!
>> Jeff Crane: I know!
>> Abigail Smithson: I'm just disgusted with myself that you're the one that's bringing us back.
>> Sara Hart: I want to linger a minute on acronyms, just to say I just sort of love to imagine those rooms where the acronyms are dreamed up, right? Like somebody had to back-engineer this one. Like, Operation KFC, start there. What can we do with it? Right? So we'll look at what happened with Operation KFC, and what that operation can tell us about the ways that our military institutions can run afoul...[all groaning]--
>> Jeff Crane: Guess who does not love puns [clucking noises]-this guy!
>> Liam Salcuni: [Clucking like a chicken]
>> Jeff Crane: But we did talk about how fun it is to create language in our military lingual episode, how they do that in the military, so I think this definitely falls in that tradition.
>> Sara Hart: That's right, that's right. Running afoul, and operation names definitely, that is its own episode, which we need to get to someday. There are some good ones. There are some good ones. So for now, though, let's stick with the canaries. When canaries first started being used by the coal-mining industry, debates about the cruelty of using birds as living gas testers were pretty common. Plenty of canaries were brought into the mines in simple cages, and they would die in these cages, if they didn't have enough oxygen. Some lucky birds, though, some lucky birds were carried down into the mines, safely held within containers, especially designed to ensure their comfort and safety, by the one made by Seeb Gourmin and Company, LTD, out of London. This one included a small tank of oxygen fit for a canary, to be used when the canary faints.
>> Jeff Crane: That is pretty bizarre.
>> Sara Hart: It's pretty bizarre, we have a picture here folks we are looking at, it's pretty-it's amazing. This incredible little contraption, guess whose idea this was? It was our friend, John Scott Haldane, friend to beast and man alike.
>> Jeff Crane: Friend of feathered and un-feathered bipeds [laughter].
>> Sara Hart: I stand corrected [laughing].
>> Abigail Smithson: Are we un-feathered, is that how we identify [chuckling]?
>> Sara Hart: That's how it-was that Plato identified humans? As the un-feathered biped [overlapping speakers and laughter], thank you 1984!
>> Abigail Smith: Plenty of feathers in this-
[ Overlapping Speakers ]
>> Jeff Crane: Thank you very much. Man, this is like Saturday Night Fever [chuckling], that's what doing my hair like John Travolta, yeah-
>> Sara Hart: Aqua Net, people! Okay! Comfortable cages, canary resuscitators, and even still some wondered why we needed to use canaries at all. I mean, this is the modern age they said. Human ingenuity has been unleashed. Its power is limitless.
>> Jeff Crane: That's always a good thing.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, let's-why are we holding back, right? Machines, technology, industrial advances, why do we keep using these birds, you know? In a 1926 Dundee Courier article, this came out of Scotland--
>> Liam Salcuni: Dundee-
>> Jeff Crane: Flower-
>> Sara Hart: Right, exactly, Crocodile--
>> Jeff Crane: Crikey!
>> Liam Salcuni: That's not a knife! This is a knife [laughter]!
>> Sara Hart: This came out of Scotland. Dougland MacIntyre [assumed spelling] writes, "Good as is the treatment of those life-saving birds, it seems a queer thing that in this age of science, a proper hand instrument cannot be invented to take the place of the harmless and useful birds in testing mines for gas."
>> Jeff Crane: Well, and thanks to De Carte, we know that animals don't have souls or emotions, they're just basically machines, right? And of course, I'm being super sarcastic here in the Snafu Bar, but it's a very Cartesian, instrumentalist view of nature, that their only value is how they serve our needs and desires.
>> Sara Hart: That's right. And it-controlling, right? Instrumental, controlling, and of course, efficiency-minded. Oh yeah. MacIntyre also notes that red pulls-red pulls, another chubby little bird with a little bit of red feathering on its breast and head--
>> Jeff Crane: Aww, sounds so cute.
>> Sara Hart: I know, it is cute. These red pulls are actually better at detecting gas than were canaries, but he said the fates of both were the same [scoffs]--
>> Jeff Crane: You're going to die now.
>> Sara Hart: You're going to die now, those fates for MacIntyre were-here's a quote. They were "the very antithesis of the natural haunts of the joyous sun-loving children of the air."
>> Jeff Crane: Oh! Well that's-pretty powerful.
>> Sara Hart: I know, right?
>> Jeff Crane: Joyous and loving children of the air.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: So we know he's talking about the birds. Let's talk about children.
>> Sara Hart: Oh.
>> Jeff Crane: Ruh-ruh...
>> Sara Hart: Ruh-ruh...
>> Jeff Crane: [Laughing] Industrial Revolution, from 1800 to 1850, children composed between 20 to 50% of the mining work force. A child worker was about 80% cheaper than a man, and 50% cheaper than a woman. They had those little hands [laughter] to get in to get the coal. Beatings-of course the flogging will continue until morale improves-
>> Sara Hart: That's right.
>> Jeff Crane: Beatings, and long hours were common with some child coal miners and hurriers, working from 4:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. A hurrier, listeners, is the person who crawls on their hands and knees in front of a coal cart, and moves loose coal out of the way as the cart is pushed up to the surface. That's just got to be a terrible job!
>> Sara Hart: Terrible job.
>> Jeff Crane: Huh?
>> Sara Hart: Not maybe as bad as the guy behind the cart.
>> Jeff Crane: Right, behind the coal cart, also on hands and knees, while pushing the cart from behind, that person was called the thruster, so thrusters and hurriers, thank you Roman Sodomayor [assumed spelling] for your very careful research on this. These are the things we're learning as we go, right? So not uncommonly, these jobs are reserved for children, small as they were. Many children developed lung cancer and other diseases. Death before age 25 was common for child workers in the mines. Once again, the glories of industrial capitalism.
>> Abigail Smithson: Sarcasm!
>> Sara Hart: Sarcasm!
>> Jeff Crane: So much sarcasm! I just-
>> Abigail Smithson: Just-name it!
>> Jeff Crane: You know, it's that or just going around, which do you want?
>> Sara Hart: Which do you want?
>> Jeff Crane: You want passive-aggressive sarcasm? Or do you want a rant?
>> Sara Hart: Listeners-we're here with the sarcasm.
>> Jeff Crane: Yes, okay! So! Sun-loving children of the ground, and the playground. They didn't really have playgrounds back then. Let's say the forest and the field weren't the industrial revolution's top priority either, it seems.
>> Sara Hart: No, they were not. Neither sun-loving children of the ground, nor of the air, but lest we lose all hope, folks, and these are pretty hopeless images we're looking at. Again, thanks Roman. We can take some comfort here, I think, in knowing that the labor laws passed in the early and mid-20th Century helped to limit a lot of the most brutal offenses and abuses of child labor, right? I mean, in recognizing that the world is not fully just, that labor and laborers are not treated with the dignity that justice might require, even today, we also--
>> Jeff Crane: It's serious backsliding today, right?
>> Sara Hart: There's some serious backsliding today, we can acknowledge that, we also don't want to forget the work that has been done, by people in the U.K., like those involved in the 1911 to 1914 movement known as "The Great Unrest" which led to national insurance, and minimum-wage acts, and in America, by the people like the women and children of Lawrence, Massachusetts, who walked out of the textile mills in the dead of winter, and endured beatings at the hands of cops, to participate in what we now call "the Bread and Roses Strike."
>> Jeff Crane: And of course, the massive reforms of the New Deal Era, in regards to union and labor rights. So the winter of 1912, this is a movement happening at the same time across the pond as they say, and it was a real high point in American history. The Bread and Roses Strike was led by women, mostly immigrants, speaking 20-some different languages, but joining together to walk out on the abuse. In this case textile factories, instead of mines. Same oppressive industrial forces abusing workers like they were expendable. And the Bread and Roses Strike also led to all kinds of Congressional investigations, limits on child labor, safety reforms. It's really a powerful era in American history where we finally do regulate and manage a reckless, unregulated capitalism, and it's frankly something we're going to be returning to in the future, I'm quite hopeful.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, yeah. I mean, so-there's our injection of hope, listeners.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, just a little bit.
>> Sara Hart: Okay, what about the canaries, though. Let's get back to the canaries [giggling]--
>> Jeff Crane: Were we talking about canaries?
>> Sara Hart: We're not done with the canaries yet. A 1996 Daily Mail article out of London picked up some of the questions that we've been asking. Questions similar to those asked by MacIntyre back in 1926.
>> Jeff Crane: Journalists are writing about canaries and coal mines in 1996?
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, yeah, 1996. You heard right.
>> Jeff Crane: So the Cold War is not-the Cold War is over, but canaries are not gone.
>> Sara Hart: They are not. Almost, though. The article was titled, "Singing as They Go, Miner's Little Friends Head for Retirement."
>> Jeff Crane: Aww!
>> Sara Hart: I know! And in it, a station officer named Dave Young explains that birds were preferred to technological or machine innovations because, "batteries can fail, but birds don't."
>> Jeff Crane: Alright, I guess that makes sense. So the miners still wanted the birds. And they still trusted the birds, and they trusted it over equipment and technology.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, yeah. But still, you know, preferences for the birds aside, electronic gas detectors were introduced into British mines in 1987, 1987--
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: Replacing the canaries. This is not ancient history, folks. At this time, when this article was written, in 1996, there were around 200 canaries still being used in British coal mines.
>> Jeff Crane: I never would have guessed that.
>> Sara Hart: I know, right?
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, would have located that in the last century-
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, this would not have been a Jeopardy win for most of us.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: And of course the canaries or the red pulls, depending on your preference, they came to be loved by their human owners. Young commented that, "there is something about hearing them singing when you start to work that lifts your spirits."
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, maybe the 1980s answer to ear buds, somebody has to whistle while the workers work, I mean, personally I don't like it when people whistle. That's an annoying human to me. You know, the guy who walks by-do-do-do-do, singing, it's like stop it [laughter], but animals are companions, and it's very natural in environments when you work with animals to form relationships with them. So I think this is what is happening here, right?
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. I think so. And this love for the birds is what led to the creation of those nifty devices like the bird resuscitator, invented by Haldane, and made by Siebe Gorman and Company, LTD.
>> Jeff Crane: So having a bird chirping beside you as you descend into the darkness of a mine sure does sound like a cheap way to maintain-[laughs] cheep-cheep!-[laughter] a bit of safety-I did that for Sara, she's just like [laughter] no bottom when it comes to bad humor.
>> Sara Hart: No bottom! You can't get bad enough.
>> Jeff Crane: [Laughs] and their sanity as well, right? So the road to hell, and the mines are about as close to hell as anyone can get, one of those roads to hell, anyway, turns out is littered with bird cages [background music begins]. Boy, who wrote that?
>> Sara Hart: [Vocalizing Drum Sounds]
>> Jeff Crane: Good lord [laughter].
[ Music ]
>> Jeff Crane: If you just joined us, this is Snafu Bar, the show about American military mishaps. I'm Jeff Crane, I'm here with Sara Hart. Today we are introducing a theme that we'll return to periodically. In these episodes, we explore how animals have been used in U.S. military operations. Today we are looking at Operation KFC, or Kuwaiti Field Chicken. Yes, you heard that right. We just wrapped up exploring how canaries and other birds were used by miners for safety purposes. We are now about to dive into how canaries were used during World War I.
>> Sara Hart: To the battlefield. Okay, so birds were introduced into mining life in the late 1800s, and early 1900s. And then another new twist came in 1915, with the first large-scale modern use of gas in warfare, which occurred at the second Battle of Ypres.
>> Jeff Crane: Oh, I think I see where this is going.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, I mean, you know this story, right? On April 22, 1915, at around 5:00 p.m., German forces released 150 tons of chlorine gas on the [echoing]--
>> Jeff Crane: Is it about the Germans [laughs]?
>> Sara Hart: More about the gas.
>> Jeff Crane: Okay.
>> Sara Hart: The gas devastated the French and Algerian Colonial Divisions, who thrashed and contorted in agony, with their eyes bulging out of their heads. It was-it was a rough, rough death, and it was new to most. So about 1,200 were killed, almost immediately, overtaken by the yellow-green cloud floating over the wind. Over Flanders Fields. The German Command had been planning this attack for months, it turns out, and waiting actively for 10 days, waiting for the winds to change, waiting for what they thought of as favorable winds, blowing the right direction, toward the French and Algerian soldiers who were hunkered down in their trenches. And they'd, you know, they'd been waiting, they'd been patient. But still when it happened, the German forces didn't immediately rush in to overpower the injured allies. As was planned. The outcome of this attack was so shocking to everyone-to the Germans, to everyone-that they failed to immediately advance. They under-utilized the success of their plan, which led to the allies holding much of their positions.
>> Jeff Crane: So yeah, when your success is so inhumane, so deplorable, it's hard on a human level to take the win. It's almost endearing, I guess, that the offensive operation was stunned into immobility by the effects of their own new weaponry. If it weren't so horribly fatal, and just terrible. So a brief human moment, before the fog of war descends, and they again tear into each other, and engage in mass slaughter.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. It's partially in response to the gas attacks, of which Ypres was the first. The canaries enter the scene of trench warfare. And they're brought by guess who? The miners! They're brought by the miners. When miners entered into the Great War as parts of the tunneling companies of the Royal Engineers, they brought canaries with them. Both miners and clay kickers, men who created tunnels for other civil projects, were put together into groups, assigned to burrow under enemy defenses. So I'm going to read a little bit from an old newspaper here. The Nottingham Evening Post, from May 13, 1963, writes, "Due honor is paid to the tunneler's friends, the mice, and canaries, which gave the essential warning of the presence of gas." The book, "Tunnelers," by Captain W. Grant Grieve, and Bernard Newman, tells the story of a canary who "became a regular old soldier, because on entering a mine, he would topple off his perch immediately and pretend to be dead-"
>> Jeff Crane: Huh!
>> Sara Hart: "And being taken out of the mine, he would recover at once, and hop about the cage, and chirp merrily, as though he enjoyed the joke."
>> Jeff Crane: Wow! So-
>> Liam Salcuni: A Disney movie idea-
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, wheeee [laughing]-so canaries learned to fake their own death to stay out of the mines, right? If that doesn't nail down the reality of these horrors, I just don't know what does.
>> Sara Hart: I know, I mean, it's a little comic relief, but really, yeah, they're trying to get out of something, and maybe these animals we bring into human warfare acclimate themselves to or mimic human behaviors. And when we get these animals involved in our human wars, we really do our part too in humanizing the heck out of them. Another company commander is noted for having kept a full log of the canaries which he used, so that he could promote canaries who had been gassed three times to the Headquarters Dugout, where they would be retired to singing only.
>> Jeff Crane: Alright, so there's a glimmer of something like kindness in the midst of the trench warfare hellscape, and that's what people do in these spaces. In the context of a systematic instrumentalism of nature, human soldiers pushed back against this ideology to forge their own needed relationships with animals. It reminds us of how valuable these relationships are, with the natural world, with other animals, particularly in the context of the nightmare and chaos of war.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. Yeah, and they pick this up, the Nottingham Evening Post continues, they even note that one canary, a potential deserter from its post--
>> Jeff Crane: A deserter? What do you have to do to desert as a bird [laughter]?
>> Sara Hart: [Laughing] Fly away! Fly away! Like, this canary had gone AWOL, that's an acronym, listeners!
>> Abigail Smithson: Mmmm!
>> Jeff Crane: Abigail, that's an acronym.
>> Sara Hart: [Smirks] Abigail, you ready?
>> Jeff Crane: You know?
>> Abigail Smithson: Sure, yeah. I'm ready. Absent Without Leave.
>> Sara Hart: Mmm!
>> Jeff Crane: Gets you in big trouble in the military.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, you're not supposed to go away without having a good reason, and permission and everything. Anyway!
>> Abigail Smithson: Feathered or not!
>> Sara Hart: Feathered or not!
>> Jeff Crane: Feathered or not!
>> Sara Hart: This canary gone AWOL was set upon by an allied sniper. That's a guy on his own team. The sniper failed to eliminate the canary, which led to trench mortars being set up to deliver the killing blow.
>> Jeff Crane: So they used trench mortars to kill the canary-
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: Well, so much for my little rhapsodic spiel about the relationships between human and animals. War sucks [laughs sarcastically]-
>> Sara Hart: Yeah! Yeah. For the canaries. So evidently, I mean-they had good reason. Evidently had the Germans spotted this renegade canary, they would have known they were there, and secret digging operations were happening nearby.
>> Jeff Crane: That makes sense. Can't have the canaries giving away positions.
>> Sara Hart: Right. Okay, so that's not the end with these war birds. Bringing it into the modern era, canaries saw war again during the Gulf wars. One was brought in by Lieutenant Colonel Norman Walker, a British Army doctor. Walker's canary was code-named Elvis.
>> Jeff Crane: Elvis! For his sultry tenor? His sexy, swiveling hips? The surly lip, the attitude-
>> Sara Hart: [Laughs] Yeah, that's right.
>> Jeff Crane: That's right, right?
>> Sara Hart: Right-no, we're in acronym territory again. Elvis here stood for Early Liquid Vapor Indicator System.
>> Jeff Crane: And it feels really critical now, that I do a check-in with Abigail. How are you feeling? Do you feel triggered?
>> Abigail Smithson: Well-one thing that is great about this ELVIS acronym, and this is potentially the only thing, when I say great, because it's disturbing, but that is actually a name. That's nice.
>> Jeff Crane: Sure, it's a name.
>> Abigail Smithson: It's a name. But--
>> Jeff Crane: You should bring the stack, and have a conversation.
>> Abigail Smithson: The definition of the words that each letter is meant to represent are disturbing in terms of what the bird was meant to function as.
>> Jeff Crane: Early Liquid Vapor Indicator System. Sexy!
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, right?
>> Jeff Crane: It's poetic [laughing].
>> Sara Hart: Okay, so this was actually an issue, you know, due to military budgeting, there were limited ways to detect biological and chemical weapons when Operation Desert Shield began on August 2, 1990. But at the same time, there was this great fear that biological and chemical weapons would be used against American forces.
>> Jeff Crane: I do remember that being one of the fears and threats stated by the Bush Administration. I'd just gotten out of the Army in 1989. And it turned out my team would have a fairly major role clearing Kuwait City with the First Marine Division, but I was out, I paid close attention to what was happening. So what's important to understand is that the prior-the Bush Administration, and the Reagan Administration-had done a great deal to make Hussein a threat in that regard. And so someday, we should probably do a Snafu Bar episode on the dangers of building up powerful tyrants who then turn on you.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, it's a thing. One Snafu Bar at a time, Jeff.
>> Jeff Crane: No, we will do it all now [laughter], I want to say all the things.
>> Sara Hart: All the things. We are coming to the really juicy topic for the day.
>> Jeff Crane: Eventually [laughter].
>> Liam Salcuni: The savory, juicy topic.
>> Sara Hart: Savory, juicy-
>> Liam Salcuni: Fried Chicken.
>> Jeff Crane: Chickens. Mm!
>> Sara Hart: Right--one method employed to address this was chickens, who were brought in to serve as detection aids. These were oversized canaries in a new kind of coal mine. The tasty-the desert, where the perceived danger is airborne, biological and chemical weapons.
>> Jeff Crane: And you know, I just don't even want to ask. Did this go great?
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah, what could go wrong [laughter], what could go wrong?
>> Jeff Crane: I'm assuming on a show called Snafu Bar, that this worked really well!
>> Sara Hart: This is going to be our exception, right? And then it worked! No. Okay, so within the year, the Department of Defense was required to seek defense contractor help, to try to secure individual chemical agent detectors. The chicken idea, it turns out, just didn't fly [groans].
>> Jeff Crane: Boo-hiss!
>> Abigail Smithson: I think-
>> Jeff Crane: You know when Sara is doing the writing.
>> Abigail Smithson: Can we throw it back a minute to what we talked about in one of our other episodes, military lingo, about the role that dark humor plays when you are discussing such abhorrent things, and how that is being employed in this episode, just to really give context for some of these amazing jokes.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. We're being dark here.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we talk about-we did get into some depth in this, and I can't remember all the details, but it is a psychological mechanism to use dark humor to deal with things that are very threatening, that can affect your cognitive dissonance, and we're talking about horrific terrible things. We're talking about, you know, abuses by the American government and some of its own foreign policy actions, and so the humor helps us manage that in a way. We don't find our problematic foreign policy and use of military and wars funny.
>> Sara Hart: No. I think the humor lets us maintain our critical angle while also moving forward.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. You know, and also people relax a little bit-when I teach climate change, when I talk about climate change, I have to have-I have a sustainable food systems class right now, and I have to always stop and say I know I'm laughing and smiling a lot, it's because of my discomfort. And I'm trying to find ways to frame this in a way that, you know, we can not just pivot right into despair. Whee!
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, whee [laughter].
>> Abigail Smithson: Back to the script [laughter].
>> Sara Hart: Okay, the first round of chickens died before serving their purpose. The expensive high-tech detectors, the ones that contractors--
>> Jeff Crane: Freedom isn't free.
>> Sara Hart: [Laughter] Weren't able to provide--
>> Jeff Crane: [Laughing] The chicken said as they die.
>> Sara Hart: Ohh...[laughing].
>> Abigail Smithson: I'm so glad we talked about dark humor before you said that.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah!
>> Sara Hart: Okay, so the chickens didn't work, but it turns out that the hand-held, you know, very fancy ones, the electronic ones, they didn't fix the problem either because--
>> Jeff Crane: What?! Come on now, seriously? I am so surprised right now.
>> Sara Hart: Shock. Yes, shocked we are. They were constantly malfunctioning. So in ABC News-there's a good story about this-an ABC news reporter who visited troops near the Kuwait-Iraq border in 2003 found the inanimate detectors-the machine detectors-were frequently going off even though there was no poison gas in the air.
>> Jeff Crane: So false alarms everywhere. You're in a tense, combat-ready situation, you've got these alarms going off-for nothing-and so you start to lose your faith in these alarms. And you're not going to trust them. And then when there is gas, you've got a problem, right?
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, and so much comes down to trust. Like, much like the miners, who were concerned about faulty batteries, U.S. troops came to prefer the presence of chickens. And so debuted the Poultry Chemical Confirmation Devices.
>> Jeff Crane: Alright, you've got to say that one again.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. Poultry Chemical Confirmation Devices. The PCCDs. And this is the operation known as Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken. And so here we are, listeners. We made it. Operation KFC.
>> Jeff Crane: [Laughing] You're only 10 or 11 pages into the script [laughter], but you're along for the ride, right? Life is about the ride. You don't have to get to the destination right away.
>> Sara Hart: Life is a highway.
>> Jeff Crane: You're probably, you know, stuck somewhere, because the stream has flooded or you know, there's an elk standing int eh road looking at you. What do you have to do on a-Saturday? Saturday?
>> Abigail Smithson: Sunday. At 1:00 p.m.
>> Jeff Crane: Right.
>> Sara Hart: Writing for Time Magazine in February 2003, Simon Robinson covered, "The Chicken Defense," following the announcement of Operation Kuwaiti Field Chicken-
[ Vocalizing Chicken Sounds ]
>> Sara Hart: The plan, headed by Marine Chief Warrant Officer Jembere [phonetic spelling] was to receive 250 chickens from a Kuwaiti supplier to join the troops in Iraq.
>> Jeff Crane: And I wonder how much those chickens cost?
>> Sara Hart: I don't think you want to know how much--
>> Jeff Crane: [Overlapping speakers] Must be like $30,000 each-
>> Liam Salcuni: That's some top quality chickens.
>> Sara Hart: I'm sure they were, yes. Oh, top quality for sure. Their mission? To ride into battle in cages on top of U.S. Humvees.
>> Jeff Crane: So, why chickens? What's wrong with canaries? Why can't they just bring pretty little yellow birds, or the birds with the red feathers? That would be nice.
>> Sara Hart: Right, I've got an answer for you on that one. You're not the first to ask. Commenting on the use of chickens as opposed to canaries, Chief Warrant Officer Jembere said to Robinson, "You and I both know those birds are not hearty, and they will try to fly away," talking about the canaries. And fly away they might. By switching to chickens, the U.S. military sought to avoid repeating the story of those dastardly deserter canaries, of World War I. And ideally, to save the money that might otherwise be spent attempting to eliminate the cowardly birds.
>> Jeff Crane: [Laughing] Canaries surrender monkeys, I don't know, um, so we've got to slander the canary now, after all the things that they did to help us build an industrial capitalist economy, to build the wealth and power that we have, canaries are so critical. Now we're going to call them wimps [laughter] is that okay? Why are you laughing?
>> Sara Hart: Everybody knows that birds are [inaudible]--
>> Jeff Crane: Canaries have earned respect.
>> Liam Salcuni: Yeah, youv'e got to stick up for the canaries.
>> Jeff Crane: Right?!
>> Sara Hart: Uh huh.
>> Jeff Crane: Thank you, Liam. Thank you.
[ Music ]
>> Sara Hart: If you're just joining us listeners, this is Snafu Bar, a show about American military mishaps. I am Sara Hart. I'm here with Jeff Crane. Today we are introducing a theme that we will return to periodically. A canary in the coal mine theme, where we'll explore how animals have been used in U.S. military operations. Today we're looking at Operation KFC, or Kuwaiti Field Chicken. Yes, you heard that right folks, chickens were used to detect chemical agents during the Iraq war in 2003. Let's check out how this savory but fowl operation unfolded. Okay, so unfortunately the chickens in our Operation KFC today-they were not quite as rugged as was hoped. Chickens are known to experience heat stress at temperatures above 75 degrees Fahrenheit, and they did not acclimate well to the 100-plus degree heat of the hot, Arabian desert sands.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, that doesn't seem like a great place for chickens, but there are chickens thriving-chickens originally come from Africa, right?
>> Sara Hart: I don't know where chickens originate.
>> Jeff Crane: Well there are chickens in Africa, and Asia, Hawaii, those are hot places, did they just get the wrong kind of chicken?
>> Sara Hart: They got the wrong kind of chicken. By March 1, 2003, Ron Harris of the St. Louis Post Dispatch led his article with Operation Field Chicken Dies. Okay, so at this point, 43 of the 250 chickens had been brought to Kuwait. All but 2 had died before seeing any battles. The Marine Corps History Division's 2006 account titled, With the First Marine Division in Iraq 2003.
>> Jeff Crane: Those were my buddies. With them. Cleared buildings.
>> Sara Hart: That's the title. It's not all he did. It describes in some detail what might have happened to the chickens. The report notes that the extreme climactic conditions, combined with the fact that the chickens were laying hens, not yard birds, likely led to their untimely demise before they could be fully deployed.
>> Jeff Crane: Isn't this like where some of the old Snafu Bar-I mean, this is really ridiculous! So, without getting too into the [clears throat] ornithological weeds here, laying hens typically require more upkeep than yard birds, right? So yard birds are what you see if you're driving through, I don't know, any rural part of America, and they're on the edge of the highway, they're out-you know, they're tough. Right? They're less specialized, more traditionally able to roam and forage on their own. Laying hens are hand-bird ladies, focused primarily on egg production. So if you're looking for chickens to ride shotgun in a Humvee, you probably want a yard bird.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: I feel like we've got a metaphor here we could have all kinds of fun with, but I'm going to stop.
>> Liam Salcuni: Well the, you know, this official study or whatever, it begs the question where is the grave of the unknown chicken?
>> Sara Hart: Oh, Liam, we're getting there!
>> Jeff Crane: Oh, geez-
>> Sara Hart: Don't you worry! Sir! Okay, let's give these feathered friends some credit. Apparently a few of the Kuwaiti field chickens, emulating the World War I canaries, were reported to have outsmarted their handlers and become deserters. This time, happily I suppose, without being assassinated by snipers or blown off the map with mortar fire. Some of those who vanished, well-their disappearance was immediately followed by what the History Division's own report notes as "suspicious cooking fires in hidden corners of the camp."
>> Jeff Crane: Suspicious cooking fires. I don't suppose we have intel on whether these were extra crispy, or original recipe, or barbecue? Probably cooked on a stick over flames? I wonder how many of them ended up with salmonella? You know, some of these guys-because I did this when I was, I was in a unit that was assigned to the middle east, we did what we called Desert Train-basically just stuck in the desert for three days without food. We did a little land orientation. But they would give us one rabbit, and one chicken.
>> Sara Hart: Huh!
>> Jeff Crane: And like, here you go, and we would kill them and eat them. So, at least they knew how to cook and eat a chicken probably.
>> Sara Hart: Okay well the chickens that we're talking about here were not as hearty as Chief Warrant Officer Jenbere had hoped. He might have been better off with canaries. They were, however, still properly honored by the soldiers who buried them with wooden markers that included their names. Captain Popeye. P.F.C. King. Lance Corporal Pecker--
>> Jeff Crane: As in woodpecker-
>> Sara Hart: And the grave of the Unknown Chicken.
>> Jeff Crane: There it is.
>> Sara Hart: There it is.
>> Jeff Crane: There it is, thank you Sara. Oh my goodness, so this is great military humor-
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, and really, it-it just gets better, right? Military News featured a clip of Harris' article on their website, writing that the Marines planned to use chicken as gas detectors was "cooked,"
>> Jeff Crane: [Snickering] Oh god!
>> Sara Hart: Chickens of war lay their final eggs [laughter]--
>> Jeff Crane: What is it about birds bringing out bad puns [laughter]?
>> Sara Hart: So good [laughing].
>> Jeff Crane: Man, okay. So at this point, they moved toward electronic biosensors, right? And you know, because we love the troops so much in America, and we want them to be safe, right? Right? Right?
>> Sara Hart: No way, man.
>> Jeff Crane: Right? Don't leave me hanging here [laughter].
>> Sara Hart: Endeavor to persevere, you know? Without chickens, the Division's next best option was...yeah. Pigeons.
>> Jeff Crane: Pigeons.
>> Sara Hart: You knew it. You knew where we were going with this. Pigeons had a much higher survival rate, due to their smaller size, and their ability to withstand the heat.
>> Jeff Crane: Basically being urban warriors.
>> Sara Hart: They were ready for this, right? They'll live anywhere. One Marine's pigeon, named "Pajoto," [assumed spelling] served a full tour, making it to Sadaam's palace in Tikrit before being "mustered out of the service."
>> Jeff Crane: Is that a euphemism for something else?
>> Sara Hart: That's what they said. That's what the military's own-the Marine's own-report said, right? So there is no Avian Division of the Veterans' Administration, so we're a little uncertain about how exactly being mustered out works for a pigeon?"
>> Jeff Crane: He's probably there, you know, somewhere in the National Mall, keeping an eye on things, remembering freedom isn't free, and maybe hoping to find some bird seed?
>> Sara Hart: [Sighs] The Marine Corps History Division notes that use of the pigeons provided the first Marine Division with "valuable comic relief at a time of heightened tension." The report is unclear if this good humor was the full extent of the pigeon's usefulness, but--
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, comic relief is invaluable for those deployed in wartime. We've discussed this in earlier episodes. Reality is stark. It's violent. It's terrifying. It's like physical and psychological stress, sitting around waiting for an attack. Waiting for a call to action, then being involved in that. Can be debilitating. So humor is critical. It goes-comic relief goes a long way.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. And the chickens, they lent themselves to a lot of jokes, I mean they really do--
>> Jeff Crane: Chickens!
>> Sara Hart: But chemical-just over and over, right-chemical and biological weapons. There's nothing funny here. The Marines who didn't have the chickens or pigeons on hand, they used a different form of gas detection. These Marines engaged in a process called "selective unmasking." In this process, a Marine is randomly selected to take off his gas mask, and serves as the human canary in the coal mine, to see if the air is safe to breathe for the others.
>> Jeff Crane: Oh. This is terrible! I can't imagine how stressful that would be. I want to reiterate, I know when we go to war sometimes, we don't have time to prepare, but this is a war we picked, right? And so they draw straws? Was it a popularity contest? The shortest guy, the tallest guy-who was the one who had to? They take turns? I wonder how they decided?
>> Sara Hart: I did--
>> Jeff Crane: Because these are bad deaths. Right?
>> Sara Hart: Yes. These are terrible deaths. I asked some people about this, it turns out. And I was told that, we found no evidence--
>> Jeff Crane: Newbie!
>> Sara Hart: Online...but we did anecdotally, I was told that in their experience, you were chosen for all the reasons you might expect. Being the new guy, being low-ranking, you did something to upset the ranking officer, whatever.
>> Jeff Crane: It's-I'll do that to you sir-
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, [laugh] like, selective unmasking. Walk into that meeting and see-[laughing]. Anecdotally, I was told that the system for choosing was not systematic. Part of the process includes disarming the Marine to ensure that the one selected doesn't get any ideas about putting up a fight or trying to run.
>> Jeff Crane: This just tells you how messed up this is.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. Selective unmasking is practiced in drills, where the Marines are trained in the process. In drills, and in real events, it's intended to take place with a medic present, to administer treatment to the individual should the air, in fact, turn out to be unfit for breathing.
>> Jeff Crane: Oh, okay. So, just a reminder folks, reality of chemical and biological weaponry is terrifying. These weapons can be invisible, odorless, we don't really have an accessible and reliable way to tell if the air is going to kill someone until it kills someone. So like 19th Century miners, they're still looking for creative ways to detect the airborne contaminants.
>> Sara Hart: That's right, and that's kind of the, you know, the factual underpinning here. Harris-Harris writes about one such creative solution in his article. Sergeant Griffin, Public Affairs Officer for the Seventh Regiment, was showing a group of 25 reporters around the U.S. Army Base Camp Doha, when the base's alarm for a chemical or biological attack went off. This sent the journalists into a panic, as only five of them had brought the highly recommended gas masks with them. Of this event, Sergeant Griffin stated, "We don't need chickens, we can just use you journalists."
>> Jeff Crane: We don't need not stinking chickens! Yeah! Military loved to pick on civilians. I think that's pretty much carved in a mountain somewhere, and I think journalists in particular, right?
[ Music ]
>> Jeff Crane: If you're just joining us, this is Snafu Bar, a show about American Military and mishaps. I'm Jeff Crane, and I'm here with Sara Hart. Today, we are introducing a theme that we'll return to periodically. In these episodes we explore how animals have been used in U.S. military operations. Today we are looking at Operation KFC, or Kuwaiti Field Chicken. Yes, you heard that right. These were the "canaries in the coal mine" for the Marines on the ground during the Iraq war. But why were birds used by the U.S. government as chemical agent detectors? Let's find out.
>> Sara Hart: Let's find out, right. Why did the U.S. government rely on chickens and pigeons to warn soldiers and Marines of chemical and biological weapons? Well, devices in the field were prone to malfunctioning, and so still, we're asking-as did MacIntyre, back in the days of 19th Century mining-why is there no better functional option? Throughout the Gulf War of the 1990s, and into the early 2000s, the U.S. is worried about chemical and biological weaponry. WMD, the acronym standing in for Weapons of Mass Destruction, entered the American civilian vernacular. G.I. Joe action figures were sold with gas mask accessories. Uh, with all that obsession, you would think that there would be some better technical solutions, and yet throughout the 90s, no real forward progress was made on airborne chemical detection devices. Trying to follow this historical thread to find out why this is the case, we find ourselves in a little bit of a tangled mess. You know, first there's the funding. One hundred and fifty thousand troops were deployed for both operations, Desert Shield, and Desert Storm, prior to President H.W. Bush submitting an official Supplemental Appropriations Request to Congress. He would do so in September 1990, at which point, he was requesting funding for the soldiers already in the field. By the time Bush received Congressional approval for the war in January 1991, 400,000 troops were already deployed. In April 1991, when the funding was approved, both operations were over.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, while police actions have been increasingly the norm for our military operations, Bush paved some new ground here, making it easier for later Presidents, like President Obama, and then particularly President Donald Trump, to simply conduct war at will, at their own behest. And we're seeing some extreme versions of that right now.
>> Sara Hart: That's right. And the Iraq war, and the Global War on Terror will follow this model, deploying troops prior to authorization of specific appropriations. Besides dissociating the prosecution of war from its cost, and thereby saddling future generations with the incomprehensible financial and moral debt of late 20th and early 21st Century American militarization-like, besides all that-
>> Jeff Crane: Besides all that.
>> Sara Hart: Besides all that--
>> Jeff Crane: That's not enough [chuckles].
>> Sara Hart: It's a model that makes preparation and allocation difficult, and that ultimately impacts the fighting forces on the ground. And it's also Constitutionally problematic.
>> Abigail Smithson: Constitutionally problematic!
>> Jeff Crane: Right [laughter], that's not a phrase we hear much anymore.
>> Abigail Smithson: What?!
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, I feel like the Constitution is basically just being ignored by, by, well-I'll just end my sentence there. Constitutionally problematic is putting it mildly. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution situates the power and the responsibility to declare war squarely with Congress, Senator John Thune, are you listening? John Thune? Anyone?
>> Sara Hart: I'm sure he's listening.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah. Article 1, Section 9, really hammers home the money part, by giving Congress the power, and the responsibility to allocate funds to appropriate the tax dollars collected for one or another goal. What you're describing here is an abdication of both those responsibilities, a contravention of both of those constitutional laws, and yeah, the financial burden that we're laying at the feet of our grandchildren, grandchildren who will pay for our wars, wars we find ourselves in-the anger that plays out in later generations, this is all pretty unconscionable.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah, and this is still with us today, for sure, just as it was in the Gulf Wars of the early 90s. Looking back in an April 1993--
>> Jeff Crane: So you say the Gulf Wars of the early 90s, I was working on the script, I got confused, I started, you might have noticed I wrote a bunch of stuff then deleted it, I was writing about 2003. With so many wars in the Gulf, right?
>> Sara Hart: It's easy to get them mixed up.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah, yeah. That whole thing on Condoleeza Rice, like whoops! Wrong war [laughter].
>> Sara Hart: Where are we, again? I think it is really tricky, and unless you're like a history major, really interested in this stuff, I think for the students who are in our classrooms today, for most college students, this is all a blur. So looking back in an April 1992 report, the General Accounting Office, this is the government's own accounting office, the people who keep track, they balance the checkbook, made an effort to evaluate what did happen with all of the airborne chemical detection devices that were supposed to make their way to the troops in 90 and 91, when things were moving so fast. Chemical and biological WMDs, remember, these were a huge concern.
>> Jeff Crane: At least rhetorically. Yeah, they were key arguments for the war, that Sadaam had built this terrible war machine that needed to be taken apart.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. I mean, it was everywhere. It was what we were called upon to fear. So, okay, so the GAO, again, the General Accounting Office, asks the question how did we do on that? Those chemical detection devices, were we ready? That report was titled, "Operation Desert Storm: DOD met need for chemical suits and masks, but longer-germ actions needed."
>> Jeff Crane: When we talk about military lingo, we also talk about bureaucratic military lingo. This was also in Feltz's chapter, called "Accentuate The Positive," how language can be used to obfuscate and obscure hard facts.
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. Right? Basically everyone was issued protective garments and gas masks, but many of the garments, and almost all of the gas masks were older. They were less effective. We knew that. It's not that newer, more effective models weren't available, they were. The Defense Personnel Support Center awarded contracts. They had ordered a bunch of these things in August and September 1990, but by the end of March 1991, only 25% of the suits had been delivered.
>> Jeff Crane: And we know what happened? Why that-why that was such a problem?
>> Sara Hart: Right, unfulfilled requisitions ranged from one to four million suits.
>> Jeff Crane: Yeah.
>> Sara Hart: So yeah.
>> Jeff Crane: And what's the cause of not getting those, do you know?
>> Sara Hart: I mean, we sort of know. We kind of know. According to the GAO, the General Accounting Office, again, it was all a result of failures in delivery schedules by manufacturers, and of the defense personnel support center's method of giving contracts to the lowest bidder, rather than the "best value bidder." In their report, the GAO made recommendations to address these issues, and wants that "without the developments and implementation of a structured approach to correct its serious suit and mask problems, DOD is likely again to find itself facing the same potential shortages it faced in the Persian Gulf.
>> Jeff Crane: So again, this sanitized language, this bureaucratic language, about potential shortages, they really needed to be talking more actively about the needs for suits and masks, in order for, you know, troops to survive chemical attacks that they're telling everyone are imminent, right?
>> Sara Hart: Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of like, I mean, you hear the language in there. Like, I don't have an easy answer. Are they-is this stalled supply lines? Is this like, okay your bidding process is a little off? You know, it is-it's true. And with the WMDs, I mean, this was the whole ballgame, right? The poison cloud was seconds away from descending. For years. Biological and chemical weapons were a stated major concern of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Still any hard and fast answers regarding the exposure of U.S. military personnel to biological and chemical weapons is muddy. Like, we don't really know what happened with the orders, and the failed requisitions, but we also don't really know how much our military personnel were in fact exposed. It's a lot of neither confirming nor denying in the official reports.
>> Jeff Crane: So, my inner cynic is clawing his way into the conversation, and here's what I'm hearing. Biological, chemical weapons were key percussive notes in the drumbeat for war, right? But when it actually came to protecting the troops against the weapons the Bush Administration is saying are a threat need to be removed, maybe we don't care that much.
>> Sara Hart: Right? Where's the hustle? I mean, this is supposed to be important. This is what we're being told is important. So here is our takeaway. The United States was really worried about these weapons. About the potentially catastrophic consequences of biological and chemical WMDs, during Desert Storm and Desert Shield. In 2003, over a decade later, the United States invaded Iraq, claiming that the invasion was justified by the need to seize and disable Iraq's WMDs.
>> Jeff Crane: I just want to say, this is one of our big themes over and over again, right? How we don't support, prepare and take care of our troops when they go to war.
>> Sara Hart: Or when they come back.
>> Jeff Crane: Especially when they come back.
>> Sara Hart: And so, with the 2003 Operation KFC, U.S. Marines were sent to the Desert, hanging their hopes on chickens.
[ Vocalizing Chicken Sounds ]
>> Sara Hart: Okay listeners. I think we are now at our extraction point from this topic.
>> Jeff Crane: Are you saying we started this episode with an exit strategy? Is that something that actually can be done?
>> Sara Hart: Yeah [laughing] today it was. It's a wandering path, we thought we might need one. Let's take a second here at the end, just to recap a few of our main points from the day.
>> Jeff Crane: You mean before we fly the coop [laughing] why do you all write these things and make me say them [laughter]?
>> Abigail Smithson: You proofread the scripts, Jeff.
>> Jeff Crane: Yes, I read every word very carefully [laughter].
>> Sara Hart: Okay, so! Four points here, listeners. One. Canaries and all other animals used by humans during high stress situations tend to become beloved by the humans they serve. Both in the mines and on the battlefield, we saw humans becoming attached to their animals, and seeking to protect or defend them. Two. Chickens, in fact, don't do well in the desert, especially [laughter], especially when it's the wrong type of chicken. Okay. Number three. Without the use of these animals, U.S. Marines were left to be the oversized canary in the coal mine, or in the parlance of the day, the oversized field chickens. And number four. The military was unprepared for biological warfare during the time of Desert Shield, and Desert Storm, and we remain unprepared during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Had any of these conflicts led to the larger-scale biological warfare engagements that were feared by the military--
>> Jeff Crane: And used by the Administration to justify war-
>> Sara Hart: And used by the Administration to justify and rally up support for war that was not funded, and would be handed on to our grandchildren in terms of a financial and moral burden-if anything had happened of this sort, there would not have been adequate protective supplies.
>> Jeff Crane: And with that, listeners, we are signing off. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time, here in the Snafu Bar.
>> Sara Hart: You've been listening to Snafu Bar, a Cal Poly Humboldt Production, brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Our team includes me.
>> Jeff Crane: And me.
>> Abigail Smithson: Abigail Smithson, Producer.
>> Liam Salcuni: Liam Salcuni, Writer/Researcher.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Roman Sotomayor, Writer/Researcher.
>> Narrator: You can find more information about Snafu Bar on KHSU.org.