March 27, 2006
Camels of Mass Destruction Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 07:55 PM EST The latest revelation to come out of the declassified papers captured in Iraq is that Saddam Hussein, in his fight against the invaders, planned to use camels to deliver explosives. These suicide bombers would presumably have been given no inkling of their mission, since camels are notorious for doing whatever they please and would not likely have been motivated by religious fervor. While this particular application would have been a novelty, camels have often been employed by military forces in their traditional capacities as a means of transportation and as beasts of burden. Even the United States Army experimented with camels in the deserts of the Southwest during the 1850s. For more on the less-than-encouraging results, see the following two articles in our archives from 1961 and 2005.
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