Used & Betrayed - 100 Years of US Troops as Lab Rats

Every Memorial Day and Veteran's Day, politicians speak at ceremonies all over the US and repeat their favorite mantra: "Support the troops."

This pledge to honor is hammered into the American psyche. However, time has shown politicians as a whole are not the friends of service members - but instead their greatest enemies.

Time and again, government institutions have abandoned soldiers after knowingly ruining their lives, in some cases after literally using them like lab rats.

In this episode of Empire Files, Abby Martin documents decades of secret experimentation on US troops - from nuclear tests to psychotropic drugs - as well as to intentionally exposing them to deadly poisons, from sarin gas to Agent Orange.

Most damning of all is how the hundreds of thousands of veterans seeking help from the government for the side-effects, such as Gulf War Syndrome are always met with lies and denial.