Pulling no punches with their announcement made on the eve of the Christmas holiday weekend, the Pentagon agency that is planning the Divine Strake for the spring of 2007 has come clean about their test. Sort of. In the agency's Friday announcement, the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency confessed that the radioactive fallout from historic tests at the Nevada Test Site which will be "resuspended from the detonation [of Divine Strake]...may, therefore, contribute radiological doses to the public."

Merry Christmas folks. You just got gifted a dirty bomb.

What? What did you say? The Pentagon said the test is safe....that the exposure to radioactive particles will be safe. Uh-huh. Right. I've heard that before.

Before you buy this used car salesman's pile of dung, you might want to get a second opinion. Shop around for other assessments. Listen to what environmental groups are saying. Clearly, the agencies that have been sending us radioactive presents from the Nevada Test Site since 1951 don't have the best track record when it comes to honesty.

What you can do is while you are doing your pre- or post- Christmas shopping, drop by your local bookstore and pick up a dictionary and look up the term alpha or beta particles. The fallout that the Divine Strake blast will eject up into the atmosphere will consist of long-lived radioactive alpha, beta and gamma particles. The Pentagon is only telling you about the external exposure to gamma particles, which can penetrate the skin.

Since we all breathe and eat, there is a frightening danger associated with this dirty bomb alpha and beta radiation - that the Pentagon is not telling you about. That is called internal radiation. When in our bodies, alpha and beta radioactive particles can start a horrific process of slowly murdering adjacent cells that can eventually lead to genetic defects, immune deficiency, leukemia, or cancer.

Folks, there's no gift receipt with Divine Strake. You can either take it or hand it back to the giver. I, for one, don't want a lifetime of worries about my health. I don't want to be wondering next year or in ten years if the radioactivity ejected from the Divine Strake test of 2007 is eating away at my insides. This is one present that I won't accept this holiday season.