Agent Orange: Terrible Legacy of the Vietnam War

[Unknown Beatle]

Mai Giang Vu was exposed to Agent Orange while serving in the Army of South Vietnam from 1968 to 1974. He carried barrels of chemicals to spray in the jungle. His sons were born in 1974 and 1975. They were unable to walk or function normally. Their limbs gradually "curled up" and they could only crawl. By age 18, they were bedridden. One died at age 23; the other at age 25.

Nga Tran is a French Vietnamese woman who worked in Vietnam as a war correspondent. She was there when the US military began spraying chemical defoliants. A big cloud of the agent enveloped her. Shortly after her daughter was born, the child's skin began shedding. She could not bear to have physical contact with anyone. The child never grew. She remained 6.6 pounds - her birth weight - until her death at the age of 17 months. Tran's second daughter suffers from alpha thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder rarely seen in Asia. Tran saw a woman who gave birth to a "ball" with no human form. Many children are born without brains; others make inhuman sounds, Tran said. There are victims who have never stood up. They creep and barely lift their heads.

~Snip~

After examining the evidence, the panel determined that the US government and the chemical manufacturers knew that dioxin, one of the most dangerous chemicals known to humans, was present in one of the components of Agent Orange. Yet they continued to use it and in fact suppressed the 1965 Bionetics study that showed dioxin caused many birth defects in experimental animals. It was not until the results of that study were leaked that the use of Agent Orange was stopped.

The panel also concluded that the US war in Vietnam was an illegal war of aggression (crime against peace) against a country seeking national liberation, in violation of the United Nations Charter. It further decided that the use of dioxin was a war crime because it qualified as a poisoned weapon in violation of the Hague Convention and customary international law. Finally, the panel found that the use of dioxin was a crime against humanity, as it constituted an inhuman act perpetrated against a civilian population in connection with a crime against peace and war crimes.

More: truthout

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Go further than this

It was also:
Pink
Green
White
Blue

The pink is like a time bomb. It ticks - then explodes. My fathers intestines were melting the last week of his life. It was the pink.

My dad would be 74 this year - he died four years ago. He was not a smoker. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in May 2011 and died August of that year. Two days before he passed away they still could not find cancer in his blood. That might bethe blue that changes the biology of the body.

Not only the enemy - but our own. They were deliberately and maliciously poisoned.

The only way to get them to admit it - is for the Veteran to die. They went back to 1978 and gave my mom full disability - after my dad died. All of those years out of pocket for diabetes, biopsies, etc etc. in death we do right by those harm.

So stop and think before we turn up our nose at doing business with Vietnam. It's "hot" there. My friend Nhu - came here when she was 10? She's 38 - and has had three cysts removed from her uterus the size of lemons. She was born after the war - but she was exposed. Her father is now dying the same path my father did. He's 71.

And turn an eye to Central and South America. Because we used the other colors there.

And you could be on a plane and touch a surface 6 months after these chemicals were there - and be exposed.

Thank you for this post. There are a lot of sick people in the world - the time bomb just hasn't exploded yet. But it will. And it's not the fault of our soldiers - its the evil human beings that unleashed this on the world.

[Unknown Beatle]

2. "Rainbow Herbicides"

As was commonly known during the war.

[JustAnotherGen]

3. Yeppers

.

I'm convinced pink is the worst - we are just beginning to see its effect now. . And so few people have responded to your post. But I did. And I'm glad someone else is not letting it go.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. And still too little coverage of the Depleted Uranium that is killing and damaging people

in the Middle East.

[2theleft]

5. It killed my step dad.

Lung cancer, spread first to spine, then basically everywhere. Small cell, fast growing. The VA did acknowledge it after about 5 years of treatments and tens of thousands of payments had been made. He then started to receive disability which allowed him to not work for the remaining few years of horrible pain and a very slow death. I was shocked when he approved for disability. Took about a year with the VA.