AGENT ORANGE
Poisoning Vietnam for last 30 years
By Barb
Neth
Buffalo, N.Y.
Some 30 years after the U.S. military was forced to stop
poisoning Vietnam with Agent Orange, three generations of
Vietnamese and their country continue to experience its toxic
affects.
Agent Orange--so called because of the orange-striped drums
it was shipped in--was a chemical defoliant that was used
extensively in Vietnam from 1962 to1970. The Pentagon named
this malicious campaign "Operation Ranch Hand."
Unable to quell the Vietnamese struggle for
self-determination using the Pentagon's enormous arsenal of
weapons, the U.S. military sought instead to strip Vietnam of
all vegetation, to deny food and cover to the Vietnamese
revolutionaries.
Air Force planes and U.S. soldiers on trucks, boats, and
foot with hand-held sprayers pumped out clouds of lethal toxin,
killing all flora in their path and creating crisscrossed
patterns of thousands of intersecting swaths that blackened
province after province.
All told, 11.2 million gallons of deadly poison decimated
hardwood forests, dense mangrove jungles, and vast expanses of
cropland throughout the southern half of Vietnam.
Water supplies, the air, the soil, and crops were all
contaminated with Agent Orange. It affected everyone in the
areas surrounding the spraying. This meant Vietnamese
combatants and non-combatants, as well as U.S. soldiers, were
contaminated.
Agent Orange was a potent brew of two powerful chemicals.
One chemical contained an unavoidable byproduct called
2,3,7,8-TCDD, an especially dangerous form of dioxin. Dioxin, a
carcinogen, has been called the most toxic molecule ever
synthesized by humans.
There is no question that the U.S. military had ample
warning regarding the potential danger Agent Orange posed to
human life and the environment. Seventeen Nobel laureate
scientists, the Federation of American Scientists, and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science all called
for a halt to the murderous campaign. They branded it
"barbarous" and a dangerous precedent for chemical and
biological warfare.
But the Pentagon had already tested Agent Orange's
effectiveness as a herbicide in the Florida Everglades and
Puerto Rico. The brass ignored the concerns and the possible
danger. The generals considered the risk of poisoning "their
own" soldiers and an entire country unimportant if this weapon
could help achieve their ultimate objective--complete
subjugation of Vietnam to U.S. corporate interests.
The chief architect of "Operation Ranch Hand", Adm. Elmo
Zumwalt, even indicated in his memoirs that "knowing what I
know now, I still would have ordered the defoliation to achieve
the objectives it did."
Zumwalt died Jan. 2 from cancer caused by exposure to Agent
Orange. His son, Elmo Zumwalt Jr., an officer who was also in
Vietnam, died from cancer in 1988--also caused by exposure to
Agent Orange. And Zumwalt Jr.'s son was born with a severe
disability--because of his father's exposure to Agent
Orange.
Why they sprayed
What "objectives" did the spraying of a deadly herbicide
over half of a country achieve? It certainly didn't prevent the
Vietnamese from kicking the U.S. military out of their country.
Nor were U.S. soldiers' lives saved.
Over 270,000 U.S. veterans and their families, have suffered
disease, disability, and death because of the Pentagon's
deliberate use of this lethal toxin.
What the spraying--coupled with more than a decade of
Pentagon bombings and warfare--did accomplish was widespread
devastation of Vietnam's environment. Millions of gallons of
toxic herbicide soaked the southern half of Vietnam during the
1960s.
These poisons eventually killed or injured 400,000 people,
and contributed to birth defects in 500,000 children.
This legacy of destruction has placed an enormous burden on
the heroic revolutionary spirit of the Vietnamese people. The
costs of environmental cleanup, research, and health care have
meant hardship for a revolutionary Vietnam struggling to
rebuild on socialist foundations.
Yet despite these difficulties--and in spite of the U.S.
government's continued hostility, attempts at subversion and
refusal to make reparations for the damage it caused--the
Vietnamese people continue to persevere.
Even the U.S. veterans the Pentagon poisoned with Agent
Orange in Vietnam were only able to wrench a modicum of
compensation from the U.S. government for the health problems
they and their families suffered. And that was only after a
long, hard, and bitter battle with the Pentagon
establishment.
Only a similar struggle can force the militarists in the
Pentagon to admit their culpability for the devastation wreaked
on Vietnam. Such an admission would imply they should accept
responsibility for all of the other destruction they have
caused, and continue to cause, around the globe.
Depleted uranium
The U.S. military has littered the world with deadly
chemicals, lethal land mines, and radioactive waste in the form
of depleted uranium. And the generals want to be free to
continue to do so at their discretion.
Depleted uranium has become their favorite new poison. DU,
an extremely dense metal, is a waste product created during the
production of nuclear weapons. DU bullets can pierce tanks and
bunkers, and tanks made from it are virtually impenetrable.
However, once DU objects are impacted they fragment, spewing
radioactive particles into the air that can become lodged in
human body tissue. The Pentagon used DU weapons extensively
throughout Iraq and Yugoslavia.
As with Agent Orange, DU demonstrates the Pentagon's blatant
disregard for humanity. Also, as with Agent Orange, mass
outrage and protest can prevent the U.S. military from creating
another environmental disaster as it did in Vietnam.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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