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Chemical companies, US authorities knew dangers of Agent Orange

FROM: http://thewe.cc/weplanet/asia/vietnam/a ... ietnam.htm

Jon DillinghamAugust 10, 2009

Agent Orange victims march Sunday, August 9, 2009 on Le Duan Boulevard in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1
To commemorate the first Orange Day in Vietnam.
Those responsible for exposing Vietnamese citizens and US troops to toxic defoliants kept silent about known health implications, a review of documents finds.
US chemical companies that made Agent Orange and the government and military authorities who ordered its spraying on Vietnam knew the human health toll it could take, according to official and unofficial documents detailing the history of the deadly defoliant.
A review of the documents related to the use of Agent Orange – a dioxin-laden herbicide – in Vietnam, including decades-old declassified papers from the companies that manufactured it and the government and military that used it, provides compelling evidence that those in charge also concealed evidence of the devastating effects it could have on people.
Mum’s the word
A declassified letter by V.K. Rowe at Dow’s Biochemical Research Library to Bioproducts Manager Ross Milholland dated June 24, 1965 clearly states that the company knew the dioxin in their products, including Agent Orange, could hurt people.
In reference to 2,4,5,-trichlorophenol and 2,3,7,8, -tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (components of Agent Orange), Rowe stated:
“This material is exceptionally toxic; it has a tremendous potential for producing chloracne and systemic injury.”
Rowe worried the company would suffer if word got out.
“The whole 2,4,5-T industry would be hard hit and I would expect restrictive legislation, either barring the material or putting very rigid controls upon it.”
So he said the company should keep quiet about the toxicity:
“There is no reason why we cannot get this problem under strict control and thereby hopefully avoid restrictive legislation ... I trust you will be very judicious in your use of this information.
It could be quite embarrassing if it were misinterpreted or misused ...
P.S. Under no circumstances may this letter be reproduced, shown, or sent to anyone outside of Dow.”
Dow played its cards right, never getting in serious trouble. The spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam went on for another six years.
Dow did not return phone calls and emails requesting comment on the Agent Orange issue.
Could have manufactured without dioxin but process slower and more expensive
In the latest case of US veterans trying to sue Dow and Monsanto for their cancers related to Agent Orange exposure, Supreme Court Documents related to a petition for a Writ of Certiorari in Daniel Raymond Stephenson, et al., petitioners, v. Dow Chemical Company, Monsanto Company, et al., respondents, further implicates the companies in cover-ups and misinformation.
The petitioners state that the companies knew their dioxins, such as those used in Agent Orange, were harmful and lied about it while concealing information, including the fact that several factory workers had fallen sick after exposure to dioxin.
Several key facts “remain undisputed,” according to the document:
“Respondents never shared the information in their sole possession about health risks attributable to dioxin.”
“Respondents used proprietary, defective manufacturing processes that dangerously contaminated 2,4,5- T with dioxin.”
That is, the chemical companies could have manufactured their products without dioxin, as other companies had done, but the process was slower and more expensive, so they chose a more dangerous method.
The companies “secretly tested their products for dioxin and hid its extreme toxicity from the military,” according to the petitioners.
The petitioners stated that the companies had been hiding information during the ongoing court process:
“Respondents also misrepresent today’s medical understanding of the injuries caused by exposure to dioxin.
Instead of telling this Court that the NAS/IOM has found that numerous cancers have been related to exposure to dioxin-contaminated 2,4,5-T (ingredient in Agent Orange) they quote a twenty-year-old Second Circuit opinion to say: ‘Even today, . . . no . . . evidence that Agent Orange was hazardous to human health.’”
The petitioners said the companies had misrepresented the health effects with “patently false” assertions that none of their workers had gotten sick from dioxin poisoning.
Inside job
Though numerous studies have uncontroversially demonstrated the devastating effects of dioxin exposure on humans, the companies that manufactured Agent Orange have gone out of their way to offer their own unique perspective.
Through 2004, Dow and Monsanto funded several friendly studies by Dr. Alvin L. Young to show that the exposure of US ground forces to Agent Orange should be of minimal health concern.
Young’s schizophrenic reports go back and forth from saying that dioxins are not harmful to saying they are harmful and his largely debunked studies have drawn the scorn of prominent members of the scientific community.
“Young is paid by the chemical companies,” Dr. Wayne Dwernychuk, a retired senior/advisor at Hatfield Consultants, told Thanh Nien Daily. “I don’t believe a word he says.” Hatfield Consultants is a research leader in the field of contamination from dioxin herbicides in Vietnam.
US military experts knew
Though reports point to the fact that chemical companies like Dow and Monsanto knowingly hid evidence of dioxin-related medical problems from the government, the declassified 1990 Zumwalt Report suggests that US military experts knew that Agent Orange was harmful at the time of its use.
The report quotes a 1988 letter from Dr. James R. Clary, a former government scientist with the Chemical Weapons Branch, to Senator Tom Daschle. Dr. Clary was involved in designing tanks that sprayed herbicides and defoliants in Vietnam, according to the report.
Clary told Daschle:
“When we (military scientists) initiated the herbicide program in the 1960’s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide.
We were even aware that the ‘military’ formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the ‘civilian’ version due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture.
However, because the material was to be used on the ‘enemy,’ none of us were overly concerned.
We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide.
And, if we had, we would have expected our own government to give assistance to veterans so contaminated.”
Chemical warfare: calling a spade a spade
Supporters of the US’s Agent Orange Campaign prefer to call it an “herbicide program” rather than chemical warfare. But official documents reveal that the US Senate knew its real name.
In US Senate Congressional Records dated August 11, 1969, a table presented to senators showed that congress clearly classified 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T (main components of Agent Orange) in the Chemical and Biological Warfare category.
The table also includes Cacodylic Acid, a main component of Agent Blue, another chemical sprayed on Vietnam to kill plants, in the official Chemical and Biological Warfare category.
The table describes it as “an arsenic-base compound... heavy concentrations will cause arsenical poisoning in humans. Widely used in Vietnam. It is composed of 54.29 percent arsenic.”
As Vietnam War Scholar and US Veteran W.D. Ehrhart put it concisely in a Thanh Nien Daily interview last week: “It would be hard to describe Agent Orange as anything other than a chemical weapon. Dioxin is a chemical.”
So is arsenic.
Some subtitles changed from original article by TheWE.cc
Click here for article
Copyright © 2009 ThanhNienNews.com

US chemical companies concealed effects of dioxin, say advocates
By An Dien and Jon Dillingham
Thanh Nien — August 6, 2009
An American lawyer and a French activist say chemical companies that produced Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant used by the US Army during the Vietnam War, connived to cover up its dangers.
The following are excerpts from interviews conducted with Gerson H. Smoger, a lawyer who has represented American Agent Orange victims for years, and Marie Hélène Lavallard, a member of the French-Vietnamese Friendship Association, on how US chemical companies hid the fact that they knew how hazardous Agent Orange was.
Thanh Nien Daily: How can these companies get away with compensating Americans but not Vietnamese?
Smoger: I would not say that they “got away with compensating,” because I can assure you that the responsible chemical companies had no interest in compensating anyone.
Also, unfortunately, the chemical companies have never really compensated the vast majority of American veterans either.

While there was a settlement entered into in 1984, the money ran out in 1994.
Of the 2.4 million Americans who served in Vietnam, only about 60,000 ever received anything from the companies… Given how long it takes to get cancer from the chemicals, virtually none of the veterans who got cancer have received any compensation from the companies...
...I have reviewed literally millions of pages of documents... It seems that the manufacturers conspired to hide the dangers from the US government and the rest of the world.
The chemical companies knew about the dangers and held secret meetings with the purpose of conspiring to keep the knowledge of the dangers from the US government.
Lavallard: The first thing to do is consider separately the 1984 agreement [with US Veterans] and the 2004-2008 lawsuit [filed by Vietnamese victims], not because they are separated by 20 years, though they are, but because they have almost nothing in common.
The settlement of 1984 was not a judgment; on the contrary it was made to avoid a lawsuit… Why did the parties choose a private settlement?

One has to consider the background.
In 1980, 1983 and 1984, three studies were published by Dr. George Roush, the medical director of Monsanto.
They asserted, especially the last two, that Agent Orange had no inconvenient effects on human health.
Of course, they were faked but that was discovered only years later.
At the moment, they were “The Truth.”
So the veterans were afraid of losing everything with the lawsuit and preferred a settlement... On Monsanto’s side, they were up to the nostrils in the Times Beach scandal, a small town so contaminated by TCDD that finally the US government bought it all in February 1983 and had it scratched from the surface of the earth.
Monsanto was guilty and was organizing its defense.
It did not need the bad publicity of a lawsuit for Agent Orange. Do not ask if it escaped the Times Beach condemnation, it did, having people destroying the necessary documents.
Not the slightest “moral” feeling in this settlement.
Just a cynical and clever way to pay a small sum to avoid a bigger disgrace.
The amount was ridiculous.
Once the lawyers had taken their share, the compensations for some 40,000 people ranged from US$256-12 800, with an estimated mean of $4,000.

Even in 1984 it was not much.
For those who received their share in the last years up to 1994 it was simply alms ...the judge did not rule in favor of the American victims.
It was a private settlement, such as the American law permits.
It was not generous.
As for the Vietnamese victims, be sure the corporations do not care at all for them.
They knew their herbicides were lethal, and they got along to hide it from the US Army at a Dow-Monsanto secret meeting in 1965.
They could have produced the herbicides with much less TCDD, or even without it, but they were only interested in making as much money as possible selling as many gallons as possible as quickly as possible.
Should the US do more to help clean up Agent Orange “hot-spots” in Vietnam?
Lavallard: Easy question: The US government requested and obtained $120 million from Hercules, a chemical company who manufactured herbicides for the war and moved to another place without cleaning its former plant.
US militarism
More than a third of land in six central Vietnamese provinces lethally contaminated with unexploded bombs and land mines

Just calculate!
Whatever the “legal” aspect, the USA are responsible for poisoning huge parts of Vietnam.
They made the mess, they have to clean it.
I notice that this question is much easier than the question of sanitary damages.
For those, there are still arguments about proofs, scientific enough or not, diseases due to sprayings or to other reasons, etc.
But for the environment, the question is perfectly clear: the US wanted to destroy the forest, they succeeded.
They wanted to ban the peasants away from their rice fields, they did.
They wanted to destroy the crops, they did, and some contaminated areas remain unsuitable and dangerous to live in.
© Copyright 2005-2009 GlobalResearch.ca

Agent Orange spraying

Agent Orange’s toxic legacy lingers on
November 17, 2008
More than 30 years after it ended, the Vietnam War is still having a devastating impact on the lives of ordinary people.
Up to five million Vietnamese were exposed to Agent Orange, a deadly herbicide sprayed by the U.S. Army over wide areas.
The chemical killed tens of thousands but has left a tragic legacy of birth defects and disabilities in those born long after the war.
Almost 80 million litres of the poisonous herbicide was sprayed by the U.S. military during the war in Vietnam. The aim was to destroy the jungle that provided cover for the Vietnamese army.
But the powerful weed killer contained one of the world’s most toxic chemicals - dioxin.
Cancer, birth defects, psychiatric disorders and diabetes are just a few of the diseases caused by it.
Vu Tan Kim was a soldier during the war. He says when the chemical was sprayed on their base, they didn’t know how dangerous it was.
Only after his daughter was born he was told by doctors the dioxin he was exposed to had affected his genes.
His daughter is blind, her arms and legs are deformed and she is mentally handicapped.
“If I had my leg cut or went blind, that’s ok. But here my blood was poisoned and even though the war ended in Vietnam, every time I come home I feel very sad when I see my daughter,” he says.
He says the one dollar a day he gets from his government is not enough and that it's the U.S. who should compensate.
However, America's constitution protects those who were responsible at the time, so the victims took the companies who developed Agent Orange to court.
But the judge, who had previously awarded millions of dollars to American veterans who suffered from the poison, threw the case out.
Nguyen Trong Nhan is a leading official of the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange (VAVA).
He says that despite having little faith in America's legal system the battle continues and they hope to win their appeal.
Da Nang International Airport is now a gateway for millions of tourists.
What they don’t know is that it’s also one of Vietnam’s three toxic hot spots.
The American military stored unused dioxin at this former airbase.
Lev Fedorov, Doctor of Chemical Science says:
“Local people here are still being chronically poisoned. The dioxin that was sprayed on the territory doesn't' go anywhere. It's very resistant.”
Residents nearby were warned only last year that vegetables grown here and fish caught in the lake are poisonous.
To learn more, please click the VIDEO button on the right. NOTE: The story contains images which you might find disturbing.
Click here for video on story
Russia TV in English —
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Copyright © Autonomous Nonprofit Organization
"TV-Novosti" 2008, all rights reserved
Monsanto, Dow Chemical, let off hook by New York Federal Court for Agent Orange toxic herbicide manufacture.
Ranch Hand — a US government operation — defoliated 1.2 million acres of land and dispensed 4.8 million gallons of chemicals over Vietnam
Nguyen Thi Thuy remembers crawling into tunnels during the day and covering her mouth with a wet rag when the US military sprayed the landscape with defoliant:
I didn't know what it was then, but it was white.
The sky and earth were scorched.
The earth had lost all its greenery.
We didn't know it was Agent Orange at that time.
When my daughter was born, everyone could see through her stomach.
It was like looking through translucent paper.
You could see her intestines and liver.
She died several hours later.
Tran Thi Hoa:
It wasn't until 27 years later that I started to get sick and my hands and feet started to curl outward and shrivel up.
Before, my hands and feet were not like this.
I was able to work, but now I can't.
I can't even take care of myself.
More Vietnamese are becoming aware of the consequences of Agent Orange.
They are voicing their experiences and expressing their expectations and needs through global channels.
Tran Thi Hoa said she'd like to receive compensation so she can hire an attendant to take care of her as her disability encompasses her.
Nguyen Thi Thuy wants to know who will take care of her disabled children when she is gone.
Thousands of other questions Vietnamese are just now finding the voice to ask their former US adversaries.
Taken from: Ngoc Nguyen/Aaron Glantz - Asia Times

Rehabilitation
Photo: Tim Lockett

Spectre orange
Nearly 30 years after the Vietnam war, a chemical weapon used by US troops is still exacting a hideous toll on each new generation.
Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy report
Saturday March 29 2003
Hong Hanh is falling to pieces. She has been poisoned by the most toxic molecule known to science; it was sprayed during a prolonged military campaign.
The contamination persists.
No redress has been offered, no compensation.
The superpower that spread the toxin has done nothing to combat the medical and environmental catastrophe that is overwhelming her country....
Hong Hanh's story, and that of many more like her, is quietly unfolding in Vietnam today.
Her declining half-life is spent unseen, in her home, an unremarkable concrete box in Ho Chi Minh City, filled with photographs, family plaques and yellow enamel stars, a place where the best is made of the worst.
Hong Hanh is both surprising and terrifying.
Ranch Hand — a US government operation
Destroyed 1.2 million acres of land in Vietnam
4.8 million gallons of chemicals

Here is a 19-year-old who lives in a 10-year-old's body.
She clatters around with disjointed spidery strides which leave her soaked in sweat.
When she cannot stop crying, soothing creams and iodine are rubbed into her back, which is a lunar collage of septic blisters and scabs.
"My daughter is dying," her mother says.
My youngest daughter is 11 and she has the same symptoms.
What should we do?
Their fingers and toes stick together before they drop off.
Their hands wear down to stumps.
Every day they lose a little more skin.
And this is not leprosy.
The doctors say it is connected to American chemical weapons we were exposed to during the Vietnam war.
650,000 alive victims — 500,000 have already died — estimated 3 million Vietnamese people died in the attack by the US
There are an estimated 650,000 like Hong Hanh in Vietnam, suffering from an array of baffling chronic conditions.
Another 500,000 have already died.
The thread that weaves through all their case histories is defoliants deployed by the US military during the war.
Some of the victims are veterans who were doused in these chemicals during the war, others are farmers who lived off land that was sprayed.
The second generation are the sons and daughters of war veterans, or children born to parents who lived on contaminated land.
Now there is a third generation, the grandchildren of the war and its victims.
Iraq tank destroyed by depleted uranium weapons

This is a chain of events bitterly denied by the US government.
Millions of litres of defoliants such as Agent Orange were dropped on Vietnam, but US government scientists claimed that these chemicals were harmless to humans and short-lived in the environment.
US strategists argue that Agent Orange was a prototype smart weapon, a benign tactical herbicide that saved many hundreds of thousands of American lives by denying the North Vietnamese army the jungle cover that allowed it ruthlessly to strike and feint.
New scientific research, however, confirms what the Vietnamese have been claiming for years.
Portrays US government as one that has illicitly used weapons of mass destruction
It also portrays the US government as one that has illicitly used weapons of mass destruction, stymied all independent efforts to assess the impact of their deployment, failed to acknowledge cold, hard evidence of maiming and slaughter, and pursued a policy of evasion and deception.
Ho Chi Minh statue
Kolkata, India
Notice the domino theory in operation
41st annual Folklife Festival
National Mall in Washington, US
A Trao, A Dan, from Vietnam central highlands
3 million Vietnam people killed by US

Friday, 29 April, 2005

3-year-old Xuan Minh, believed to have genetic defects from Agent Orange

Vietnam doctors believe the effects of Agent Orange are ongoing
The legacy of Agent Orange
Thirty years after hostilities ended between the US and Vietnam, relations remain strained by one of America's most notorious weapons during the war, the chemical Agent Orange.
The Vietnamese believe that the powerful weed killer — the use of which was intended to destroy crops and jungle providing cover for the Vietcong — is responsible for massively high instances of genetic defects in areas that were sprayed.
Nguyen Trong Nhan, from the Vietnam Association Of Victims Of Agent Orange and a former president of Vietnamese Red Cross, believes the use of Agent Orange was a "war crime".
He told BBC World Service's One Planet programme that Vietnam's poverty was a direct result of the use of Agent Orange.
"They are the poorest and the most vulnerable people — and that is why Vietnam is a very poor country," he said.
"We help the people who are victims of the Agent Orange and the dioxins, but the capacity of our government is very limited."
Contaminated areas
Campaigners such as Mr Nguyen believe they have been left with little choice but to resort to legal action, and in 2004 took the chemical companies that produced Agent Orange to court in the US.
But last month an American Federal District Judge dismissed the case on the grounds that use of the defoliant did not violate international law that the time. An appeal has been lodged against this decision.
The US sprayed 80m litres of poisonous chemicals during Operation Ranchhand. There were many Agents used, including Pink, Green and White, but Agent Orange was used the most — 45m litres sprayed over a 10th of Vietnam.
It was also used — mostly in secret — over parts of neighbouring Cambodia.

Children at a Friendship Village for victims of Agent Orange
It's not going to go away, because it affects a huge number of people in Vietnam

But Agent Orange in particular was laced with dioxins — extremely toxic to humans. Dioxins accumulate in the body to cause cancers. Anyone eating or drinking in contaminated areas then receives an even higher dose.
Spraying stopped in 1971, after more than 6,000 missions and growing public disquiet.
But the ground in many areas of Vietnam remains contaminated by Agent Orange. A number of people in these areas believe they are victims of the chemical.
One woman said the herbicide had caused a skin disease which gave her "great suffering".
"If the US and Vietnamese governments could care for people like me, that would be comforting," she added.
Another man said his legs have "wasted away" as a result of Agent Orange.
"When I realise I have been contaminated with poisonous chemicals, and the US government hasn't done anything to help, I feel very said, and it makes me cry," he added.
"Now I always get severe headaches. My first child has just died — he had physical deformities. The second one is having headaches like me."
Cancers and disease
Food and supplies are still delivered to victims of Agent Orange. Many were not born when the US sprayed the area — but there is strong evidence the chemicals are still having an effect.
A disproportionately large number of children in the areas affected are born with defects, both mental and physical. Many are highly susceptible to cancers and disease.
And Vietnamese doctors are convinced Agent Orange is to blame.

Planes spraying Agent Orange over Vietnam
Agent Orange was intended to defoliate the jungle
"This is due to the US sprayings," said Dr Hong Tien Dong, village doctor who has lived in the area all his life.
"Before, in this area, the environment was quite clean.
"Now it has become like this."
In the late 1990s, a Canadian study tested soil, pond water, fish and duck tissue, as well as human blood samples, and found dangerously high levels of dioxin travelling up the food chain to humans.
Dioxin concentrations have been found to be 13 times higher than average in the soil of affected areas, and, in human fat tissue, 20 times as high.
A Japanese study, comparing areas sprayed with those that were not, found children were three times more likely to be born with cleft pallets, or extra fingers and toes.
There are eight times as many hernias in such children, and three times as many born with mental disabilities.
In 2001, scientists found that people living in an Agent Orange "hotspot" at Binh-Hoa near Ho Chi Minh City have 200 times the background amount of dioxin in their bloodstreams.
Hugs daughter
Agent Orange caused disability
Danang, Vietnam
3 million killed by US
Nguyen Thi Kieu Nhung aged 6
holds photos of herself
Agent Orange contamination disability
3 million Vietnam people killed by US

Spectre orange
Nearly 30 years after the Vietnam war, a chemical weapon used by US troops is still exacting a hideous toll on each new generation.
Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy report
Saturday March 29 2003
Teams of international scientists working in Vietnam have now discovered that Agent Orange contains one of the most virulent poisons known to man, a strain of dioxin called TCCD which, 28 years after the fighting ended, remains in the soil, continuing to destroy the lives of those exposed to it.
Evidence has also emerged that the US government not only knew that Agent Orange was contaminated, but was fully aware of the killing power of its contaminant dioxin, and yet still continued to use the herbicide in Vietnam for 10 years of the war and in concentrations that exceeded its own guidelines by 25 times.
As well as spraying the North Vietnamese, the US doused its own troops stationed in the jungle, rather than lose tactical advantage by having them withdraw.
On February 5, addressing the UN Security Council, secretary of state Colin Powell, now famously, clutched between his fingers a tiny phial representing concentrated anthrax spores, enough to kill thousands, and only a tiny fraction of the amount he said Saddam Hussein had at his disposal.
Vietnamese government has own phial — 80g of TCCD — enough to kill entire population of New York if dropped into water supply. US sprayed 170kg over Vietnam
The Vietnamese government has its own symbolic phial that it, too, flourishes, in scientific conferences that get little publicity.
It contains 80g of TCCD, just enough of the super-toxin contained in Agent Orange to fill a child-size talcum powder container.
If dropped into the water supply of a city the size of New York, it would kill the entire population.
Ground-breaking research by Dr Arthur H Westing, former director of the UN Environment Programme, a leading authority on Agent Orange, reveals that the US sprayed 170kg of it over Vietnam.
Ranch Hand — a US government operation
Destroyed 1.2 million acres of land in Vietnam
4.8 million gallons of chemicals
Doing this has created more than 1 million Agent Orange victims.

John F Kennedy's presidential victory in 1961 was propelled by an image of the New Frontier.
He called on Americans to "bear the burden of a long twilight struggle ... against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."
But one of the most problematic new frontiers, that dividing North and South Vietnam, flared up immediately after he had taken office, forcing him to bolster the US-backed regime in Saigon.
Kennedy examined "tricks and gadgets" that might give the South an edge in the jungle, and in November 1961 sanctioned the use of defoliants in a covert operation code — named Ranch Hand, every mission flown signed off by the president himself and managed in Saigon by the secret Committee 202 — the call sign for defoliating forests being "20" and for spraying fields "2".
Ngo Luc, 67, was serving with a North Vietnamese guerrilla unit in the Central Highlands when he saw planes circling overhead.
"We expected bombs, but a fine yellow mist descended, covering absolutely everything," he says.
We were soaked in it, but it didn't worry us, as it smelled good.
We continued to crawl through the jungle.
The next day the leaves wilted and within a week the jungle was bald. We felt just fine at the time.
Today, the former captain is the sole survivor from his unit and lives with his two granddaughters, both born partially paralysed, near the central Vietnamese city of Hue.
When US troops became directly embroiled in Vietnam in 1964, the Pentagon signed contracts worth $57m (£36m) with eight US chemical companies to produce defoliants, including Agent Orange, named after the coloured band painted around the barrels in which it was shipped.
The US would target the Ho Chi Minh trail — Viet Cong supply lines made invisible by the jungle canopy along the border with Laos — as well as the heavily wooded Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that separated the North from the South, and also the Mekong Delta, a maze of overgrown swamps and inlets that was a haven for communist insurgents.
US dropping "poison." Federation of American Scientists — Vietnam being used as laboratory experiment
A reporter for the St Louis Dispatch witnessed a secret spraying mission and wrote that the US was dropping "poison".
Congressman Robert Kastenmeier demanded that the president abandon "chemical warfare" because it tainted America's reputation.
Instead, William Bundy, a presidential adviser, flatly denied that the herbicide used by America was a chemical weapon, and blamed communist propagandists for a distortion of the facts about the Ranch Hand operation.
Only when the Federation of American Scientists warned that year that Vietnam was being used as a laboratory experiment did the rumours become irrefutable.
More than 5,000 American scientists, including 17 Nobel laureates and 129 members of the Academy of Sciences, signed a petition against "chemical and biological weapons used in Vietnam".
Cluster bomb dropped by US
Najaf, Iraq

Eight years after the military launched Operation Ranch Hand, scientists from the National Institute of Health warned that laboratory mice exposed to Agent Orange were giving birth to stillborn or deformed litters, a conclusion reinforced by research conducted by the US department of agriculture.
These findings coincided with newspaper reports in Hanoi that blamed Agent Orange for a range of crippling conditions among troops and their families.
Dr Le Ke Son, a young conscript in Hanoi during the war and now director of Vietnam's Agent Orange Victims Fund, recalls:
The government proposed that a line of runners carry blood and tissue samples from the front to Hanoi.
But it was more than 500 miles and took two months, by which time the samples were spoiled.
How could we make the research work? There was no way to prove what we could see with our own eyes.
In December 1969, President Nixon made a radical and controversial pledge that America would never use chemical weapons in a first strike.
He made no mention of Vietnam or Agent Orange, and the US government continued dispatching supplies of herbicides to the South Vietnamese regime until 1974.
That year, Kiem was born in a one-room hut in Kim Doi, a village just outside Hue.
For her mother, Nguyen, she should have been a consolation because her husband, a Viet Cong soldier, had been killed several months earlier.
"The last time he came home, he told me about the spray, how his unit had been doused in a sweet-smelling mist and all the leaves had fallen from the trees," Nguyen says.
It soon became obvious that Kiem was severely mentally and physically disabled:
"She can eat, she can smile, she sits on the bed.
That's it.
I have barely left my home since my daughter was born."
An Image That Is Worth A Million Words
US Foreign Policy

Brain injured — Agent Orange — clawed hand
Photo: David Lockett
Friday, 11 March, 2005

Vietnam fury at Agent Orange case

Nguyen Van Quy, 49, weeps while sitting with his son Nguyen Quang Trung, 17, at his house in Hai Phong, Vietnam on July 2004.
Former soldier Nguyen Van Quy says he will not stop campaigning
Vietnamese plaintiffs have condemned a US court's decision to dismiss their legal action against manufacturers of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
"It is a wrong decision, unfair and irresponsible," said Nguyen Trong Nhan, vice president of Vietnam's Association of Agent Orange (VAVA).
He said his group was thinking of filing an appeal.
The judge in the case said allegations the chemical caused birth defects and illness had not been proved.
"There is no basis for any of the claims of plaintiffs under the domestic law of any nation or state or under any form of international law. The case is dismissed," said US District Judge Jack B Weinstein.
But Mr Nguyen disagreed.
"Weinstein has turned a blind eye before the obvious truth. It's a shame for him to put out that decision. We just want justice, nothing more.

Dr. Nguyen Thi My Hien with an Agent Orange victim
Many handicapped come from villages that were sprayed
"This is just another war that could be long and difficult, as was the Vietnam War. We are determined to pursue it until the very end, until the day we will be able to ask for justice," he said.
Test case
Former North Vietnamese solder Ngyuen Van Quy, who is being treated for liver and stomach cancer and whose two children are disabled, also said he would not give up his struggle for compensation.
"I'll fight, not just for myself, but for millions of Vietnamese victims. Those who produced these toxic chemicals must take responsibility for their action," he said.
The plaintiffs had sought compensation from pharmaceutical firms including Monsanto, Dow Chemical and Hercules Incorporated, for the alleged effects of Agent Orange, a defoliation agent used to deprive communist Vietnamese forces of forest cover.
The plaintiffs argued that the chemical caused birth defects, miscarriages and cancer.
The civil action was the first attempt by Vietnamese plaintiffs to claim compensation for the effects of Agent Orange.
The defendants argued that the US government was responsible for how the chemical was used, not the manufacturers.
Legal precedent
However, in 1984, several chemical companies paid $180m (£93m) to settle a lawsuit with US war veterans, who said that their health had been affected by exposure to the substance.
Ngo Thanh Nhan, a professor who participated in a campaign to drum up support for the case, said this fuelled the Vietnamese plaintiffs' argument.
"If the medical files [of Vietnamese victims] are not convincing enough, we will use the ones of the American soldiers," he said in Tuoi Tre newspaper.

Le Van Chien was born with no legs
"There's no reason why those who sprayed chemical products got compensation for their contamination... and the direct victims' suit is rejected by an American court."
Agent Orange was named after the colour of its container. As well as herbicides which stripped trees bare, it contained a strain of dioxin.
In time, some contend, the dioxin entered the food chain and caused a proliferation of birth defects.
Some babies were born without eyes or arms, or were missing internal organs.
Activists say three million people were exposed to the chemical during the war, and at least one million suffer serious health problems today.
Search for dead
Seek to communicate with dead to help families find mortal remains of loved ones missing since US attack on Vietnam
Hanoi, Vietnam
Red river
Hanoi
3 million Vietnam people killed by US

Spectre orange
Nearly 30 years after the Vietnam war, a chemical weapon used by US troops is still exacting a hideous toll on each new generation.
Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy report
Saturday March 29 2003
By the time the war finally ended in 1975, more than 10% of Vietnam had been intensively sprayed with 72 million litres of chemicals, of which 66% was Agent Orange, laced with its super-strain of toxic TCCD.
But even these figures, contained in recently declassified US military records, vastly underestimate the true scale of the spraying.
Ranch Hand — a US government operation
Destroyed 1.2 million acres of land in Vietnam
4.8 million gallons of chemicals
Doing this has created more than 1 million Agent Orange victims.

In confidential statements made to US scientists, former Ranch Hand pilots allege that, in addition to the recorded missions, there were 26,000 aborted operations during which 260,000 gallons of herbicide were dumped.
US military regulations required all spray planes or helicopters to return to base empty and one pilot, formerly stationed at Bien Hoa air base between 1968 and 1969, claims that he regularly jettisoned his chemical load into the Long Binh reservoir.
"These herbicides should never have been used in the way that they were used," says the pilot, who has asked not to be identified.
US Government 'indemnified' from lawsuits
Almost immediately after the war finished, US veterans began reporting chronic conditions, skin disorders, asthma, cancers, gastrointestinal diseases.
Their babies were born limbless or with Down's syndrome and spina bifida.
But it would be three years before the US department of veterans' affairs reluctantly agreed to back a medical investigation, examining 300,000 former servicemen - only a fraction of those who had complained of being sick - with the government warning all participants that it was indemnified from lawsuits brought by them.
When rumours began circulating that President Reagan had told scientists not to make "any link" between Agent Orange and the deteriorating health of veterans, the victims lost patience with their government and sued the defoliant manufacturers in an action that was finally settled out of court in 1984 for $180m.
It would take the intervention of the former commander of the US Navy in Vietnam, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, for the government finally to admit that it had been aware of the potential dangers of the chemicals used in Vietnam from the start of Ranch Hand.
The admiral's involvement stemmed from a deathbed pledge to his son, a patrol boat captain who contracted two forms of cancer that he believed had been caused by his exposure to Agent Orange.
Every day during the war, Captain Elmo Zumwalt Jr had swum in a river from which he had also eaten fish, in an area that was regularly sprayed with the herbicide.
Two years after his son's death in 1988, Zumwalt used his leverage within the military establishment to compile a classified report, which he presented to the secretary of the department of veterans' affairs and which contained data linking Agent Orange to 28 life-threatening conditions, including bone cancer, skin cancer, brain cancer — in fact, almost every cancer known to man — in addition to chronic skin disorders, birth defects, gastrointestinal diseases and neurological defects.
Because the material was to be used on the 'enemy' none of us were overly concerned
Zumwalt also uncovered irrefutable evidence that the US military had dispensed "Agent Orange in concentrations six to 25 times the suggested rate" and that "4.2m US soldiers could have made transient or significant contact with the herbicides because of Operation Ranch Hand".
This speculative figure is twice the official estimate of US veterans who may have been contaminated with TCCD.
Most damning and politically sensitive of all is a letter, obtained by Zumwalt, from Dr James Clary, a military scientist who designed the spray tanks for Ranch Hand.
Writing in 1988 to a member of Congress investigating Agent Orange, Clary admitted:
When we initiated the herbicide programme in the 1960s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide.
We were even aware that the military formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the civilian version, due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture.
However, because the material was to be used on the enemy, none of us were overly concerned.
Vietnam tears
1971

The Office of Genetic Counselling and Disabled Children (OGCDC) operates out of a room little bigger than a broom cupboard.
Dr Viet Nhan and his 21 volunteers share their cramped quarters at Hue Medical College with cerebral spinal fluid shunt kits donated from Norfolk, Virginia; children's clothes given by the Rotary Club of Osaka, Japan; second-hand computers scavenged from banks in Singapore.
Vietnam's chaotic and underfunded national health service cannot cope with the demands made upon it.
The Vietnamese Red Cross has registered an estimated one million people disabled by Agent Orange, but has sufficient funds to help only one fifth of them, paying out an average of $5 (£3) a month.
Dr Nhan established the free OGCDC, having studied the impact of Agent Orange as a student, to match Vietnamese families to foreign private financial donors.
"It was only when I went out to the villages looking for case studies that I realised how many families were affected and how few could afford help," he says.
Children need to run before they die
"I abandoned my research.
"Children need to run before they die."

Wheel chair — Agent Orange victim — eye affected — claw hand
Ranch Hand — a US government operation — defoliated 1.2 million acres of land and dispensed 4.8 million gallons of chemicals over Vietnam.
Doing this has created more than 1 million Agent Orange victims.
Monsanto, Dow Chemical, let off hook by New York Federal Court for Agent Orange toxic herbicide manufacture.
Photo: David Lockett
Sunday, 30 December, 2001

Agent Orange hotspots located

By BBC Science's Helen Sewell
Scientists investigating the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam have found that people living in a so-called hotspot have the highest blood levels of its poisonous chemical dioxin ever recorded in the country.
Agent Orange, which has the dioxin (TCDD — short for 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin) as one of its constituents, was last used in 1973.
But today, some residents of Binh-Hoa, near Ho Chi Minh City, have 200 times the background amount of dioxin in their bloodstreams.
Agent Orange was widely used by the US military during the Vietnam War as a defoliant so that Vietnam's dense jungle could not provide cover for Viet Cong forces.
'Startling' results
It was when US veterans started to become ill with a variety of health problems that investigations suggested that Agent Orange could be involved.
The most dangerous ingredient was the dioxin, a pollutant that stays in the environment for decades.
There are still about 12 dioxin hotspots in Vietnam, in areas where very heavy spraying took place.

US soldier fighting
Agent Orange was used to destroy tree cover
Scientists from the United States have been working with the Vietnamese Red Cross in these areas, testing residents to see whether they are suffering any ill effects.
The lead scientist, Professor Arnold Schecter of the University of Texas, says they are "very startled" by the results.
Export worry
In a paper to be published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, he says that in Binh-Hoa, 95% of people sampled had elevated levels of dioxin in their bloodstream, and some had 200 times the average amount.
Dioxins, which include TCDD and other related compounds, can cause cancers and problems with reproductive development, the nervous and immune systems.
It is thought the high levels of dioxin found in Binh-Hoa residents result from the chemical leaching into watercourses where it is absorbed by fish and ducks, which form part of the Vietnamese diet.
The issue is very sensitive for Vietnam, which exports these foods all over the world.
Agent Orange
caused disability
Hanoi, Vietnam
Nguyen Thi Kieu Nhung aged 6
holds photos of herself
Agent Orange contamination disability
3 million Vietnam people killed by US

by **admin_pornrev** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 11:05 am

Spectre orange
Nearly 30 years after the Vietnam war, a chemical weapon used by US troops is still exacting a hideous toll on each new generation.
Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy report
Saturday March 29 2003
At home, the US takes heed. When a dump at the Robins Air Force Base in Georgia was found to have stored Agent Orange, it was placed on a National Priority List, immediately capped in five feet of clay and sand, and has since been the subject of seven investigations.
Dioxin is now also a major domestic concern, scientists having discovered that it is a by-product of many ordinary industrial processes, including smelting, the bleaching of paper pulp and solid waste incineration.
The US environmental protection agency, pressed into a 12-year inquiry, recently concluded that it is a "class-1 human carcinogen".
Vietnam Letter
Cao Van Sanh
Can be contacted at:
www.danangquangnamfund.org

No money is forthcoming, no aid of any kind
The evidence is categoric.
Last April, a conference at Yale University attended by the world's leading environmental scientists, who reviewed the latest research, concluded that in Vietnam the US had conducted the "largest chemical warfare campaign in history".
And yet no money is forthcoming, no aid in kind.
For the US, there has only ever been one contemporary incident of note involving weapons of mass destruction — Colin Powell told the UN Security Council in February that, "in the history of chemical warfare, no country has had more battlefield experience with chemical weapons since world war one than Saddam Hussein's Iraq"
Why the Vietnamese are still dying
The US government has yet to respond to the Hatfield Consultants' report, which finally explains why the Vietnamese are still dying so many years after the war is over, but, last March, it did make its first contribution to the debate in Vietnam.
It signed an agreement with a reluctant Vietnamese government for an $850,000 (£543,000) programme to "fill identified data gaps" in the study of Agent Orange.
The conference in Hanoi that announced the decision, according to Vietnamese Red Cross representatives who attended, ate up a large slice of this funding.
One of the signatories is the same US environmental protection agency that has already concluded that dioxin causes cancer.
"Studies can be proposed until hell freezes over," says Dr Dwernychuk of Hatfield Consultants:
"But they are not going to assist the Vietnamese in a humanitarian sense one iota.
"We state emphatically that no additional research on human health is required to facilitate intervention or to protect the local citizens.
America continues to spend considerably more on dead than millions of living and long-suffering
There is cash to be lavished in Vietnam when the US government sees it as politically expedient.
Over the past 10 years, more than $350m (£223m) has been spent on chasing ghosts.
In 1992, the US launched the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting to locate 2,267 servicemen thought to be missing in action in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Jerry O'Hara, spokesman for JTF-FA, which is still searching for the remains of 1,889 of them, told us, "We don't place a monetary value on what we do and we'll be here until we have brought all of the boys back home."
So it is that America continues to spend considerably more on the dead than it does on the millions of living and long-suffering — be they back home or in Vietnam.
Vietnam Baby
Cao Than Ha
Can be contacted at:
www.danangquangnamfund.org

Thankfully, none of these dioxin babies ever wake up
The science of chemical warfare fills a silent, white-tiled room at Tu Du hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.
Here, shelves are overburdened with research materials.
Behind the locked door is an iridescent wall of the mutated and misshapen, hundreds of bell jars and vacuum-sealed bottles in which human foetuses float in formaldehyde.
Some appear to be sleeping, fingers curling their hair, thumbs pressing at their lips, while others with multiple heads and mangled limbs are listless and slumped.
Thankfully, none of these dioxin babies ever woke up.
Ravaged infants whom no one has the ability to understand
One floor below, it is never quiet.
Here are those who have survived the misery of their births:
Ravaged infants whom no one has the ability to understand.
Babies so traumatised by their own disabilities.
Luckless children so enraged and depressed at their miserable fate.
That they are tied to their beds just to keep them safe from harm

Vietnam Letter
Luong Kinh
Can be contacted at:
www.danangquangnamfund.org
Ranch Hand — a US government operation — defoliated 1.2 million acres of land and dispensed 4.8 million gallons of chemicals over Vietnam.
Doing this has created more than 1 million Agent Orange victims.
Monsanto, Dow Chemical, let off hook by New York Federal Court for Agent Orange toxic herbicide manufacture.
Sunday, 10 March, 2002

New study into Agent Orange

The research will focus on the long term medical effects
Vietnam and the US have agreed to conduct joint research on the effects of Agent Orange, the defoliant widely used in the Vietnam war, US officials said on Sunday.
Anne Sassaman, of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and Nguyen Ngoc Sinh, head of Vietnam's National Environmental Agency, signed an agreement laying out specific priorities for future research.
The move follows a landmark conference on Agent Orange which took place in Hanoi last week, the first ever joint conference on the issue.
"This framework for collaboration is an important step forward, but the real difficulties lie ahead — agreeing to do the research is the easy part. " Dr Sassaman said in a statement.
"The more difficult task will be to develop research studies that are definitive and address the underlying causes of disease in Vietnam," she added.
Contaminated areas
Key areas for research include spontaneous abortions, miscarriages, congenital malformations, neurological disorders and cancers.

Agent Orange being sprayed
The defoliant was sprayed over enemy territory
In a pilot project scientists from the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are helping their Vietnamese counterparts to study the impact of Agent Orange at a contamination hotspot near the country's third largest city of Danang.
Priority will also be given to identifying and cleaning up "hotspots," where high concentrations of dioxin still exist.
Call for help
US forces sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange on Vietnam during the war that ended in 1975, to deny communist soldiers jungle cover.
The US stopped spraying in 1971 after it was discovered that it contained the most dangerous form of dioxin, TCDD, and caused cancer in rats.
On Wednesday, Vietnam's Red Cross appealed for urgent help for victims of Agent Orange — the poisonous chemical dioxin used during the Vietnam War.
"People affected by Agent Orange need help now and cannot wait years for more research, said the head of Vietnam's Red Cross," said Professor Nguyen Trong Nhan.
Nguyen Vu Phong
Hanoi, Vietnam
Monk recites Buddhist scripture
Thuan Thanh, Vietnam

Friday, 19 November, 1999

Vietnam War poison

Julian Pettifer speaks to Kim Thoa: is she a victim of Agent Orange?
By Arlene Gregorius
Kim Thoa is a bright and cheerful fourteen-year old girl from the North of Vietnam.
She speaks some English, and has a talent for drawing and painting.
She also suffers from a very disfiguring skin condition: her face and body are covered in patches of inky-black, scaly skin.
That's why she's taught at Than Shuan Peace Village, one of several special boarding schools in Vietnam for children with a range of mental and physical disabilities.
Why should Thoa's black skin patches put her in a class with pupils who have severe learning difficulties?
Because all these children, regardless of the nature of their various conditions, are alleged to be victims of Agent Orange, the herbicide and defoliant sprayed over much of South Vietnam during the war.
But how could the children, none of whom is older than sixteen, possibly be victims of the Vietnam war, which ended in 1975? And how could they be affected by a substance sprayed only up until 1971? We asked the deputy director of the Peace Village, Nguyen Huy Long.

Disabled
Agent Orange has been linked to mental and physical problems
"Although the war ended long ago", he said, " the children here are still considered victims of the war, because their parents fought in the battlefields in the South, and were affected by Agent Orange."
In other words, according to Nguyen Huy Long, Agent Orange caused the veterans to father children with mild or severe birth defects.
The children probably get better medical care here than they would otherwise, and they're not made to feel freaks. But we had a strong feeling that the brighter children here were unlikely to reach their full intellectual potential.
And it also seemed to us that these children were being used for propaganda purposes. Their future appeared to be sacrificed to the greater good of gaining international sympathy, and funding.
For, as we found out, there is now a veritable Agent Orange trail, well trodden by foreign journalists, charity workers, and anyone else who shows a serious interest in the matter. All are taken to the same places.
After the Peace Village, our next stop was the 10-80 committee, so-called because it was set up by the Vietnamese government in October 1980 to investigate the effects of Agent Orange on people's health and on the environment. We asked Professor Hoang Dinh Cau, the chairman of the Committee, about their findings.
"What we discovered is that Agent Orange causes diseases in victims' eyes, as well as the lungs, the liver and other organs. But especially, we discovered birth defects in the children of affected people." He then showed us a number of statistical charts. There was one about the number of babies born with birth defects in one of the main hospitals of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). It showed that the number of such births rose dramatically after the Vietnam war. Another graph showed that levels of dioxin in mothers' breastmilk were up to seventeen times the maximum safety level.

Banners warn of the dangers of dioxin
Agent Orange is a compound of two herbicides, and the combination of these created a type of dioxin as a by-product. This substance is the most toxic chemical known to mankind. Five parts per trillion are known to kill laboratory animals. No scientist, whether in Vietnam or the West, would dispute that dioxin can cause a whole range of cancers, and some other diseases. But birth defects?
Professor Arnold Schecter of the University of Texas School of Public Health is one of the world's leading experts on the subject. He's made fifteen working trips to Vietnam, two of them this year. He insists that it's extremely unlikely that most of the deformities shown to people in Vietnam are caused by Agent Orange.
The higher levels of dioxin in breast milk only exist in a small number of women in the South, and not in the North, he says, so it's almost impossible that the conditions of the children in the Thanh Shuan Peace Village, for instance, are caused by Agent Orange.
Professor Schecter admits that "Vietnam is the world's worst dioxin incident", and that therefore when quoting Western evidence, one might not be comparing like with like. However he says scientists have learnt enough from other dioxin contaminations — in Italy, Taiwan or Japan — to be sure that the vast majority of birth defects are not caused by Agent Orange.

We took the train south, to Quang Tri province just south of the former DMZ, the "demilitarised zone" on both sides of what was the border between the Communist North and the American-backed South Vietnam during the war. Quang Tri province was one of the most heavily sprayed areas of Vietnam, and where some of the toughest fighting took place.
Khe Sanh, Hamburger Hill, the Ashau Valley, Camp Carol, Con Tien — all these former U.S. marine bases and battlefields were Quang Tri. The U.S. bases repeatedly sprayed their surroundings with Agent Orange to give clear fields of fire in every direction.
We went to a village near Con Tien to meet a local farmer, who has seven children. The three eldest were born whilst the family lived in an area that had not been sprayed, and they were healthy.
The disturbing fact was that the four youngest were born here, in Quang Tri province, and they were all both mentally and physically disabled. "When the oldest of the four was born", hed told us, " the doctor said that maybe I was affected by a poisonous chemical. He advised me not to have any more children."
As we walked away from the village, we met another team of journalists. Quang Tri province, too, is a firm fixture on the Agent Orange trail. But could the conditions of the farmer's four youngest children really be caused by dioxins in the soil, and hence the food chain, here?

This farmer had three healthy, then four disabled children
Professor Arnold Schecter doubts it. To prove it, one would have to test blood samples of the farmer and his family to see if they contain elevated dioxin levels. This is expensive, costing up to US $1,000 per sample. Few laboratories in the world — and none in Vietnam — can do it.
The high cost is only one reason why more research on Agent Orange's legacy has not been done. Both Vietnam and the US are reluctant to fund it. And the reasons for that reluctance are political.
The Vietnamese government isn't united on the issue. Those concerned with public health want more research done, but those dealing with commercial interests don't want any adverse publicity about dioxins which could affect food exports, such as rice, and tourism.
The US attitude is also ambiguous. No-one from the US Embassy in Hanoi or at the State Department in Washington was prepared to speak to us. But it's clear that the US is worried about possible compensation claims from Vietnam.
There are already claims for a billion dollars compensation for Agent Orange damage, from South Korean veterans who fought on the American side during the Vietnam war. So the US too is playing for time.
Nhung sits inside her family home next to the Danang airbase in Danang
Ten-year-old Pham Duc Duy cradled in arms of his mother
Vietnamese doctors believe Duy is a victim of exposure to dioxin, or 'agent orange.'
3 million people killed by US in Vietnam

Saturday, August 21, 1999
Newspaper reports in the United States say the American army carried out secret tests of the highly toxic chemical, Agent Orange, in Panama, in the 1960s and 70s.
A US army veteran who served in Panama said in the Dallas Morning News that hundreds of barrels of Agent Orange — a defoliant — were sprayed close to the Panama Canal, in densely-populated areas and near a lake which is a source of water for Panama City.
Trang disabled by dioxin sits on the bed at her mother's house in Hanoi

Saturday, August 21, 1999

Agent Orange blights Vietnam
Robin Denselow reports that poisons dropped by US forces during the Vietnam War have left a long-lasting legacy.
The Vietnam war has been over for 23 years, and the nation is now at peace.
Areas once famous for brutal high-tech battles are today a tourist destination.

Agent Orange has dramatically changed the Vietnamese landscape
However, one weapon that was used by the Americans is still lethal.
New research shows it is still creating environmental chaos, poisoning the food chain and causing serious concern over its effects on human health.
Dioxin was found in Agent Orange, one of the herbicides sprayed from giant C 123 cargo planes to destroy the forests and fields that gave cover to the VietCong fighters.
In total, 11m gallons were poured over South Vietnam between 1961 and 71, over 10% of the country — 14% of the area targeted was farmland.
Agent Orange was a cocktail of chemicals that were stored in drums marked with an orange band.
It was contaminated with TCDD, the most poisonous dioxin, known to cause cancer and other diseases.
The Vietnamese have long claimed that Agent Orange — and the dioxin it contained — has seriously damaged the health of those living in the areas where it was used.

11m gallons of Agent Orange were poured over South Vietnam
The US says there is no proof and that all this is just propaganda.
And yet, in the States, Vietnam veterans who handled Agent Orange can claim compensation for a whole range of other diseases recognised as being associated with dioxin.
They range from skin diseases such as Chloracne, through to conditions that affect the nerves and lymphatic glands as well as a range of cancers — of the lung, larynx and prostate.
Vietnamese scientists studying dioxin levels have been hampered by lack of resources.
Proof of contamination
But an independent Canadian team, Hatfield Consultants, have studied the levels of dioxin that still exist in one area that was heavily sprayed and found disturbing results.
Team member David Levi said: "We should not think of this as a historical problem.
This is a present-day contamination issue.
The lasting legacy of the Agent Orange drop has even staggered some war veterans.
Chuck Starey, of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, said: "Any sprays, poisons that are sprayed from the airplanes and helicopters you have to have some concerns about, but I never imagined it would be as devastating as apparently it has been over the years."
Vietnamese scientists have been shocked by the Canadian team's findings. There is talk of evacuating contaminated areas — a quarter of a century after the spraying stopped.

Remains of old trees stand on bare hillsides
High dioxin levels were found in the blood of local children
Dr Nguyen Viet Nhan, who has studied child health in areas where Agent Orange was used, is aware that dioxin is known to cause cancer and brain damage in children, but argues that it is also causing the large amount of deformities found in the sprayed areas.
Dr Nguyen's pilot study compared the health of children in one area that had been sprayed with those in another that had not.
"The dioxins that are present are entering the food chain today, and also being taken up by the people living in the area today."
Children in areas that had been sprayed were:
• More than three times as likely to have cleft palates
• More than three times as likely to be mentally retarded
• More than three times as likely to have extra fingers or toes
• Nearly eight times as likely to suffer hernias
The Vietnamese government claims there are so many children born with problems caused by dioxin that they have had to set up a network of 11 special schools — so called 'peace villages' — across the country.

Dioxins have found their way into the food chain
Unexploded bombs
Agent Orange is not the only still-remaining lethal legacy of the American war.
Areas such as Quang Tri Province, north of the Aloui valley, are still littered with unexpoded bombs.
In total, it is estimated that six million are still scattered across Vietnam.
Detonating unexploded bombs in areas where dioxin is in the soil is likely to re-activate the chemical.
This means demining must be followed by decontamination if land is to be made fully safe.
In addition to the Aluoi Valley it is thought there could be at least nine other heavily contaminated 'hot spots'.

High dioxin levels were found in the blood of local children
The cost of a clear-up operation could be enormous.

1962
The decision to begin destroying crops with herbicides was longer in coming, even though President Diem was an early and enthusiastic advocate of crop destruction.
He maintained that he knew where the Viet Cong crops were, and South Vietnamese officials had difficulty in understanding why the Americans wouldn't give them a readily-available chemical that would accomplish with much less effort what they were already doing by cutting, pulling, and burning.
Although the Defense Department favored chemical crop destruction, several influential people in the State Department, notably Roger Hilsman and W. Averell Harriman, were opposed.
They argued that there was no way to insure that only Viet Cong crops would be killed, and the inevitable mistakes would alienate the rural South Vietnamese people.
Hilsman maintained that the use of this technology would enable the Viet Cong to argue that the U.S. represented "foreign imperialist barbarism,” and Harriman urged that crop destruction should be postponed to a later stage in the counterinsurgency struggle when the Viet Cong would not be so closely intermingled with the people.
October 2, 1962, President Kennedy decided to allow restricted crop spraying to proceed.
Operation Ranch Hand

Spread the message, carry the fight
Len AldisAugust 10, 2009

Agent Orange victims march Sunday, August 9, 2009 on Le Duan Boulevard in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1
To commemorate the first Orange Day in Vietnam.
Over the past week and especially today, the call for justice for victims of Agent Orange has been heard and seen around Vietnam and the world, through print and through radio and television.
The Vietnam Association for the Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA), and VTV4 have done valuable work to advance the cause.
All are to be congratulated, and mention must be of the role played by Thanh Nien through its informative articles published these days, giving voice to international friends of Vietnam and the Vietnamese victims.
Today via the Internet with its stupendous reach, the message of Orange Day has been carried far and wide, and no one can be unaware of the tragic legacy that has been borne by hundreds of thousands of innocents by the use of chemicals in the Vietnam War, and in particular Agent Orange.
We have seen and read of the tragic stories of the victims, we have seen the horrific photographs of them and their families, we have also seen the humanitarian work being carried out within Vietnam by VAVA, the Vietnam Red Cross and international NGOs.
Our thanks should also go to the American NGOs working in Vietnam helping to remove from the soil of

Vietnam massive amounts of unexploded bombs that, today, thirty-four years after the end of the war, are still killing and maiming innocent men, women and children.
The past ten days have been remarkable in bringing the message of international solidarity to the victims of Agent Orange from many corners of the world with the continuing call for justice.
And after August 10th?
All of us must increase our roles and strengthen the international campaign for justice.
The companies responsible – Monsanto, Dow, etc, cannot and must not escape from the horrific crimes they carried out with Agent Orange.
Until they accept their responsibility, and compensate all the victims and their families, we should campaign for an international embargo on all their products.
Len Aldis is the Secretary of the Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society
Click here for comment article
Copyright © 2009 ThanhNienNews.com

...Monsanto, Dow Chemical and more than a dozen other companies, including Hercules Inc., Occidental Chemical Corp, Thompson Hayward Chemical Co., Harcros Chemicals Inc. and Uniroyal Chemical Co. Inc., were named in the case.
In November 1961, President Kennedy approved the launch of Operation Trail Dust, a campaign of military herbicide operations in Vietnam designed to prevent 'the enemy' from using vegetation for cover and sustenance.
Lawyers for Vietnamese people sued U.S. companies, saying the program caused miscarriages, birth defects, breast cancer, ovarian tumors, lung cancer, Hodgkin's disease and prostate tumors.
They said the military's use of Agent Orange violated international, domestic and Vietnamese law and that companies aided the violations or committed their own by helping the military.
They sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and an environmental cleanup program.
Lawyers for the companies and the U.S. government had argued that there was no evil intent when Agent Orange was used to clear the Vietnamese landscape for troops.
Agent Orange has been linked to cancer, diabetes and birth defects among Vietnamese soldiers and civilians and American veterans.
In 2002, the United States and Vietnam signed a memorandum of understanding providing for scientists from both governments to work together to determine the effects of Agent Orange on people and ecosystems, along with methods and costs of treatment and environmental remediation.
The United States, though, has never agreed it has a legal duty to provide funds or assistance to remediate harms allegedly caused by Agent Orange.
In a separate opinion, the appellate court also said companies are protected from lawsuits brought by U.S. military veterans or their relatives because the law protects government contractors in certain circumstances who provide defective products.
Thimerosal
Amish Children no autism
Mercury
how it relates to the
'Protecting America War on Terror Act'
Cluster bombs killing injuring, Iraq, Lebanon
US new generation of landmines called Spider
Guantanamo Hunger Strikers being tortured
U.S. War Crimes — Falluja photos — Graphic Images
US used chemical and thermobaric weapons in Fallujah
AK-47 assault rifle
— copper-plated, steel-jacketed, high velocity cartridge
— bullets
International Gun Trade
Palestine children in prison
I Refused
Kept in arm and leg restraints
Youth prisons
Humiliation
Despair

Depleted Uranium — its use in Afghanistan, Iraq, Balkans
Photos of Iraq children being born deformed
Hunger, children dying
— locusts, drought — Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti
Iraq death squads — Badr, White Toyota Land Cruisers
Glock pistols, Interior Ministry memo
Salvador Option
Basra, Fallujah, Baghdad, Mosul... US created Iraq — devastated cities
Fake News
Torture, Death
Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala
Iraq, US

State of the Union — USA
US Congress — too stupid or gullible, and have killed many.
I would suggest that any member of the US Congress who had voted
for it, should be barred from ever running for
any public office in America ever again!
Iraq? Vietnam? Palestine? Lebanon? — US War Crimes
Elegantly dressed statesmen constructing framework

that would allow them to kill quite a lot of people
Big melt warning for Arctic

Area covered by sea ice in Arctic shrunk for fourth consecutive year
Thermohaline shutdown inevitable
IRAN US Confrontation
American Democracy in Trouble — Al Gore

No longer possible to ignore the strangeness
al-Sadr City
More on al-Sadr — Aljazeera article
Global warming point of no return
Has the Age of Chaos Begun?
Pay me I am not a criminal
Young Afghan boy sent to Guantanamo
CO2 record high levels in the atmosphere

Increases in carbon dioxide never exceeding 30 ppm in 1,000 years

— Now 30 ppm in last 17 years.

Highest for 800,000 years — Climate fear as carbon levels soar
Cowardly attacks by air killing men women and children in their homes, often never seeing those they kill as the drones or aircraft fly back to the cowardly bases
If they kill only the husband, see how they care for the family they have destroyed
Afghanistan — Western Terror States: Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Italy
Photos of Afghanistan people being killed and injured by NATO
Why I would not kill in war
— Stories of former Conscientious Objectors
Some U.S. soldiers speak — Iraq Invasion
Siberia, Alaska

Dramatic permafrost melt — click here
Iraqi rebels turning to defeat United States

I am ready to sacrifice the rest of my family to defeat America.

And God willing we will defeat her
Soot's effect on ice melt and glaciers

Melting glaciers Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Himalayas, Kilimanjaro...
US veteran Mothers against the war:

So anyway that filth-spewer and warmonger, George Bush
was speaking after the tragedy of the marines in Ohio...
Suicide Bombing Blair, Bush

Suicide Bombing is response to foreign occupation

Will stop once troops withdraw
Doris Colmes escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 — Patriot Act — Iraq photos
World Tribunal
War Crimes — Illegality of Preventive Attack
Unilateral Use of Force
"None of that spilling of secrets for crass political retribution
could have gone on without her knowledge and approval,
and thus complicity.

Little of it could have happened without her participation,
if not as a leaker herself,
at least with her direction and with her scripting."

Condoleezza Rice — Iraq — Rove
Simple Questions — Iraq June 2005 photos
Settlements — Trees — Jayyous — West Bank — Palestine
Flag draped U.S. coffins
Life expectancy drops from 60 years to 30 years
Zimbabwe crises
Children workers — Sweat shops — Unions
drinking the Kool-Aid — on the Death of Idealism
Loo! Loo! Lulu! Loot! — New Orleans after Katrina
The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war,
the cynical use of the U.N. to provide an excuse,
and the secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress

Downing Street Memo — How Bush and Blair took us all for a ride
Blair Brown Campbell Goldsmith Hoon Straw
U.S. and British bombing raids illegal.
Coca-Cola and Plachimada, India
Deregulation, Accumulation of wealth
— India resistance and corporations
— India photos
Bolivia — Indigenous Revolt Evo Morales President
Venezuela
The elections of Hugo Chávez
Haiti
— Aristide Preval Privatization Poor —
UN troops and Massacre
India — Class war
Globalization
Weather 2005
Mental Health disorders effecting returning US troops
Most religious people are on the same side as most progressive people
Hiroshima, Nagasaki
— the bombs that incinerated and killed more than 200,000 people
— George Weller report
The Politics of Anti-Semitism
99 US Senators, 350 US House members attend AIPAC May, 2005 meeting
Life expectancy drops from 60 years to 30 years
Zimbabwe crises

Democracy in the United States and most of the rest of the industrial West
is therefore a false front on a rich man’s mansion, a sham in which people are
given a political vote but then clock in each day to an economic system where
their entire lives are regimented by a small group of executives busily downsizing
whatever workplace rights people had gained in centuries of struggle.

Global weather, environment and climate change — includes photos
Why did you cut down the trees Grandma?
State of the World's Garden
Listing of Iraq War — includes photos
I beheld the wretch — the miserable monster whom I had created
World is actually running out of oil
Corporate toadies — John Kerry, John Edwards, Hillary Rodham Clinton
March 2005 Anti-war photos
False memories — George Orwell wisdom
Keep the people frightened
Of things they cannot know
Is the secret of the Tomb
If they knew what you and I know
They would know it is just men
Who rob them, cheat them, kill them
Then start it all again
The Negative Return Economy — a discourse on America’s black budget
Fascinating and lucrative
Black Budget? What Black Budget?

With Bush's reinauguration, America now has the president it deserves
— Bush's reinauguration bash and the six children of Tal Afar
“When You Talk with God”
U.S. Debt
U.S. vote fraud continues 2005
Torture techniques no surprise
Israel: A Call for Divestment — Palestine photos
U.S. Soldiers against the war
Abu Ghraib soldier, Concientious Objector
Aidan Delgado
Dr. Martin Luther King
— War and Militarism — Photos and images Iraq Vietnam 1967
Blair — WMD claims
The Empire
U.S. destructive, psychotic fantasy: The War On Terror
— 500 'bunker buster' bombs
Atrocities in Palestine

Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying
Sudan — Darfur
Pictures and arial views of destruction
— 2003 - 2005
Faith Fippinger
Book of Merlyn
US 2011-2012 Warmest 12-Month Period Since Records Began
2010 hottest first 6 months ever recorded
2005 hottest year on record,
2004 4th hottest,
2003 3rd hottest,
2001-2002 tied for 2nd.
Bush, Blair and their minions have committed a monstrous crime

and they know it
Rumi

For archive purposes, this article is being stored on TheWE.cc website.
The purpose is to advance understandings of environmental, political,
human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues.
Globalization Enviro News
Abrupt climate event
World's Garden War photos
‘War Circus’

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