What is Agent Orange?
Agent Orange was a herbicide mixture used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. The chemical mixture contained dioxin, a highly toxic substance that has been linked to various health problems, including cancer and birth defects. The U.S. military sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange over large areas of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in an effort to destroy the dense jungle foliage that provided cover for enemy troops. The use of Agent Orange has had a lasting impact on the health of both U.S. veterans and the Vietnamese people.
Photo – Ctsy, US Army
The story leading up to the use of Agent Orange…
The Vietnam War was the longest military conflict in U.S. history. It was the most unpopular war in which Americans ever fought. The toll in suffering, turmoil, and sorrow can never be tabulated. For the more than two million American Veterans of the war, the wounds will never heal. The war took the lives of over 58,000 of our best men, with over a quarter million wounded. The cost of the war? 150 billion dollars.
How did this all happen? The French were fighting the Viet Minh. The U.S. supplied 300,000 small arms and spent more than one billion dollars in support of the French military effort. The Viet Minh was receiving support from the Soviet Union and China. The idea of the French winning the war was always in doubt. On May 7, 1954, the Viet Minh handed the French a stunning military defeat at Dien Bien Phu.
JFK became President and sent 500 “Advisors” to Vietnam. It is uncertain what he thought they could accomplish. By 1962 the number had increased to over 12,000. With guerrilla activity increasing, JFK increased the number once again to 16,300. The numbers on both sides escalated and by 1964 the guerrillas had over 100,000 men. Then came the bombing campaign. 3500 marines were committed, and soon escalated to over 200,000. The controversial General Westmoreland takes the full blame for his incompetence in underestimating the enemy, predicting victory by 1967. Westmoreland increased the troop commitment to 553,000 by 1969. He requested 200,000 more troops, but the Tet Offensive defused any plans the U.S. had of winning the war.
AMERICAN SOLDIER BURNS VIETCONG VILLAGE – Ctsy, Wikipedia
U.S. SOLDIER HUNTS VIETCONG – Ctsy, Wikipedia
Meanwhile, back in the States, the entire nation revolted against the ever escalating war as we invaded Cambodia. In 1971 Australia and New Zealand withdrew their soldiers. The U.S. reduced to 196,700, with plans to withdraw another 45,000.Our country was consuming large amounts of drugs, race relations grew tense, and U.S. soldiers were disobeying orders and there was an increase of murder of unpopular officers.
North Vietnamese soldiers launched a dramatic attack on U.S. troops, taking city after city. The Americans were clearly on the run. Chaos, unrest, and panic ensued as there was a hysterical scramble to get out of Vietnam as the fall of Saigon was near. On April 23, President Gerald Ford declared an end to the Vietnam War.
General Westmoreland’s incompetent leadership was credited as the major cause of failure.
AGENT ORANGE POSTER
Deformed victim of AGENT ORANGE – Ctsy, Downtheroad.org
Victim of AGENT ORANGE – Ctsy, Downtheroad.org
The most controversial part of the Vietnam War was the U.S. widespread use of toxic chemicals between 1961 and 1971, used to defoliate large parts of the countryside. These chemicals continue to change the landscape, cause diseases and horrible birth defects, and poison the food supply. Millions of gallons of AGENT ORANGE were sprayed over South East Asia during their involvement. As we are told the Holocaust never happened, and there was no Japanese brutality in WW11, the U.S. is quietly covering up this catastrophe. The blame all boils down to one person, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. Very seldom will you see his name mentioned, but he takes 100% responsibility for this tragic torture and ruined lives.
ADMIRAL ZUMWALT – Ctsy, Wikipedia
In a twist of fate, as Zumwalt pressed to saturate more and more areas with poison, his own son who was running a river boat died from the AGENT ORANGE his father had so harshly demanded to be spread. The Kennedy administration also assumes much blame for this shameful process which brought so much grief to so many people, mostly children. Kennedy had the USAF spray 20 million gallons of concentrated herbicides over 6 million acres, affecting 13% of South Vietnams land.
American aircraft spraying AGENT ORANGE Dioxin – Ctsy, Downtheroad.org
55-gallon drums filled with Agent Orange – Ctsy, Wikipedia
The Wall Street Journal reported up to a half million children were born with dioxin-related deformities, and led to the deaths of 1000 peasants and 13,000 livestock. In 2006, the Vietnamese Government estimated over 4 million victims of dioxin poisoning. As to be expected, the U.S. has taken the stand that dioxin really never hurt anyone. In some areas dioxin levels remain over 100 times the accepted International Standard. The U.S. Veterans Administration has listed prostate cancer, Respiratory cancer, multiple myeloma, type 11 diabetes, hodgkins disease, lymphoma, soft tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea, tarda, peripheral neuropathy, and spina bifida in CHILDREN of VETERANS exposed to AGENT ORANGE, renal cancer, testicular cancer, leukemia, spontaneous abortion, nasal cancer, bone cancer, female reproductive cancer, infant death and stillbirths, low birth weight, childhood cancers, urinary and bladder cancer, stomach cancer, pancreatic cancer, colon and rectal cancer, and brain tumors.
ADMIRAL ELMO ZUMWALT, DEAD AT 69 JIM LEHRER: 11 years ago, Zumwalt’s son, also named Elmo, died of cancer, which was presumed to be the result of his Naval service in Vietnam. Here is an excerpt of a profile about the admiral and his son which the NewsHour broadcast in 1984. The correspondent is Charlayne Hunter-Gault. A Zumwalt profile Admiral Zumwalt was one of the more controversial men to ever run the Navy, forcing the Navy to liberalize many of its strict regulations during his tenure as Chief of Naval Operations from 1970 to 1974. In 1962 he wrote a report urging the United States not to get involved militarily in Vietnam, but by 1968 he was commander of the Naval forces there, and committed to winning the war. A year later, his son Elmo volunteered for riverboat duty there. ADMIRAL ELMO ZUMWALT: I had the power to prevent his coming to Vietnam, and was asked whether or not I would permit him to do so. I couldn’t have been the father my son wanted me to be had I not let him go there. ELMO ZUMWALT: Running river boats was a very dangerous situation. (Gunfire) ELMO ZUMWALT: There was a tremendous amount of responsibility in running an operation like that in a combat environment, and, you know, it was a test, and it was a test that I wanted to take. The helicopter pilots were used to be required to ride the boats so they could get a feel for what we went through, so they could react as quickly as possible when we called them in. And I’ll never forget a helicopter pilot saying, you know, “we’re the hunters up there in the air, but it’s obvious that you all are the hunted down here.” That is a precarious place to be. To protect his sailors, Admiral Zumwalt ordered stepping up the three-year-old campaign of agent orange spraying, especially in the Camau Peninsula area, an area where his son was patrolling. ADMIRAL ELMO ZUMWALT: You must remember that we were watching the defoliation take place at a time when, in my case, for example, my sailors were taking casualties at the rate of 6% per month. So that on the average, my sailors and officers had about three-quarters of a… about a 75% probability of being a casualty during their year there. Anything that could be done to reduce the fearsome casualties that we were taking was an intelligent thing to do. ELMO ZUMWALT: The areas around us were heavily defoliated, so defoliated that they looked like burned-out areas, many of them. You know, almost every day that you were in riverboat patrol, you were having… You were being subjected to the agent orange factor. It is the case that the particular area in Vietnam in which my son’s boat operated a great deal of the time was an area that was sprayed upon my recommendation, and in that sense it’s particularly ironic that in a sense, if the causal relationship can be established, I have become an instrument of my son’s own tragedy. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: The admiral is convinced that he made the right decision, that spraying agent orange may have saved his son’s life in Vietnam, as well as the lives of thousands of others, but what concerns him most is the futility of the sacrifice he sees his son and other veterans making. My son’s illness has caused me to recall even more vividly the tragedies that flowed from the tragic war in Vietnam. If one knew then what we know now– namely, that the United States would make a decision here to lose that war– I would far have preferred that we never had gotten involved in the war. As far as being bitter about it, I, you know, I intellectually made those decisions. I’m the one that decided to volunteer to go into the river boats, I’m the one that volunteered to run those risks, and, you know, I was a creator of my own destiny, and I have a hard time understanding about being bitter because if I am, if I’m going to be bitter, I’m going to have to be bitter with myself that I made those decisions, and I can’t say that I necessarily regret making those decisions. JIM LEHRER: Two years after that interview, the Zumwalts wrote a book together called “My Father, My Son.” The younger Zumwalt died in 1988 at the age of 42. At the admiral’s funeral today, President Clinton recalled that Zumwalt lived with the consequences of life’s greatest loss. He saluted Zumwalt as the sailor who never stopped serving his country, never stopped fighting for the men and women in uniform, and never stopped being the conscience of the Navy. Source: Wikipedia THE LAWSUITS
In this story on AGENT ORANGE you were forewarned of the photos of horrible deformed children, caused by the U.S. spraying. For many years the Vietnamese have been pursuing diplomatic channels to get the U.S. to accept the responsibility for the terrible effects of AGENT ORANGE. It is not possible to sue the U.S. Government. A group of Vietnamese Doctors, scientists, and others who have worked for years with the innocent victims of AGENT ORANGE sued the chemical companies that produced the AGENT ORANGE. The chemical companies filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. On March 10, 2005, our Government did just that when Judge Jack Weinstein of Brooklyn Federal Court dismissed the lawsuit filed by Vietnamese victims of AGENT ORANGE. In a 233 page decision Judge Weinstein said the use of toxic chemicals did not violate International Law.
It is not possible for my mind to accept the fact that the U.S. resorted to this form of illegal warfare.
Spraying Agent Orange in Mekong Delta near Can Tho, 1969 – Ctsy, Wikipedia
Supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail – Ctsy, Downtheroad.org
The children of this inhumane spraying have the worst deformities ever seen. How can two men, Zumwalt and Westmoreland, cause such destruction and heartache to so many millions of people? The Kennedy Administration apparently took great pride in wiping out the rice crop. Now, years later, our own troops are paying the price for this cruel act. Many are developing different types of cancer, and what about their children? This will be handed down for generations. No one ever officially took the blame for this military blunder.
Dioxin victim by Daniel Shea
A person with birth deformities associated with prenatal exposure to Agent Orangectsy – Ctsy, Wikipedia
A group of handicapped children in Ho Chi Minh, some of them affected by Agent Orange – Ctsy, Wikipedia
SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA, WALL ST. JOURNAL, N.Y. TIMES DOWNTHEROAD.ORG
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