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TechnoratiAgent Orange: Toxic Legacy of Vietnam Still Demands Remediation
A US-Vietnamese group said Friday 1.2 million dollars had been spent to contain rainwater run-off from a "dioxin hotspot" at a war-time US airbase that was a depot for the toxic defoliant Agent Orange.Containment measures at the airport of the central city of Danang aimed to protect nearby residents from further dioxin contamination, visiting members of the US-Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin told a media briefing.
As part of the project, scientists had tested blood and breast milk samples from residents and workers near the base and found they exceeded safe levels of the most toxic dioxin type TCDD "by a wide margin," the group said.
A new cement cap had been built over a former Agent Orange loading area, water drains and treatment facilities which now contained run-off, and a downstream lake outside the base had been fenced off to stop people from fishing there.
Under the 1961-71 "Operation Ranch Hand" US forces sprayed about 80 million litres (21 million gallons) of Agent Orange and other herbicides on southern and central Vietnam to deprive enemies of forest cover and food crops.
Washington has rejected responsibility for the millions of people Vietnam says have suffered direct or second-generation disabilities due to Agent Orange, with US officials pointing to a lack of mutually agreed data.
However, in an effort to address the issue, US Congress last May set aside three million dollars "for environmental remediation of dioxin storage sites and to support health programmes in communities near those sites."
The money has not yet been released, but US Ambassador Michael Michalak told the dialogue group that "final steps are being taken to determine how these funds will be spent," his embassy said.
The dialogue group said in a statement that "there have been an alarming number of birth defects, cancers and health problems among both American troops and their families and generations of Vietnamese veterans and civilians."
"Dioxin has had a profound impact on generations of Vietnamese families," said Ton Nu Thi Ninh, a member of the group, which has received funds for the projects from the non-profit Ford Foundation and the US government.
"It has devastated lives and the environment for decades," she said. "But the initial progress we're seeing is very heartening. It is a meaningful contribution toward addressing the toxic legacy of the war."
The group is seeking public and private donors for other projects, including health and education services for disabled children and youths, landscape restoration, and to set up a high-tech laboratory to test for dioxin traces.
© 2008 Agence France Presse
18 Comments so far
Show Alldoes anyone know of a connection with agent orange and vasculitis? i took care of a vietnam vet who had a horrible condition where he had open sores all over his body. then he got better, nobody knows why.
The US is the only country that has used nuclear weapons in war and that too not once but twice in a span of just 3 days Little boy on 6th August 1945 and Fat boy on 9th August 1945.
If they wanted to demonstrate their power, just one bomb would have done.
The US has long preached but never put into practice what it has preached and it has yet to win a war that it fought on its own - so much for the world's only superpower
In 1985, I had 80 small round balls of lead and mercury removed from my prostrate, I served two tours in Vietnam.
I really was shooting bullets in bed.
Add to this mess, the long term effects of depleted uranium and white phosphorous
Nothing can touch the US Chemical Companies when it comes to sheer effectiveness in pulling off mass genocides - and sauntering away scot free.
The high point has to be Union Carbide's 1984 gassing of well over 100,000 men women and children in Bhopal ,India -in just a few hours.
In fact the US is far and away the world's greatest exponent of organized state-sponsored mass genocide ( with millions whooping and cheering on the sidelines ).
The atom bombing of Japan...the blanketing of S.E. Asia with Agent Orange ... the cluster bombing ( using Israel as its surrogate ) of Lebanon... these are the ones the world knows about . But what about those that may never yet see the light of day.
In hindsight ,its perhaps a very good thing that Hitler was idiotic enough to declare war on the US . Among other things, the Holocaust would have been infinitely worse -had he not done so .
For then ,he might have been able to avail of the 'expertise' of the US Chemical giants ,in effecting quantum increases in the 'throughput' of his death camps.
i was in nam 2 tours, 67 ,and 1968. have had growths removed, fillings [lead and mercury] removed, growth on lyrnx, cancer of bladder, [just found]. i had to fight 16 yrs to get my comp, pension, then waited another 10 yrs to get up-graded to more percentage. 4 of my shipmates gone off the u.s.s preble, had the forrestall blown up from around me [ john mc cain's jet] left wing missle fired on board , chain reaction of 9 -500 to 900 lb bombs set off . 137 of my shipmates killed. carl b in arkansas
urthsong:
Drug production is a trillion dollar industry with most of the profits going to the ruling classes. Vietnam War was, in part, just an ongoing cover operation for heroin production and smuggling. Today's Afghanistan is little different. Biggest drug runners are the CIA which has always worked closely with organized crime. They didn't spray Agent Orange on the poppy fields and they won't be spraying the poppy fields in Afghanistan either.
Leftist American politics rests upon too many false assumptions of underlying, ultimate decency when in fact the corruption is like an onion.
"US War Crimes in Indochina in the 1960s: Truth as Casualty
A Response to Carol Brightman and Carl Ogelsby on the Sixties
by Ralph Schoenman
Global Research, January 29, 2008"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7930
Obelsby is clearly wrong and liar, while Brighton minimally is just as bad. To be absolutely certain would require verifying with copies of the source books and documents, but I think (am sure) Schoenman is wholly truthful.
Not stated in that article, but he also hosts a weekly radio show with Maya Shone on takingaimradio.com or if not .com, then one of .org, .... I think it's .com
He was member of the international war crimes tribunal which was focusing on the U.S. deliberately committing genocide in Vietnam, and as of 1962-63; with Jean-Paul Sartre and others.
What he says remains strongly pertinent for Vietnam (and all of us), while also telling much about what's going on with today's GWoT. F.e., much of what Schoenman says the U.S. did in and to Vietnam is evidenced in Iraq today. And like today, it was not Israel and AIPAC that controlled the U.S. govt.
It's a wholly pertinent and important article.
I also read a very interesting article by him on the Oklahoma City bombing; very interesting. A Web search should turn up a link for the article(s) by just searching on these keywords, including his name. Maybe there's at GR and available via the authors index there.
He's right in the above GR-posted article, and wholly so, but in terms of the genocide not really being against one population segment, but all of us, everyone who cares on this planet anyway; well, he's right. It's much enough a universal sort of genocide, overall, only when certain segments are specifically targeted, then it's most intense for them. Add projects for human depopulation and the picture becomes all the more clear; liberally applied genocide and really much of it.
With the U.S. govt as it is, he's right.
It's a prison world; only, people who are sufficiently well-off economically don't want to "rock the boat", while the poorest are unable to do that even if they wanted to. Try as hard or much as you want, but we can't rock a boat we don't have.
AmeriKKKa the real terrorists
Washington has rejected responsibility for the millions of people Vietnam says have suffered direct or second-generation disabilities due to Agent Orange, with US officials pointing to a lack of mutually agreed data
The War on Drugs has funded the poisoning of subsistence farmers in Colombia to push them off their lands and poison the streams flowing down to the northern Amazon basin where the fish have been a major protein source for the native population. Kill the native peoples off. Drive them off. Then lumber and minerals may be exploited. Now the US is making plans to spray crops in Afghanistan. Poison the land. Drive the people off. They will never learn because they don't care. They will never care. War profitters never do.
This ribbon doesn't support the military industrial complex so the wearer will be accused of being a traitor.
We used this stuff on our OWN soldiers in Nam! The chemical companies said is was safe even though they knew full well that it wasn't. Ain't that America, the biggest committer of genocide in the world.
Chemical corporations are one of the biggies that control our government. The only way cocaine is manufactured, is by use of chemicals. Those necessary chemicals are shipped daily from the US of A to Mexico and Columbia by the ton.
thanks for the web location "Bill BRG." David Cline would be thankful that you shared this information.
The death toll from the Viet Nam war is still being counted. The sickness and second generation birth abnormallities aside, 3 million dollars is a drop in the bucket. The chemical companys, Dow, Dupont, and Monsanto should be paying reperations for thier deceit and willing lies to American service personell and the Vietnamese people that watch thier children die prematurely from horrible diseases. The median age in Vietnam is 37...hummm no old people.
The US Government and chemical corporations are still stonewalling justice on this.
Find out how you can help www.vn-agentorange.org -The Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign, a project of Veterans for Peace.
(The website was down temporarily when I checked it this morning)
NO we quit that, now we use DU, ___it's safer.
And America says it doesn't use chemical weapons.
Hoa binh