[News] Agent Orange and the Third Generation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/galleymore05282010.html

May 28 - 30, 2010


"Perfectly Safe: It Just Kills Plants ... "

Agent Orange and the Third Generation

By SUSAN GALLEYMORE

Each year for the last five years the U.S. has 
welcomed a delegation of Vietnamese affected by 
spraying chemicals in Vietnam three decades ago. 
The Fifth Agent Orange Justice Tour ended 
recently. It focused national attention on grass 
roots and legislative efforts to achieve 
comprehensive assistance to victims in Vietnam, 
to the children and grandchildren of U.S. 
veterans, and to Vietnamese-Americans.

It is not news that American troops fighting for 
the U.S. military in Vietnam were told by their 
commanders that the defoliants and herbicides 
sprayed by the U.S. Air Force were “perfectly safe...[they] just kill plants.”
The statistics, while heartbreaking, are, 
likewise, not news for anyone who pays attention 
to recent history. From 1961 to 1970 more than 
20,000 missions that composed Operations “Trail 
Dust” and “Ranch Hand” dispersed about 13 million 
gallons of chemicals over five million acres of 
Vietnam's forests and agricultural lands; 
southern Laos and Cambodia were sprayed too.

To the military mind, defoliating was a practical 
solution that disallowed cover to the enemy. To 
the corporate mind – Dow, Monsanto, Hercules, 
Uniroyal, Diamond Shamrock, Syntex Agribusiness, 
and more than two dozen others – manufacturing 
chemicals provided good ROI: one gallon of liquid 
cost $7 back then. Moreover, corporations sped up 
the 2,4,5T manufacturing process so they could 
produce more, faster. They ignored the partially 
catalyzed molecule, dioxin, that was a byproduct 
of the faster process; it remained in Agent Orange (AO).

Vietnam's dense southern uplands' forests were 
sprayed with a range of chemicals signified by 
color-coded barrels: Agents Blue, Orange, White, 
Pink, Purple and so on. Areas that the C-123 
“Provider” airplanes didn't reach – equal to the 
size of Rhode Island -- were bulldozed with Rome Plows.

Paul Cox was a US Marine fighting along the DMZ 
for months. Today, he is a civil engineer, a 
Veteran for Peace member, and a board member of 
Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility 
Campaign (VAORRC). In a recent presentation in 
San Francisco, he described the area he fought in 
at the time as “almost totally denuded from high 
explosives and multiple spraying sorties; aside 
from some invasive grass, hardly anything lived, 
no animals, no bugs, no nothin'. We could operate 
in the area for days in a row and see no living trees.”

Since 1994, the Canadian company Hatfield 
Consultants has conducted contamination and 
mitigation work in Vietnam in close collaboration 
with Vietnamese Government agencies. More than 
nine projects in twenty provinces have determined 
levels of Agent Orange/dioxin in soils, food 
items, human blood, and breast milk. Hatfield 
also studies the effects of loss of timber that 
leads to reduced sustainability of ecosystems, 
decreases in the biodiversity of plants and 
animals, poorer soil quality, increased water 
contamination, heavier flooding and erosion, 
increased leaching of nutrients and reductions in 
their availability, invasions of less desirable 
plant species (primarily woody and herbaceous 
grasses), and possible alterations of Vietnam's macro- and micro-climates.

In short, there is no let up to the devastation 
wreaked by war's practicality and profit three decades ago.

Consistent determination

Despite VAVA delegates representing three million 
people when they travel to the U.S., to date U.S. 
courts have not acknowledged the chemicals' 
effects on Vietnam or the Vietnamese.

Yet, under U.S. law, veterans who served in 
Vietnam between 1962 and 1975 (including those 
who visited Vietnam even briefly), and who have a 
disease that the Veterans Administration (VA) 
recognizes as being associated with Agent Orange, 
are presumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange 
and are eligible for service-connected compensation based on their service.
The VA’s list of “Diseases associated with 
exposure to certain herbicide agents” are Acute 
and Subacute Peripheral Neuropathy,AL 
Amyloidosis, Chloracne (or Similar Acneform 
Disease), Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (now 
expanded to B Cell Leukemias), Diabetes Mellitus 
(Type 2), Hodgkin’s Disease, Ischemic Heart 
Disease, Multiple Myeloma, Non-Hodgkin’s 
Lymphoma, Parkinson’s Disease, Porphyria Cutanea 
Tarda, Prostate Cancer, Respiratory Cancers (of 
the lung, larynx, trachea, and bronchus), and Soft Tissue Sarcoma.

Veterans' children born with Spina bifida “may be 
eligible for compensation, vocational training 
and rehabilitation and health care benefits.” For 
the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concluded 
in its 1996 update to its report on Veterans and 
Agent Orange – Health Effects of Herbicides Used 
in Vietnam that there is “limited/suggestive 
evidence of an association between exposure to 
herbicides used in Vietnam and spina bifida in children of Vietnam veterans.”

A time line, briefly

September 10, 2004: an amended class action 
complaint was submitted to the U.S. District 
Court, Eastern District; Constantine P. Kokkoris, represented the victims.

March 10, 2005: in Brooklyn, Judge Weinstein dismissed victims' claims.

September 30, 2005: a Brief was submitted to the 
2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York against 
36 U.S. chemical companies. The summary by Jonathan Moore states:

The lawsuit...seeks to hold accountable the 
chemical companies who manufactured and supplied 
Agent Orange to the government. Contrary to 
government specifications, the product supplied 
to the government contained an excessive and 
avoidable amount of poison...[D]ioxin...was 
present in the herbicides supplied to the 
government only because these chemical companies 
deliberately and consciously chose to ignore then 
existing industry standards and produce a 
herbicide that contained excessive and avoidable 
amounts of dioxin. The presence of the poison 
dioxin had no military necessity...chemical 
companies...knew that the more herbicide they 
produced the more money they would make and the 
faster they produced it the more they could sell 
to the government....[T]hey ignored industry standards....

That lawsuit was unsuccessful.

Another try

This year VAVA, Veterans for Peace, and the 
Vietnamese will begin to apply pressure on 
Congress to pay the bills for damage done in that 
country. These groups are drafting legislation 
that they expect will become a bill that, 
eventually, addresses this legacy. It consist of four parts:

1) clean up the environment and do no further harm.

2) address the problems of millions ill ...that 
now extends to three generations.

3) create regional medical centers specifically 
for victims' children and grandchildren born with 
the physical deformities and mental illness associated with dioxin.

4) conduct a public health study on the 
Vietnamese American population in the U.S. to 
learn if, and if so, how they have been affected 
by AO sprayed in their homeland. (The assumption 
is that this population could have a similar 
exposure to deployed American military personnel).

Personal stories: new every time

If the news about dioxin – and the political and 
economic wrangling that accompanies it – is 
depressingly familiar, what is always fresh are 
the hopeful voices and enthusiastic faces of the 
VAVA delegates. All suffer grievous disease or 
deformities yet their spirits and generosity are astonishingly strong.

This year, 33-year old Pham The Minh accompanied 
the small group. He is the son of a Vietnamese 
fighter contaminated by Agent Orange in Quang Tri 
Province where the spraying was most intensive. 
Minh and and his sister were born after the war 
with birth defects that signal dioxin contamination.
His is no story of victimization. The man's voice 
is vibrantly honest and alive as he says, “I grew 
up with pain in my spirit and in my body...I 
graduated from university and I am happy to teach 
English to victims of Agent Orange.”

In Minh's city of Hai Phong alone there are more 
than 17,000 victims with birth defects, most of 
whom live difficult lives and require constant 
support from hard-pressed families.

Last year, the delegation was headed by Dang Hong 
Nhut who suffers from cancer and has experienced 
multiple miscarriages. Twenty-one year old Tran 
Thi Hoan accompanied Nhut. Tran was born with one 
hand and no legs due to her mother's exposure. 
Despite Tran and her mother both being diagnosed 
with life threatening and disabling conditions 
that create severe and life-long hardship, the 
young woman attends college and is determined to 
work for a just solution for other Vietnamese families.

The 2007 delegates shared compelling stories too.

Vo Thanh Hai was 19 years old in 1978 when he was 
employed replanting trees around Nam Dong that 
had been defoliated by the U.S. Army's spraying operations.

In 1986, Mr. Hai’s wife miscarried. In 1987, 
their son, Vo Thanh Tuan Anh was born. In 2001, 
he began episodes of fatigue and dizziness that 
was diagnosed as osteosarcoma for which he was 
treated with surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

Their doctor also advised Mr. Hai to have a lump 
on his own neck examined. Tests disclosed Hodgkins Disease.

Both father and son have difficulty performing 
routine activities. Mrs. Hoa provides their daily 
care...which means the family has little regular income.

Nguyen Van Quy served in the Vietnam People's 
Army from 1972 through 1975. He ate manioc, wild 
herbs and plants and drank water from streams in 
areas that had been spayed with Agent Orange. He 
experienced periodic headaches and exhaustion and itchy skin and rashes.

In 2003, Mr. Quy was diagnosed with stomach 
cancer, liver damage and with fluid in his lung. 
His son, Nguyen Quang Trung, was born with 
spinal, limb and developmental disabilities, 
enlarged and deformed feet, and a congenital 
spine defect; he cannot stand, walk, or use his hands.

Mr. Quy's daughter, Nguyen Thi Thuy Nga, was born 
deaf and dumb and developmentally disabled. 
Neither child can attend school or work and neither is self-sufficient.

In her presentation in San Francisco, shortly 
before leaving the U.S. to return home, another 
2007 delegate, Mrs. Hong, said how happy she was 
to have had a chance to visit this country and 
talk to people she found “very welcoming.”
Mrs. Hong had served in the Eastern Combat Zone 
of South Vietnam as a clerk tailor and medical 
care worker. In 1964, she was sprayed with Agent 
Orange while washing rice in a stream. She tried 
to dive into the water to wash away the chemicals 
that stuck to her body. Moreover, she consumed 
contaminated food, wild grasses, and water every day after that.

In 1975 she was diagnosed with cirrhosis and 
required long term hospital treatment. In 1999 
she was found to have an enlarged spleen and 
hemopoesis disorder. Several tests later 
uncovered cancer of the left breast as well as 
shortness of breath, high blood pressure, 
cerebral edema, breast cancer with bone 
metastasis, stomach aches, cirrhosis, gall-stones 
and bladder-stones, varicose limbs, limb-skin 
ulcer, weak legs and limited range of movement.

Both Mr.Quy and Mrs Hong died shortly after they returned to Vietnam.

Tragedy of such magnitude easily can overwhelm 
those unprepared to hear it. Yet listening deeply 
to these personal stories presented in the 
even-handed, non-blaming manner of the VAVA 
delegates creates an opening that may allow We, 
the People to apply pressure on Congress to 
co-create legislation to alleviate our nation's 
moral stigma from our actions in Vietnam.

Perhaps the courage of the women in Lan Teh 
Nidah's poem, Night Harvest can give hope to 
Americans of peace and reconciliation. These 
courageous Vietnamese women harvested rice at 
night to avoid detection by American forces.

...

The golds of rice and cluster bombs blend together.
even delayed fuse bombs bring no fear:
Our spirits have known many years of war.
Come, sisters, let us gather the harvest.

...

We are the harvesters of my village,

...

We are not frightened by bombs and bullets in the air --

Only by dew, wetting our lime-scented hair.

One day, perhaps, we in the United States will 
acknowledge our responsibilities in Vietnam. For 
we, too, have known many years of war. Those of 
us who struggle for peace are harvesters too. Let 
us accept our history, sew the seeds of peace, 
and highlight the futile lose/lose proposition that is war.

Susan Galleymore is author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745328296/counterpunchmaga>Long 
Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and 
Terror<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745328296/counterpunchmaga>, 
host of Stanford University's Raising Sand Radio, 
and a former “military mom” and GI Rights 
Counselor. Contact her at 
<mailto:media at mothersspeakaboutwarandterror.org>media at mothersspeakaboutwarandterror.org. 





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