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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10162009.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10162009.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">October 16-19,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Agent Orange in
Vietnam <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Ignoring the Crimes Before Our Eyes
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By DAVE
LINDORFF <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">O</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>n Oct. 13, the <i>New York Times</i> ran a
news story headlined “Door Opens to Health Claims Tied to Agent Orange,”
which was sure to be good news to many American veterans of the Indochina
War. It reported that 38 years after the Pentagon ceased spreading the
deadly dioxin-laced herbicide/defoliant over much of South Vietnam, it
was acknowledging what veterans have long claimed: in addition to 13
ailments already traced to exposure to the chemical, it was also
responsible for three more dread diseasesParkinson’s, ischemic heart
disease and hairy-cell leukemia.<br><br>
Under a new policy adopted by the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, the VA will
now start providing free care to any of the 2.1 million Vietnam-era
veterans who can show that they might have been hurt by exposure to Agent
Orange.<br><br>
This is another belated step forward in the decades-long struggle by
Vietnam War veterans to get the Defense Department and the VA to
acknowledge the American government’s responsibility for poisoning them
and causing permanent damage to them and often to their children and
grandchildren. Dioxin, one of the most poisonous substances known
to man, is known to cause many serious systemic diseases, autoimmune
illnesses, cancers and birth defects. (It is also a warning about the
general Pentagon and government approach to other hazards caused by its
battlefield use of toxinsmost significantly the increasingly common use
of depleted uranium projectiles in bombs, shells and bulletsan approach
which features lack of concern about health effects on troops and
civilians, denial of information to troops, and denial of care to
eventual victims.)<br><br>
Missing from the <i>Times </i>article, written by military affairs
reporter James Dao, which did include mention of the obstructionist role
the government has played through this whole sorry saga, was a single
mention of the far larger number of victims of Agent Orange in
Vietnamthe people on whose heads and lands the toxic chemical was
actually dropped, or of the adamant refusal by the US government to
accept any responsibility for what it did to them.<br><br>
According to the article, the VA estimates that there may be as many as
200,000 US veterans who are suffering from Agent Orange-related
illnesses. But according to a court case brought on behalf of Vietnamese
victims, which was dismissed by a US Federal District Judge who ruled
that there was “no basis for the claims,” there are at least three
million Vietnamese, and possibly as many as 4.8 million, who are
suffering the same Agent Orange-related illnesses as American veterans
and their children. It is estimated that as many as 800,000 Vietnamese in
the country’s south currently suffer from chronic health problems due to
Agent Orange exposure, either to themselves, or to a parent or
grandparent. Most of these victims, some of whom are retarded, and others
of whom cannot walk or have no use of their arms, need constant care.
<br><br>
Veterans for Peace, an organization whose membership includes a large
number of Vietnam War veterans, has issued a call for the US to provide
funds for health care, education, vocational education, chronic care,
home care and equipment to clean up hotspots of dioxin in Vietnama call
which Congress and the White House have consistently ignored. Tests
have found dioxin levels around the sites of the three main former US
bases in what was South Vietnam to be 300-400 times recognized safe
levels. The US dumped huge amounts of Agent Orange for miles around those
bases to kill off jungle cover that Vietnamese fighters could use to
approach the bases, but it was never cleaned up when the US pulled
out.<br><br>
One organization that includes a number of American veterans of the way,
including former military doctors or soldiers who later became
physicians, is the Vietnam Friendship Village Project USA Inc., which
raises funds to help establish communities in Vietnam to care for the
victims of Agent Orange.<br><br>
It may seem a pathetic stab at principle given America’s use of two
nuclear weapons against civilian targets in Japan a few years later, but
back in World War II, in the midst of the most brutal island-to-island
fighting during the Pacific War, a US Judge Advocate General in the
Pentagon ruled that a military request for permission to use herbicides
against the Japanese on Pacific islands would be illegal under the Hague
Convention (forerunner of what are now called the Geneva Conventions). He
ruled that trying to destroy the crops of civilians on those islands to
deny food to the Japanese troops would be a war crime. The US went
ahead and used the herbicides anyway, arguing that even though it was
illegal, the US was free to go ahead, since the Japanese had already
broken the laws of war by using strychnine to kill military guard dogs in
Siberia. Under the rules of war, if one side breaks a rule, the other
side is no longer bound by it.<br><br>
But the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese never used toxic materials against
US forces or against South Vietnamese forces. And the Pentagon in the
Vietnam War never even considered whether spraying a highly toxic
herbicide over 1.4 million hectares12% of the total land area of Vietnam
and almost 25% of the southern half of the countrymight be a war
crime.<br><br>
Moreover, the Pentagon knew, before it began its massive defoliation
campaign, about studies showing that Agent Orange was heavily laced with
deadly dioxin, but covered up those studies, some by the chemical’s
makers, Dow Chemical and Monsanto, and never even warned the troops who
handled the material daily, or who were sent out to fight in areas that
had been heavily sprayed.<br><br>
The ongoing medical disaster in Vietnam caused by America’s criminal use
of Agent Orange to defoliate a nation would be a good place for President
Obama to start earning his just-awarded Nobel Peace Prize. He could kick
off his peace campaign by finally honoring President Richard Nixon’s
immediately broken promise to provide several billion dollars in
reconstruction aid to Vietnam at the conclusion of peace talks at the end
of the war. Not a dollar of such aid was ever given.
<br><br>
Dao says he didn't mention significance for Vietnamese dioxin victims of
the VA's decision to recognize three new diseases as being Agent
Orange-linked, because "my beat is veterans," and because he
only had 800 words in which to cover his story. That may be true (though
surely the Vietnamese at least deserved a one-sentence mention). But back
on July 25, when the Times ran a story (by Janie Lorber, not by Dao)
about the finding by an expert panel of the National Institute of
Medicine linking Parkinsons, ischemic heart disease and leukemia to Agent
Orange, upon which the latest VA decision was based, it also failed to
mention the Vietnamese victims. In that case, the lapse was simply
journalistically inexcuseable, since it was about a new medical finding,
not a policy decision regarding the treatment of veterans.<br><br>
At this point, the only way the <i>New York Times</i> can salvage a bit
of its journalistic reputation on this topic would be by having Dao,
Lorber or some other reporter write a piece about the impact of America’s
Agent Orange use on the people of Vietnam. They could start by calling a
veteran at Veterans for Peace or the Vietnam Friendship Village Project
USA. <br><br>
<b>Dave Lindorff</b> is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is
“<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/031237254X/counterpunchmaga">
The Case for Impeachment</a>” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available
in paperback). He can be reached at
<a href="mailto:dlindorff@mindspring.com">dlindorff@mindspring.com</a><br>
<br>
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