US Is Finally Cleaning Up Agent Orange In Vietnam

[ElNono]

"It only took 40 years. And yes, Washington still disputes Hanoi's claim (http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/8/8/everybody-slow-clap-america-scrubbing-vietnam-of-agent-orange) that up to 4 million Vietnamese suffered contact with the defoliant, which was dumped en masse in a U.S. air campaign to scorch away the dense jungle cover under which guerilla fighters hid. But the AP reports that the U.S. is finally set to start cleaning up the mess. The numbers are staggering: Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed some 20 million gallons of Agent Orange (http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-08-08-AS-Vietnam-US-Agent-Orange/id-4dbb81688c164999989e9f29076aed81) and a galaxy of other herbicides on nearly a quarter of former South Vietnam. The defoliant ate through about 5 millions acres – a tract comparable in size to Massachusetts – of forest. An additional half-million acres of crops were decimated."

[baseline bum]

http://morallowground.com/wp-content/uploads/Agent+Orange1-e1298655585461.jpg

[AussieFanKurt]

Agent Orange is some scary shit. How can they deny the damage

[ElNono]

http://morallowground.com/wp-content/uploads/Agent+Orange1-e1298655585461.jpg

collateral... no biggie

[MaNuMaNiAc]

You know, we always look at dictators and despots as being mostly responsible for war crimes throughout history but I wonder how many war crimes tribunals would have been held throughout the 20th century had there been a world power capable of holding the US responsible for their fuck ups...

[Halberto]

You know, we always look at dictators and despots as being mostly responsible for war crimes throughout history but I wonder how many war crimes tribunals would have been held throughout the 20th century had there been a world power capable of holding the US responsible for their fuck ups...

Good point. I wonder how many people saddam killed during his reign?

[AussieFanKurt]

You know, we always look at dictators and despots as being mostly responsible for war crimes throughout history but I wonder how many war crimes tribunals would have been held throughout the 20th century had there been a world power capable of holding the US responsible for their fuck ups...

What's the worse that the US have done, in your opinion?

[Pee-Wee Herman]

Agent Orange haha!

Fv91iV2uPDE

[velik_m]

Agent Orange is some scary shit. How can they deny the damage

Liability.

[Wild Cobra]

collateral... no biggie
But is that picture actually from agent orange, or is there some other reason for those birth defects?

We've seen pictures attached with false claims before. What is the source of that picture?

[Winehole23]

The new federal rule covers an expanded group of military personnel who flew or worked on Fairchild C-123 aircraft in the U.S. from 1969 to 1986 and were believed to have been exposed to Agent Orange residue. The planes had been used to spray millions of gallons of the chemical herbicide during the Vietnam War.


An Institute of Medicine study released in January concluded that some C-123 reservists stationed in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts had been exposed to Agent Orange residues in the planes and suffered higher risks of health problems as a result.
Undertaking a review of military records, the VA said it subsequently determined that pilots, mechanics and medical personnel who served at seven other locations in the U.S. and abroad also were potentially affected — Florida, Virginia, and Arizona, as well as Taiwan, Panama, South Korea and the Philippines.


Those affected individuals under the new rule will now be eligible to receive disability aid including survivor benefits and medical care. The veterans must show they worked on a contaminated plane and later developed any of 14 medical conditions such as prostate cancer, diabetes and leukemia that the VA has determined to be connected to Agent Orange.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/us-pay-benefits-vets-exposed-agent-orange-c-123s-n377596

[boutons_deux]

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/us-pay-benefits-vets-exposed-agent-orange-c-123s-n377596

I just lost a close friend of 40 years. From some kind of lung scarring disease, initially diagnosed idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, but his last doctor at UVA said it wasn't idiopathic.

He was an ex-Marine (but "got over it" and never identified himself as ex-Marine). He was stationed in San Diego in the early '70s. His team cleaned jet engines with some chemical whose name he still knew after all these years, because, the last time I talked to him, he related that he had been in contact with his Marine ex buddies from the jet engine cleaning group, and several of them also were dying from progressive lung scarring. I never detected any anger or bitterness from him, but he was clear at the end that his non-combat Marine service was killing him. Good luck 35 - 40 years later to a group of dying guys getting care and/or compensation from the DoD.

[SnakeBoy]

I just lost a close friend of 40 years. From some kind of lung scarring disease, initially diagnosed idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, but his last doctor at UVA said it wasn't idiopathic.


Well what was the last doctors diagnosis?

[boutons_deux]

Well what was the last doctors diagnosis?

All my friend said was "it finally wasn't idiopathic", which means it wasn't an auto-immune disease.