NYT: Agent Orange, the Next Generation (Vietnamese and American)

[DeepModem Mom]

Agent Orange, the Next Generation

By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: August 8, 2004


In 1984, after years of battles over science and damage tabulations, seven American chemical companies settled a huge class-action suit by Vietnam veterans who claimed that the defoliant Agent Orange caused cancer, birth defects and a nightmarish brew of other health problems.

The companies paid out $180 million. By 1997, after the last payments had been made, 291,000 people had received benefits. The settlement was reached after a federal judge persuaded the companies to buy themselves out of protracted litigation. It was called a landmark legal peace on a brutally contentious issue, and it was supposed to be the final word from the courts on Agent Orange, a defoliant containing the deadly substance dioxin.

But today, a new cast of plaintiffs, this time Vietnamese as well as American, has returned to the same American court seeking justice and dollars. One suit filed on behalf of as many as four million Vietnamese says their land and people were so poisoned by Agent Orange that supplying it to the military amounted to war crimes by the chemical companies.

In other suits, American veterans say they have only now come to learn of their devastating health problems, with the money gone.

The claims are more than empty reminders of an old fight. Judge Jack B. Weinstein, whose aggressive handling of the Agent Orange case in Federal District Court in Brooklyn in the 1980's brought him wide attention and considerable anger, has said that the Vietnamese suit raises serious issues. The United States Supreme Court has said that the new cases by American veterans cannot be automatically barred....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/nyregion/08orange.html

[Massacure]

1. Was cancer, and other effects the entire point of agent orange?

Or was it used for something else than killing people?

[renegade000]

7. it was intended to clear swaths of the jungle

so airdrops and stuff could be accomplished.

[TahitiNut]

10. It was used far more indiscriminately than that.

The 'objectives' for using this defoliant were various and its use was apparently indiscriminate. I was stationed with USARV HQ at Long Binh Post throughout 1969. At the center of the post at that time was a watershed runoff, with a mini"jungle" that bred mosquitoes and other creepy-crawlies. About 2 or 3 times during 1969 the area would get sprayed by choppers. Some of us thought it was insecticide, but noticed that the foliage wilted and died off after these sprayings. Our hooches were located just south of the 'jungle' (only about 10 acres) and the aerial spraying would also wind up in our fresh water (open-topped rubber cisterns on platforms) and in the post's above-ground swimming pool - one of those backyard, rectangular 4'-deep pools with a 8' deck around it. (The pool felt a bit like warm piss to swim in.) So, we swam in it (maybe once a week or two), and drank it, and showered in it.

It destroyed croplands and removed the concealment of triple-canopy for VC/NVA troop movements and supply movements. It was used a lot.

[Blue Gardener]

2. Bush* blocked retired vets from receiving A.O. disability

I have to acquaintances that were exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. One just signed up to receive a couple of hundred dollars a month in military disability payments due to his exposure to Agent Orange. The other friend retired from the military. He also is entitled to this same disability payment, but they deduct it from his military pension, so really he gets nothing. He said Bush* is the one that made this decision. I don't know all the facts on this issue, but would like to find out. This is just one more example of the way this administration is screwing over our veterans.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. I hope others will add personal stories, and any other information...

they have. What a horrendous story, still playing out after all these years!

[demigoddess]

17. there were agent orange babies here in the Us.

fathered by vets who were exposed. After the first gulf war vets fathered more defective babies after coming home. Expect an even larger group after this gulf war is over. I have reason to know about this, almost everytime I took my daughter in for a consultation with military doctors, I was asked about whether my husband had ever been exposed and later on the doctor I was taking my daughter to told me about the cluster then and there were fliers on the bulletin board about the support groups that mothers had formed.

[saigon68]

4. ITS TRUE BUSH NEEDS TO "TRIM" SPENDING

If you are retired your disability benefit is trimmed from your retirement pay.

Its called "Double Dipping" and the Re Pukes are seldom anxious to see disabled Vets get benefits for their disability and your retirement Both at the same time.

It would ruin HIS TAX-CUT PLAN FOR THE RICH

[Blue Gardener]

5. I just find this appalling

They earned that disability and they should get every penny that's coming to them. At least the retired vet is voting for Kerry.

[saigon68]

6. 100% disability is about $2200.00 a month

If your retirement pay is $1500.00 a month, all you get is $2,200.00 not $3,700.00

If you are partially disabled ie: 30%--- that amount is deducted from your $1500.00 which means you get NO DISABILITY payments for WAR WOUNDS AT ALL----

THIS IS SO THE TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED.

[JohnyCanuck]

8. Can you imagine if a "terrorist" group

dumped a cancer causing Agent Orange like chemical over large swaths of the USA what the reaction would be? It wouldn't be just O'Reilly and Rushbot going ape shit proclaiming this dastardly, cowardly action was tantamount to chemical warfare and another sure sign of the ultimate unreedemable evil in the heart of the crazy, fanatical terrorist organization justifying any action necessary to wipe them off the face of the earth, and about 98% of the US population would agree. The hypocrisy of it all just gets to be too much at times. And I don't buy for a second that they didn't know what the likely consequences would be when they started dumping this stuff on the heads of the Vietnamese.

Three million acres of South Vietnam were sprayed with 50,000 tons of Agent Orange and other herbicides, containing over 500 pounds of dioxin. Because herbicides were used in Vietnam to destroy crops and defoliate jungle cover, the military used 27 times more herbicide per unit area than most domestic applications, which are primarily used to prevent weed growth. Dioxin is the focus of veterans’ health concerns because of its toxicity. However, many different chemicals with the potential for producing health problems were used in Vietnam.

<snip>

AIR FORCE KNEW OF HEALTH DANGER
Scientists involved in Operation Ranch Hand and documents uncovered in the late 1980’s in the National Archives present a troubling picture. There are strong indications that military officials were aware as early as 1967 of the limited effectiveness of chemical defoliation and they knew of potential long-term health risks of frequent spraying.

Dr. James Clary was an Air Force scientist in Vietnam who helped write the history of Operation Ranch Hand. Clary says the Air Force knew Agent Orange was far more hazardous to the health of humans than anyone would admit at the time. "When we (military scientists) initiated the herbicide program in the 1960s," Clary wrote in a 1988 letter to a member of Congress investigating Agent Orange, "we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. We were even aware that the `military' formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the `civilian' version, due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture. However, because the material was to be used on the `enemy,' none of us were overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide. And, if we had, we would have expected our own government to give assistance to veterans so contaminated."

<snip>

On March 11, 1966, a test operation known as "Hot Tip" was documented at Chu Pong mountainnear Pleiku when 15 B-52s dropped incendiaries on a defoliated area. According to the declassified memo, "results were inconclusive but sufficient fire did develop to indicate that this technique might be operationally functional." What neither the government nor the chemical companies told anyone was that burning dioxins significantly increases the toxicity of the dioxins. So, not only was the government introducing cancer causing chemicals into the war, it was increasing their toxicity by burning them. Nevertheless, "Project Pink Rose" continued.

A History of Agent Orange Use (Requires Adobe Acrobat to view)

[indepat]

9. Can you imagine the astronomical judgments possible for our use of agent

orange and DU alone (how great a risk to the economic well-being of all future generations of Americans has been unleashed by our using such chemical weapons in a forty-year span alone?) Wonder if any of the rest of the world views our use of such chemical weapons as the work of a vast terrorist organization?

[Bruce McAuley]

11. I am 57 years old...

I was in the military at the time Agent Orange was used in Vietnam, although I never was in Vietnam. I DO remember all the vets I have known my age who WERE, and who died young of strange cancers.
My wife lost her second husband to Agent Orange, her job because she spent time educating vets in the 70's about Agent Orange, and her kids because she had to send them to her first husband to raise for a while when she was an activist. She was a material part of that $180 million settlement, and knows most of the principals involved. She has talked to both Weinstein and Feinberg. She knows many lawyers asociated with the case. She never got a penny of the money, but her second husband who worked on Ranch Hand DID get care later when it was much too late. He died at age 47.
The main reason nobody wants to re-open THIS can of worms is that you can buy the SAME stuff at your local garden center. You know that smell you get from walking into the pesticide/herbicide section? THAT is the smell of DEATH.
Roundup has the same stuff Agent Orange had, just a smaller amount. Weed-N-Feed has the same stuff. Many people's lawns have the same poison on them that gets tracked inside and causes strange cancers of unsuspecting "neat-lawn freaks", and their children and animals.
This is just the TIP of the poisoning iceberg.
Oh, Not To Worry, Citizens! Dow wouldn't poison us just for huge profits, now would they?
This story is potentially HUGE!
Wake up America!

Bruce

[DeepModem Mom]

13. That is scary as hell! Guys, read post 11 about "Agent Orange" around us

everywhere --

[tlcandie]

14. EXACTLY why I don't use poisons or chemicals PERIOD!!!

Now an even better reason to NOT use them!

Maybe they saw it as a way for population control. If they could just deny the vets their disabilities and play the denial game long enough then it would work perfectly!

I'm sure there are very many devious (jebbie's coined phrase) plans to rid this world of too many cannon fodder. One obvious way is unending wars.

[knitter4democracy]

12. Dioxin is bad stuff

I have endometriosis, a nasty disease of pain and other symptoms, and now we know that it can be caused by dioxin exposure. I grew up in farmland with crop dusters going over my house with who-knows-what pesticides and herbicides in them, often then wafting over the house and us working outside. Endo causes infertility, pain, and basically disability in some women, not to mention we are at higher risk for several cancers.

Dioxin needs to be banned. Period. No one should have to live with my disease.

[Bruce McAuley]

15. The Vietnamese are making the same point...

We can now see the results of GENERATIONS poisoned by dioxins, yet Roundup(TM) is still freely available to anyone who has the money.
D'oh!

Bruce

[struggle4progress]

16. kick

:kick: