a war unending the vietnam war and agent orange

8/13/2019 A War Unending the Vietnam War and Agent Orange

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Nguyen Nguc Phuongs father fought in central and southern Vietnam for 10 years up to the end of the Vietnam War in1975, and sometime, somewhere along the way, came in contact with some o f the 76 million liters o f Agent Orange thatwas sprayed o n the Vietnamese countryside up.

As a res ult, Nguyen is only 95 ce ntimeters (a little over 3 feet) tall and weighs in at a meage r 20 kilograms(approximately 44 pounds). My sister is the same size like me he says. When I was born I weighed only 800 gramsand was less than 20cm long.

I was very angry because I did not know when I was yo unger why I was le ft like this. I wanted, I s till want, to be anormal person but I know I am not in a go od condition, says Nguyen. The salary is very little here but I dont care, Iknow the c enter doesnt have much money, he says. But I want to help the other kids who are worse off than I am andhelp them have a better future.

Some of Nguyens colleagues share similar stories. Now 24, Hoang Kim Nguyen lifts a blouse sleeve to show blotchy,disco lored arms. I dont know w hy I have this, she says , but my mother wo rked at Danang airport during the war s o Iguess it is from Agent Orange.

Nguyen Thi Hein, Hoangs boss and manager of the center, says that she was quite aggressive as a tee nager, but hasmellowed into one of the centers best teachers, despite a careful, often inaudible way of speaking. I was bullied,teased, when I was younger, Hoang says. Not because of my arms, but because of this, she adds, lifting off a jawlinelength wig to reveal a fe w patchy tufts of hair instead of the straight brown or black sheen a Vietnamese wo man her ageshould have.

She has come a long way, she feels, but a traumatic adolescence has scarred her mentally. It was difficult for me to gooutside when I was a teenage r, and I am still shy in many ways, she co ncedes. But I got my diploma and I am happy to

be here at the center, where she teaches art, embroidery and sewing.

Asked if she is angry like Nguyen at the impact it seems Agent Orange has had on her life, Hoang pauses for acouple of seconds before replying that I know American people were affected too, soldiers in the war and their childrennext in the U.S.

For parents of affected c hildren, the center provides invaluable support. Pang Thu Dan Thanh has two c hildren, one son inkindergarten who seems perfectly healthy, she says. Beside her sits Nguyen Hu Thao Vi, 16, who best-buddy-style restsa hand on her mothers shoulder midway through the interview.

The teenage r was bo rn with Down Syndrome, another apparent result of the spraying of Age nt Orange.

My husband was not a Viet Cong , but he did work in the areas where spraying took place, says mother Pang Thu DanThanh.

Raising Nguyen Hu Thao Vi has been difficult, her mother concede s. She could not even sit up by herself until she wasfour years of age and now at 16 she s till cannot speak much other than a few simple words.

A few miles away from the center, Danangs glossy new international airport sits around fo ur hundred yards from the s iteof the old Danang airbase, where American troops mixed-up and stored the toxic jungle spray. The c odename AgentOrange came f rom the ye llowy amber sheen seen on fo liage along the Ho Chi Minh trail after a dousing by U.S. aircraft

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The site of the old airbase has dioxin contamination up to 350 times higher than the trigger levels at which internationalreco mmendations for action should kick in. Given rare acc ess to the U.S. $43 million dollar clean-up, I was told by one ofthe U.S. government subcontractors on the job that the c lean-up will take 54 months to c omplete, po inting to an adjacentconcrete slab covering one of the areas where the liquid was mixed and returning aircraft hosed down.

The contractor standing in the driving coastal rain and barely-audible over the din of the blue Vietnam Airlines jet taxiinga stones throw away o n the new Danang airport runaway asked not to be identified as he was not authorized to discusssensitive material, but said that the c ontaminated soil wo uld be excavated to a temporary mound 8 meters high by 70

meters wide by 100 meters long, and in turn baked to over 600 degrees Fahrenheit, a procedure intended to break downthe dioxin into carbon dioxide, wate r and chloride.

The Danang clean-up is a joint project o f the Vietnamese Defense Ministry and the United States Agency f or InternationalDeve lopment (USAID) that began in August of this ye ar, after Secre tary of State Hillary Clinton announcedthat hergove rnment would assis t with the clean-up during a visit to Hanoi in the s ummer of 2010, amid tensions be tween Vietnamand China over the South China Sea, known as the East Sea in Vietnam, in turn prompting closer ties between the U.S. andVietnam.

Chuck Searcy came back to Vietnam 17 years ago, 3 years before the U.S. and Vietnam normalized relations . Heeventually stayed on in the one- time enemy terrain to work for the Veterans Memorial Fund, which cleans up unexplodedordnances from the war in central Vietnam. Speaking in Hanoi over a morning c offee, not far from the o ld Hanoi Hiltonwhere Republican Senator John McCainwas detained for five years as a prisoner of war, he recalls in sonorous Morgan

Freeman-like tones that when Agent Orange w as used in Vietnam we were told it was harmless , that it was just apesticide, and we believed that.

For decades the U.S. government disputed the link betwee n Agent Orange and birth defects in Vietnamese children, butthat opposition appears to have relented, the Vietnam War veteran tells me.

Now things are changing, he says, acknowledging that the U.S. government finally is doing the right thing, maybe notenough, but at least it is helping American veterans. We o ught to be doing the same thing in cooperation with theVietnamese people. That is late in the day, but is finally starting now too .

Washingtons Asia Pivot will be in full focus this week, as newly-reelected Pres ident Obama visits So utheast Asia ,with stops in Thailand, Burma and Cambodia. While in Cambodia Obama will participate in the East Asia Summit, wherehe will meet leade rs f rom China, J apan, Russia, South Korea, Australia as well as his Southeast Asian counterparts.

For its part, the Vietnamese g overnment provides a monthly stipend of about U.S. $17 to more than 200,000 Vietnamesewho are be lieved to be aff ecte d by the toxic herbicides . Although the program costs the Vietnamese government aroundU.S. $40 million annually, the stipend isnt much for those rece iving it, and does nt go far.

We would not be able to manage having him at home, says Nguyen Thu Thon, mother of Nguyen Viet Hai, age 24,who stays at the center. We cannot afford to hire care for him and we need to work ourselves to make ends meet, and hecannot be left alone by himself.

Currently based in southeast Asia, Simon Roughneen has written for Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Christian ScienceMonitor, South China Morning Post, Asia Times, The Irrawaddy,ISN, Sunday Business Post and others. He is a radio

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correspondent affiliated to Global Radio News and has reported on RT, BBC, CBS, CBC Canada, Fox News, Voice ofAmerica, al-Jazeera.

Topics Features Environment Southeast Asia Vietnam

Tags Agent Orange His tory Indo-China War V ietnam War

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[...] http://thediplomat.com/2012/11/13/a-war-unending- the-vie tnam-war-and-agent-orange/ Nguyen Hu Thao Vi with her mother in Danang (Photo: SimonRoughneen) [...]

A victorious power never ge ts charged for war crimes. Germany was carpetbombed, Japan was nuked, and Vietnam got the most bombs dropped and ofcourse, the Agent Orange. Might is right !

Please do not forget the genocides the White conducted on the natives in theNorth, Central and South Americas, and Australia; Inhuman slave trades andatrocities done to the African; and other crimes against humanity the Whitecarried o ut on the Asians during the colonization and imperial co nquests in Asia.Anyhow the White insists history is irrelevant, by gone is by gone, past hasnothing to do with the pres ent, therefo re even though they were murderers, drugdealers and executors o f g enocide on hapless American and Australian natives,Africans and Asians, they still can claim moral high ground and lecture allothers on democracy and human rights to no end.

No one will ever hear that the International Court of Justice w ill indict thosecriminals o n behalf of the countless victims, Indeed might is right,

FWIW, the US government has recognized diseases and birth defects afflictingUS veterans' and their children, as being caused by Agent Orange. However, asof yet, the US Government has not extended the same recognition toVietnamese victims.The list is here.http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/age ntorange/dise ases .asp

Obviously, the question needs to be asked, why would it affec t only Americans

and not Vietnamese as well?

That's right, might is right . just like the golden rule "he who has the goldmakes the rule" The U S has both the might and the go ld, fo r now.

@vic,I wonder whether you have realized that you are c ontradicting yourself. Indeed,conce rning the atrocities during Vietnam War (the sec ond), the US was not the

A Battle Unending: The Vietnam War and Agent Orange - The Diplomat | simonroughneen.com

November 13, 2012 at 23:23

vic

November 14, 2012 at 06:20

John Chan

November 14, 2012 at 08:36

Leonard R.

November 14, 2012 at 10:11

Schminner

November 14, 2012 at 14:42

nirvana

November 14, 2012 at 19:27

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victorious party. Concerning the bombing during WWII, German Nazi andImperial Japan were not the victims. Without Hiroshima and Nagasaki sacrificeof innoce nts, go d knows how many years and how many millions o f o therinnocent victims have to be added afte r Aug 1945, not o nly in Japan but also inChina and South-East Asia. Rec all that Hirohito narrowly escaped a co up d'tatwhen he decided that Japan should surrender.The ultimate proo f o f might is def initely not right is that, everywhere in theworld, at the end of the day, the simple voice o f the people can defeatdictatorship, police repression, fire squads and can repel tanks in public squares(such as in Moscow). If might was right, you would not be blogging here onAgent Orange. You would still be a Re d Guard reciting Mao's red book and

breaking Chinese ancient culture.@Leonard,There is hypocrisy in the US go vernment and Department of Justice. But theanswer to the question why the US service men got indemnified quickly and notthe Vietnamese is simply a question of scale of the affected population. For theVietnamese nobody can give an upper bound on the e stimate of the cos t toindemnify them, i.e. down to how many generations, how to quantify the

prejudices,

But I think President Obama should rule on the matter and should decide that theUS government must officially recognize the responsibility of this war crime.Then he will truly deserve his Nobel Prize.

It is now 51 years since the US Forces began the spraying of Agent Orange onSouthern Vietnam. 51 years is lo ng enough for the US Government and the 36Us Chemical Companies who made AO to acce pt their responsibilities and paycompensation to the Vietnamese (nearly four million) and their families.www.lenaldis.co.uk

Hegemony is cyclical. Most great powers of the past are no more. China, India,

Po rtugal, Dutch, British and so forth. The British ruled India for 200 years andmore. Russia imploded and co mmunism collapse d and rightly so! The UnitedStates has been in power for 5 decades and now is facing many morechallenges. The idea to have a strong military for c ommerce is failing badly.Capitalism in the United States is no more be ing eroded by monopolisticcorporations and large interested groups. The legacy from wars has created alarge population of veterans who need welfare and are discontent.Since Obama came to power, the idea that the US is spe cial in the 21st ce nturyis be ing revisited-there is nothing exce ptional from a country that makes millionsout of the war machinery-the Industrial Military Complex. If employment, is a

Len Aldis

November 14, 2012 at 22:06

chandran

November 14, 2012 at 22:58

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problem in the USA now, ending wars wo uld be difficult for a co untry thatprovides millions of c itizens with jobs in this business. If you end wars lessjobs espe cially in Washington, MD and VA.Change is coming-rather than the w orld acc ommodates the United States whoalways wanted to be different-the USA is being encompassed with the world-the identity of the country is be ing changed within. Elections and domestic

policy is now dictated (at least) by Hispanics and Asians. A child who learnsfrom the history of the US will know that war is never good-and as time passes,we will probably the USA held accountable for using disproportionate force oncivilians. No longer will there not be a remedy fo r Vietnamese families in UScourts for agent orange, Bhopal victims must be able to sue DOW Chemicals inthe US-hopefully the panel of judges at the Supreme co urt will change to onethat supports justice and democracy.Beware that time may come soon if the drone strikes are not ended, hopefullythe USA realizes this-that the time is up-Americans will f eel po verty-its a f latworld

@nirvanaUS Government must take responsibility for war crimes? You are dreaming theimposs ible dream. It is in the DNA of America as a nation to inflict casualtieson a massive scale (think genocide). Kissinger expanded the war f rom Vietnam

to Cambodia and Laos. America inflicted as much damage as pos sible short ofusing nuclear weapons. It withdrew o nly because it co uld not totally win aconventional war. The Nixon-Mao meeting included an agreement for Chinesesupport of American withdrawal from Vietnam (How would you prevent the last50,0 00 troo ps from being massac red by a hostile native population?). Americawas victorious in the se nse that the American homeland was never attackedwhereas Vietnam was virtually totally wrecked. The only way fo r a co untry to

be insured against this so rt of American aggres sion is to be able to have thecapac ity to wreck the American homeland similarly. The 9/11 attack on theAmerican homeland was a "blow-back" for crimes committed in the MiddleEast.

Yes, I sympathize with the Viets who were affected.

Now, Vic and JC how is it relevant to rant again about the "whites"? I really donot get it. The Chinese are just as guilty JC, remember Shih Huang Ti and theChinese practice of burying the concubines together with their masters? I couldgo on and on but it would be po intless .

You need to consider the times and what was the norms, yo u really can't expectto use today's s tandards fo r what Shih Huang Ti did can you? Same goes with

vic

November 15, 2012 at 02:23

Cyrus

November 15, 2012 at 02:36

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your "white" mans rant.

@CyrusIt can be said that since the days of recorded history, no nation or people couldmatch the level o f American brutality. The nuking o f Japanese cities is the apexof brutality. As might is right, America never gets c harged with war crimes. Forthe Buddhist victims of Vietnam, they suffered in silence the effects of AgentOrange. The Bible dictates "and God says , revenge is Mine and Mine alone".However, mere mortals s aid, "I shall avenge my brothers' death" while they

were plunging their airplanes on 9/11. A historical s tatement was made by thedespe rados o n 9/11 that a victor can suffe r from a blow-back. Question when and how will the blow-back from the nuking o f Japanese cities comeabout ? Can the spirit of Zen prevail or does violence begets vio lence, thatnever ending cyc le o f brutality.

@Cyrus,Promoting by g one is by gone theory? And laying the g roundwork toexonerate the White who has been bo mbing and killing innoce nts nonstop sinceWWII?

Any bad behaviour should be de nounced regardless when it happens, Chinese isnot afraid of expos ing bad behaviours by doc umenting them; Chinese historybooks are littered with those crimes and bad behaviours. Instead of praisingChinese honesty and courage, you use those tragedies and miseries todemonize China meanwhile you are glo ssing o ver the Whites ugly past, itmakes one wonder where your moral bearing is.

Canadian blogge rs should urge their gove rnment to se t the example bycompensating the AO vic tims in Vietnam for be ing a supplier of AO to the USforces in Vietnam.

The so called pacifist and democratic Japan denies atrocities and crimes itcommitted during the WWII, its courts threw out cases that ex-c omfort womenand forced laborers sued the Japanese government for apology andcompensation.USA wrote Japanese constitution and laws, therefore by association, the USAwill behave like J apan, the USA courts will behave like J apanese courts,expec ting a remedy for Vietnamese families in US c ourts fo r the harm caused

by Agent Orange will meet the same fate as those ex-c omfort women and

vic

November 15, 2012 at 08:26

John Chan

November 15, 2012 at 10:55

John Chan

November 15, 2012 at 11:22

John Chan

November 15, 2012 at 11:51

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9/19

forced laborers expecting justice from the Japanese courts, the chance is zero,zip, nada, zilch, nix, the answer is keep dreaming, get out of here, get a life,

@vic,To quote two great men of our time: "the audacity of hope" and "I am not theonly dreamer. One day the wo rld will be o ne".Concerning the Nixon-Mao deal, it was not so much about safety of the US

army withdrawal. Nixon agree d that Mao can keep his sphere o f influence(North Vietnam and Laos) provided Mao help Nixon to bring down worldcommunism (=the Soviet, that Mao called the Hege monist), which Mao did. Infact Mao was not happy of Vietnam reunification, bec ause it was a reunificationoutside of his sphere of influence.

Funny how so me racist chinese bloggers are always whining and complainingabout the whites but last time I c hecked CCP s till covers up and whitewashes itsdirty past where it s tarved 30 million of its own peo ple and brutally killed itsown citizens in tianamen.

Seems like these Chinese bloggers would be better served complaining againsttheir own government so that it doe s not re peat its c rimes against humanity!!!

(Putting things in perspec tive)@Jean-Paul,To give justice to the CCP, they did admit that Mao was wrong but only 30% s o.Yes, yes, not approximately, exactly 30% is the of ficial number.Do the math: 1% of Mao's miscalculation is 1 Million deaths, mostly Chinese .To be compared with the 200 thousands total casualties (exclusively Japanese)of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs, which was for ending a war that, if

prolonged by another couple of years could claim as many as the civiliancasualties in the Korean war (2.5 millions). And that would not be Americancivilians but Chinese, Filipinos, Vietnamese , Malaysian, Indonesian, Burmese ,and Japanese

Whoa. I agree that the American war machine has a history of going to war toomuch, but to say that they are the apex o f brutality is g oing too far. For starters,they're not Genghis Khan who piled up heads to make pyramids. Nor are they

Nazis who methodically genocided Je ws, Gypsies, and other undesirables.

nirvana

November 15, 2012 at 15:01

Jean-Paul

November 15, 2012 at 23:30

nirvana

November 16, 2012 at 02:59

Errol

November 16, 2012 at 05:47

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10/19

They're not Imperial Japanese who took no prisoners.As fo r the atomic bombs used on Japan, c an you actually say that everyoneknew about long-term effects of radiation back then? None. Coz for all theAmericans new, it was only a new weapon that packed a wallop. Do you knowthe options they had back then? Invade Japan thru the Kanto plains and sufferhorrendous losses due to bushido. Or use the 'superbombs' and try to bluff Japaninto surrendering. Guess what. The bluff worked. Had the Allies invaded Japan,you would se e far more c asualties than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You would seethe entire civilian population of J apan's biggest island being used by the militaryfor banzai charges . Would you rather choose that option?

Wait, I'm confused with your statement.

Any bad behaviour should be denounced regardless when it happens, Chinese isnot afraid of exposing bad behaviours by documenting them; Chinese historybooks are littered with those crimes and bad behaviours. Instead of praisingChinese honesty and courage, you use those tragedies and miseries to demonizeChina meanwhile you are glossing over the Whites ugly past, it makes onewonder where your moral bearing is.

Whose wrongdoings are you talking about? Can't be the CPC coz the CPCwon't allow anything that criticizes it to be printed. So you must mean the West.Guess what. Even Western literature is rife with the list of the West's ownwrongdoings.Help me understand though. How are Chinese records of the West's failingsused to demonize China? Coz usually what I read is the West's records ofChina's failings that is used to demonize China. Or the CPC actually. You can't

blame the ordinary Chinese for so mething he or she has no controlover whatsoever.

I agree John. Trouble is, Canada is in this dee per than being a mere supplier of

Agent Orange. Canada is implicated all the way back to the invention of AOand, as if this werent enough, poisoned hundreds of thousands of its owncitizens while perfecting it for use during the American War (Vietnam War) atCanadian Forces Base Gagetown. Compensating the Vietnamese would have to

be part of a larger package o f co nfess ion. How o n earth can Ottawa possiblyadmit any of this?As a Canadian victim of AO myself, let me tell you what I think would happen ifOttawa attempted the unthinkable and tried to own up to its very real moralobligations to the Vietnamese . First, the uncompensated Canadian victims of AOwould feel a heightened sense of betrayal because we, in many cases, were

Errol

November 16, 2012 at 05:52

Kelly Porter Franklin

November 16, 2012 at 08:57

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Leap Forward; and French behaviour in Algeria was fit fo r indictment of crimeagainst humanity by the World Court. If French are not complaining against theirown nation, French blogge rs are de finitely not qualified to po int finger toanyone here .

"Secretary o f State Hillary Clinton announced that her gove rnment would ass istwith the clean-up during a visit to Hanoi in the summer of 2010, amid tensionsamid tensions between Vietnam and China over the South China Sea, known as

the East Sea in Vietnam, in turn prompting closer ties between the U.S. andVietnam."Well, well, after decades of absolute refusal in taking anyresponsibilities whatsoever on Agent Orange, it is obvious that the littleassistance now is intended to facilitate American geopo litics and pivot intoAsia, Clos er tie and friendship with Vietnam, LOL.

No doubt, America and Weste rn press exce l in propaganda with beautifiedwords. They fool no one exce pt Americans.

@nirvana,Are you saying it is OK to kill with nuclear bombs as long as you can fabricate

justification? It seems to you spreading Agent Orange o n the Vietnamese is fullyjustifiable too because they are commie, and to save the Filipino, Malaysian,Indonesian from falling into Viet Congs hand.

@Errol,Are you demonstrating the art of twisting words and fabricating f acts yo u learntin the Dick Cheney Schoo l of Imperialism?If CPC wont allow anything that criticizes it to be printed then how do youknow anything bad about them? Are you admitting that all those bad things yousay about CPC is your fabrication?

@ErrolAre you saying that the nuking of J apanese cities is a blessing in disguise? Thatis very twis ted log ic, but it does make the Americans happy. The Americanscould stop at the g ates without having to enter to slaughter. Only barbarianscould do that, a whole scale slaughter of c ivilians in two cities . By the way, theeffects of gamma rays were known at the time of the test blast at Los Alamos.

globallc

November 16, 2012 at 13:27

John Chan

November 16, 2012 at 13:43

John Chan

November 16, 2012 at 14:01

vic

November 16, 2012 at 15:21

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If the Americans could deny that they never dropped Agent Orange on theVietnamese, and could shift the blame of this heinous crime against humanity onto the Russians or the Chinese , they c ertainly would. Recall that during theKorean war of the 1950's, the Americans droppe d ge rm bombs o n the Koreans(a weapon they obtained from the surrendered Japanese doctors of death inWW2 responsible for half a million deaths by bacteria in China 1931-1945)causing outbreaks of bubonic plague and anthrax. There were independentobservers (Joseph Needlam amongst them) attesting to these disease outbreaks,

but the US continue to deny their war crime up to this day. US startedgiving limited ass istance to clean up contaminated areas ONLY because they

want Vietnam to be on their side to help contain China. It is NOT a humanitarianact nor an admission of guilt.

@JC. Wow. You accuse me o f be ing Cheney's s tudent. Even when I don't knowmuch about the g uy aside from the fact that he was a VP who happened to shoo this fellow hunter out on a trip. Going back to your question, we know about theCPC's failings not because of the CPC's industriousness but because of thecourage of ordinary people to bring the facts to light. You follow the CPCclaims that nothing bad happened back in Tiananmen Square back in 1989 andsay it's only a fabrication of the West. Yet Chinese themselves remember theevent. If it was o nly a propaganda attempt by the West, how co me the CPC puts

such a tight noose everytime it's the TSM' anniversary? There was also whenthe CPC tried to suppress the news about the first bullet train crash and theresulting fatalities. No news about commemorating the dead in the majornewspapers. Also, when the Bo Xilai news was first starting, Chinese mediatook a hands-of f approac h. Only the despised Wes tern media paid attention atthe start. Should I go on?

@ VicDo I espo use nuclear use? Knowing what we all know now, no I don't. Yoursuggesting that the Americans c ould have just s topped at Okinawa. Is i really aviable option? The American populace, then and now, has no stomach fo r a longwar. For them, WW2 was only an interlude that should end quickly. Your

suggestion that the Japanese islands be besieged is not workable. Had theAmericans left, Japan would be free to send out its armies again to prolonghostilities. So again, how should the Allies e nded the P acific war quickly?Yes, scientists knew about the gamma rays. But doesn't that happen on themoment of the blast itself? Oppenheimer and his crew knew about that. Whatthey didn't know is that radiation will stay in the blast site and the kill zone foryears on end.

vjie king

November 16, 2012 at 21:18

Errol

November 17, 2012 at 04:43

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Errol makes go od points. The fact is, the US worked hard to develop theatomic bomb before Germany could complete it's own effo rts to do so. Canyou imagine what Hitler would have done with it? Once deve loped, our leaderswere faced with the choice o f using the bomb on Japan and hopef ully end thewar, or continue the island hopping campaign to the main Japanese islands.Okinawa was a g ood indicator of what that would have loo ked like; massiveAmerican AND Japanese c asualties would have been the result. Far moreJapanese casualties than the atomic bombs were re sponsible fo r. If I was incharge it would have been an easy dec ision: Let's s ee, drop big, powerful

bombs on a brutal, militaristic society responsible for multiple atrocities (rape

of Nanking, anyone?), hopefully ending the war in one fell swoop, ORproceed with an invasion in which hundreds of thousands of American troopswould almost certainly be killed o r wounded, not to mention the c ost to theJapanese population. Duh. So easy for you people to play the moral superioritycard 65+ years later. You forg et the world had seen 7 years of unimaginable

brutality and death. My guess is that people of that period would haveoverwhelmingly made the choice that would of fer a quick end to the bloo dshed,even if they understood the long-term effects of the bombs.

The U.S. government does something for American victims o f AO? Nope .Approach the Veterans' Administration for help and the first things they ask are

your income, your sources of income, what property you own, and whatinsurance you have.

Great post, i'm seriously tired of people giving the US so much criticism, anyother nation would have done the same at the time. It saved more lives than ittook and ended the largest bloodiest war the world had ever seen.

@ErrolThe two atomic bombs dropped were done out of spite for the Japanese.Japan's aerial and sea defenses were effectively destroyed before the nuking.For a country made of islands, the prospect of a sea blockade meant that Japan

had to surrender. Of c ourse, trying to s torm the islands would be extremelycostly, but it was not necessary to storm the stronghold to force Japan tosurrender.From the simple mathematical c oncept of exponential equation, one knew

befo re the test blast the half-life of radioactive materials. The test blast was totest the technology of the trigger mechanism for the nuclear explosion ofuranium material assembled as a bomb. The theory had mathematical ele gance

in its full glory.

Fedupwithstupid

November 17, 2012 at 05:32

Mack

November 17, 2012 at 09:40

Jean-Paul

November 17, 2012 at 14:56

vic

November 18, 2012 at 06:58

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@MackThere is a disproportionate number of veteran pilots of Hercules cargo planes(carrying Agent Orange) who died from or are still suffering from cancer. TheUS government refuses to acknowledge this statistic but does its best to coverup.

Vic wrote: "Of course, trying to storm the islands would be extremely costly,but it was not nece ssary to sto rm the stronghold to fo rce Japan to surrender."

You don't really know Pacif ic history do you?There we re Japanese s oldiers holding o ut and still fighting the war up until the1970s. As a c hild I was told a sto ry about the area that I was in, that someonesaw some old soldiers still holding out in 1972 and so the Japanese embassyoff icial was s ent in to yell up into the Jungle to tell them the War was ove r.How long do you think they would have held on in Japan and in other parts ofAsia. The war o n Saipan wasn't ended fo r 6 months after the dropping of the

bombs as Japanese s till held on.Maybe the Chinese need to learn some history other than their own befo re

telling the rest of the world 'how it is'?

@ Jo hnXUnfortunately you are asking too much of these c hinese poste rs. The onlyhistory books they have ever read out of are the CCP approved brain-washingschoo l of hatred and bigotry. It seems like the CCP has really achieved itsobjective o f f ully brainwashing its populace into be lieving that Japan is still awar criminal and that the West has been bombing and killing "nonstop".I think it will only take the effort of the international community to stop this

brainwashing from turning China into the next imperial japan.

Sometimes I think you are right.But, I listened to the stories of those who were there and I am not willing tosimply accept the Chinese replicate the Imperial Japanese .I feel like screaming in their faces some times."Don't do it, war isn't the answer".

vic

November 18, 2012 at 07:09

JohnX

November 18, 2012 at 11:06

Jean-Paul

November 19, 2012 at 02:36

JohnX

November 20, 2012 at 16:59

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17/19

Vietnam is o ne of land with longes t history on agriculture experience. They,more than any one else even rec ent scientist, know how the wild plants cansurvive and be harmed. As I usually heard they said nh c phi nh tn gcwhile glairing at opponents in fo rmal meeting. (To s tate that I had a very sorttime wo rk for a Vietnamese g overnment owned c orporation). This meansmaking devastating to opponents family, even newly born children.

So how the orange agent, which was ejected from above the air, can any howhave a meaning affec t? No t to mention, historically, Vietnamese , in general,have regular of an animal tribe as seen in a fairy tail Tm Cm. In this tail, one

sister to rtured her younger half-blood and sent back the part to the mother to eatas a way of revenge.

Nowadays, lets see how they treat people inside the country, who are not ontheir side? Especially, wealthy people who intent to emigrate?

For those American people o r American, who made any agreement to rec entVietnam government regarding orange agent: You are totally mental dullness andare incapable o f protecting and gove rning the humans civilizations againstsavage gorilla tribe?

I, for myself and others, hope you and your politicians to call for the power ofthe upper opponent class people inside Vietnam rather than a treaty for a savage

gorilla class.

I am from Vietnam, a generation born in 1970s, now turn to 40s. I understand,in a war, e ach side has their own interest. For to day, after 70 years o f thrivingunder co mmunist reg ime, a major o f Vietnamese reco gnize the true face o f therobbery. In my opinion, they have no right to claim the reopen o f Orange Agent

phenomenon.

Vietnam is o ne of land with longes t history on agriculture experience. They,more than any one else even rec ent scientist, know how the wild plants cansurvive and be harmed. As I usually heard they said nh c phi nh tn gcwhile glairing at opponents in fo rmal meeting. (To s tate that I had a very sorttime wo rk for a Vietnamese g overnment owned c orporation). This meansmaking devastating to opponents family, even newly born children.

So how the orange agent, which was ejected from above the air, can any howhave a meaning affec t? No t to mention, historically, Vietnamese , in general,have regular of an animal tribe as seen in a fairy tail Tm Cm. In this tail, onesister to rtured her younger half-blood and sent back the part to the mother to eatas a way of revenge.

Nowadays, lets see how they treat people inside the country, who are not on

Sunny Krownd

July 30, 2013 at 15:30

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their side? Especially, wealthy people who intent to emigrate?

For those American people o r American, who made any agreement to rec entVietnam government regarding orange agent: You are totally mental dullness andare incapable o f protecting and gove rning the humans civilizations againstsavage gorilla tribe?

I, for myself and others, hope you and your politicians to call for the power ofthe upper opponent class people inside Vietnam rather than a treaty for a savagegorilla class.

You seem to forget, the US may recognize the use of Agent Orange and itseffects on the vets and yes the children of the vets, but, the children of the vetsare NOT being taken care of. They receive no help from our government. Just arejection letter whenever they try to get medical help from the VA. I know thatfor a fact, I have a daughter that has had 14 brain surgeries due to her fathersexposure to AO. They keep denying her. And, we lost her f ather in 2011 due tolung cancer f rom his e xposure to AO. At least the Vietnamese govt is admittingthe problem they have there and are do ing something for the victims. More thanwe can say of our own government.

Nancy

November 22, 2013 at 09:12

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