Agent Orange: the legacy of a weapon of mass destruction

[Al-khiyal]

Thirty-five years after the US sprayed the jungles of Vietnam with toxic defoliant, thousands of babies are still being born with horrific defects. But unlike the American veterans, no one in the war-ravaged country has received any compensation.

On a table in the dimly lit room lay a small white bundle, tied with a silver ribbon. With a brilliant smile and a barked order, Professor Nguyen Thi Phuong had directed me to the morgue of the Tu Du maternity hospital to see the latest evidence of the impact of a war that ended more than 30 years ago.

Outside on the streets, thronged with motor scooters in the 30C heat, young men and women stopped to buy roses from the flower sellers at the hospital gates, preparing to give them to loved ones. In the morgue, an anonymous block at the back of this 1,000-bed hospital, love had had an unexpected, tragic outcome. Somewhere in the hospital, a mother was grieving for the loss of her son.

A porter donned latex gloves and untied the ribbon. Carefully unwrapping the bundle, he revealed a tiny corpse, delivered a few hours earlier, its skin a livid purple, fine black strands of hair plastered to its head. He turned the infant over and there, at the base of the spine where the tissues had failed to form, like a wound, was the unmistakable sign of spina bifida.

This is the only birth defect recognised by the US as a legacy of Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant sprayed by American troops from 1965 until 1971 during the Vietnam war. But there is worse, far worse, in this hospital, the largest in south Vietnam. Some of the most severely affected babies, abandoned by their parents, live on two floors in a wing known as the Peace Village.

Entering it is like stepping back 40 years to the days of Thalidomide, the morning-sickness pill prescribed in Britain in the 1960s that left babies hideously deformed. In the first room, cots line the walls. In one, a four-year-old girl rocks on all fours, gently banging her head against the bars. A nurse turns her round to reveal a face with no eyes. Under a thick fringe of dark hair, there are soft indentations in the skin either side of her nose, where her eyes should be. Above her cot a printed label gives her name as Tran Sinh, and her date of birth as 27 February 2002. According to the nurses she was born in an area heavily sprayed with Agent Orange, where the land is still contaminated 35 years after the spraying stopped......

Agent Orange: the legacy of a weapon of mass destruction

[Bilderbooger]

Did the US kill your mom or something, Al-K? What's the deal with your hatred of my country?

[Al-khiyal]

What a bizarre question ya Bilderbooger. Are you ill? Since when did posting articles, written and researched by others, translate into 'hatred of your country'?

Seriously, you must be ill to come up with such a ludicrous comment, or is it that you feel that the facts of history and their contemporary relevance - or any other current events - should not be examined by others in case the facts tend to present U.S. actions in a bad light?

Do you send similar messages to the journalists, editors, printers, newsagents, newspaper vendors, Internet service providers, international news agencies, radio and TV broadcasters and everyone else involved in disseminating this and other information? Are you seriously suggesting that all who transmit this information are displaying 'hatred of your country'?

Or are you just playing the fool when you come here?

[Al-khiyal]

If you like, ya Bilderbooger, I can post the series of Pulitzer prize winning articles from The Toledo Blade about American war crimes in Vietnam, you know, the ones about American GIs beheading tiny Vietnamese babies and committing other atrocities.

Then you can tip off the authorities over there about 'U.S. hatred' being alive and well and thriving among Americans in the U.S.A.

Damn it, why wait for you to answer, eh?

Here you are, now everyone can read about how Americans were beheading babies and committing other savage war crimes long before people like you began to think it was something unique to Iraq - or Muslims. Or maybe you did know and just don't like people like me bringing such things up?

Thanks for reminding me, ya Bilderbooger. I have many facts about the disgusting deeds of your nation right at my fingertips. Any time you wish to learn of more you need only ask.

[Bilderbooger]

Originally posted by Al-khiyal


Thanks for reminding me, ya Bilderbooger. I have many facts about the disgusting deeds of your nation right at my fingertips. Any time you wish to learn of more you need only ask.

No doubt you do. It's certainly obvious to the membership that you've hijacked this board in order to bash the United States.

Nothing new. I've seen it before.

[Al-khiyal]

It's paranoid people like you, ya Bilderbooger, who make an art of trying to brush American crimes under the carpet by branding people who refer to them as 'filled with hatred'.

You may wish to present the history of your nation in a sanitized way, a dishonest way. You may wish to think that others will be affected by the historical (and hysterical) amnesia that seems to attach itself to characters like yourself.

But when you stoop to calling someone 'filled with hatred' for posting an article published today by a British newspaper and hosted on its online site, an article written and researched by somebody else, then you are really showing the other members here exactly what you are.

Apart from being ignorant you are somewhat pathetic. Can you spell out for us my personal responsibility for having the article researched, written, published and hosted online?

As you are not going to be able to do that I'll spell something out for you: Your ignorance and accusations mark you down as completely brainwashed. You really should try to educate yourself and learn that levelling baseless allegations is no substitute for being informed about the world and particularly the history of your own country. If you are reduced to rejecting facts and trying to claim they are 'propaganda' then you really are in a bad way.

As the members here can see.

[Al-khiyal]

Activists and Vietnam War veterans wrapped up a global conference on Agent Orange Wednesday with a plea to the U.S. government and chemical companies to take responsibility for health problems linked to the wartime defoliant.

"We ... demand that U.S. chemical companies pay compensation equal to their liability. We demand the U.S. government be held responsible for making contributions to overcome the consequences of toxic chemicals," a statement adopted at the end of the meeting read.

More than 100 activists and from at least six countries including the United States, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Canada attended the two-day conference in Hanoi......

At Agent Orange conference, a plea to U.S.