Legacy of Agent Orange
From Slate:
During the Vietnam War, millions of gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed across regions of the country to destroy forest cover used by guerillas. It contained the dangerous dioxin TCCD. On this day in 1984, a $180 million out-of-court settlement was announced in the Agent Orange class-action suit brought by Vietnam veterans, who argued that exposure to AO had caused various cancers, birth defects, and other chronic diseases. The settlement came to government benefits of about $1,500 a month until 1997. Yet many Vietnamese victims who also suffer greatly have received nothing from the United States since the end of the war. Magnum and Slate present images of Vietnam’s victims of Agent Orange.
View the photo gallery (contains disturbing – more accurately, sad and tragic – images).
To think that Iraqis will have to endure a similar legacy from the depleted uranium munitions, chemical weapons, destruction of medical facilities and all the associated environmental costs of war…it’s absolutely infuriating.
These are war crimes, plain and simple. And so the three step process for ending the war in Iraq ought to be:
- Withdraw
- Pay massive reparations
- Bring those responsible – Bush, Cheney, and all the others on down – to justice, which, since I oppose capital punishment even when it is well-deserved, means life imprisonment.
Even that would salve only a tiny portion of all this pain and suffering.