The Militant - March 5, 2007 -- U.S. gov’t to pay for Agent Orange poisoning

Vol. 71/No. 9 March 5, 2007

U.S. gov’t to pay for Agent Orange poisoning

BY ROSS HOGAN
February 16—The U.S. government has agreed to pay $400,000 toward a $1 million study into the removal of dioxin residues at the former U.S. air base in Da Nang, Vietnam, reported BBC News on February 9. This is the first time Washington has agreed to any such funding.

Dioxin is an ingredient used in the toxic herbicide Agent Orange. The defoliant is named Agent Orange because it was stored in drums marked with an orange band during the Vietnam War. It contains TCDD, the most poisonous dioxin. It has been known to cause cancer and other diseases, including deformities in children of those exposed to the chemical.

The Pentagon used an estimated 70 million liters of toxic chemicals like Agent Orange during its war against Vietnam in the 1960s and early ‘70s, in order to defoliate jungles to aid the U.S. military in fighting the Vietnamese resistance. Hanoi estimates that 4 million people have been affected by the toxin.

Washington has claimed that there is little proof of the actual effects of Agent Orange. However, following a 1984 lawsuit against U.S. chemical companies, Vietnam veterans in the United States who developed symptoms of dioxin poisoning won the right to $180 million in compensation.

A separate lawsuit, brought against U.S. chemical companies in 2005 on behalf of Agent Orange victims in Vietnam was rejected by a federal court, on the basis that the case did not have “legal grounds.” An appeal of that verdict is pending in a U.S. Court of Appeals.

During its decade-long war against Vietnam and neighboring countries in Indochina, Washington unleashed more bombs than had been dropped in all previous wars, including 100,000 tons of napalm. Nearly 60,000 U.S. troops died in combat, while millions of inhabitants of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were killed.

The damage inflicted on the Vietnamese people has been long lasting. It includes the effects of Agent Orange. This can be seen at the Friendship Village outside of Hanoi, where not only veterans of the war but their children and the offspring of their children are treated today with visible symptoms of deformations and diseases caused by the defoliant. (For more details see “Friendship Village in Vietnam treats Agent Orange victims,” an eyewitness report in the April 4, 2005, Militant.)

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