There are an estimated 650,000 like Hong Hanh in Vietnam, suffering
from an array of baffling chronic conditions. Another 500,000 have
already died. The thread that weaves through all their case histories is
defoliants deployed by the US military during the war. Some of the
victims are veterans who were doused in these chemicals during the war,
others are farmers who lived off land that was sprayed. The second
generation are the sons and daughters of war veterans, or children born
to parents who lived on contaminated land. Now there is a third
generation, the grandchildren of the war and its victims.
This is a chain of events bitterly denied by the US government.
Millions of litres of defoliants such as Agent Orange were dropped on
Vietnam, but US government scientists claimed that these chemicals were
harmless to humans and short-lived in the environment. US strategists
argue that Agent Orange was a prototype smart weapon, a benign tactical
herbicide that saved many hundreds of thousands of American lives by
denying the North Vietnamese army the jungle cover that allowed it
ruthlessly to strike and feint. New scientific research, however,
confirms what the Vietnamese have been claiming for years. It also
portrays the US government as one that has illicitly used weapons of
mass destruction, stymied all independent efforts to assess the impact
of their deployment, failed to acknowledge cold, hard evidence of
maiming and slaughter, and pursued a policy of evasion and deception.
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