by Jack Dalton

I’ve been thinking about the article I read about the lawsuit some Vietnamese people brought against the U.S. government for the use of Agent Orange during the ten-year American War in Vietnam—20 million gallons of it—and thinking about it deeply. The entire issue of Agent Orange use and contamination is a real sore spot with me on a personal level, as it is with many of us who were in Vietnam and in contact with that “stuff.”

It comes as no big surprise to me that this government would petition the court to drop the case the Vietnamese have brought. Hell, this government still refuses to accept what AO did to us that wore this nation’s uniform let alone be willing to acknowledge what AO has done to millions of Vietnamese. If the courts were to not only hear, but decide the case the Vietnamese brought, that would open the floodgate of additional lawsuits by us vets of that war.

This government would then have to acknowledge that AO is definitely a chemical weapon of mass destruction. The government would then be compelled to look at real science, medical science and the hundreds of verifiable reports worldwide that state in no uncertain of terms that Agent Orange has drastic and dramatic negative impacts on people’s health and well being. The government would then have to face up to and openly admit it knew what AO would do to people even before it was used the first time. The government would then have to start giving contaminated vets their just due—medical treatment and disability checks monthly where appropriate - and that is something this government is flat unwilling to do. Not in today’s climate and not with the Bush Cabal in charge of the asylum.

One of the Bush mouthpieces recently told the world that paying veterans’ disability money for injuries and illnesses sustained while in performance of their duties is a “threat to our national security.”

Not one Congress or Administration since that war in Vietnam , Republican and Democrat alike, has been willing to look at or deal with what Agent Orange has done to people and is still doing to people; like killing them slowly, piece by piece on a daily basis.

Starting in the 1990’s this government, in conjunction with the Veterans Administration, started putting together a list of “presumed” conditions as a result of AO contamination. Currently there are ten different diseases on that list, for all the good it does. That’s due to the simple fact that even if you have one of the “presumed” conditions, have the absolute proof you were exposed to AO on an ongoing basis, are being medically treated for the disease, the VA will still deny “service connected” disability to that veteran.

Here is a real life example of what I mean. There is a veteran of the American War in Vietnam whom I know real, real well and have for a very long time. He was in Vietnam for close to two years and was at a place which was a storage and transfer depot for Agent Orange. Agent Brown, Agent Green, Agent White, and Agent Pink were also used in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

By the time he came back to he had already started getting sick. He was in the Long Beach Naval Hospital for close to three months with kidney failure and internal bleeding, and the nerves in his legs and hands started going numb constantly. After he was stabilized he was sent back to his duty station which was the Marine air base at El Toro , CA. He was then discharged in December of that year, 1967; but less than four months after being discharged he found himself in a VA hospital with kidney failure, internal bleeding, and nerves going dead in his legs and hands. While there, paperwork was submitted to the VA for processing as a disability claim—it was denied. Less than a year out of that VA hospital he found himself back in the hospital for the very same conditions.

This continued off and on for the next 35 years with over twenty requests being submitted to the VA for service-connected disability as by then this veteran had 22 documented diseases covering virtually every system in his body—bones, muscles, nerves, immune, endocrine. You name it, the organ was affected. Every claim that was submitted by this veteran was denied. By now he had four confirmed diseases that were on the VA’s list of “presumptive” Agent Orange diseases—but still he was denied service-connected disability.

Finally he was able to get non-service connected disability in mid 1999 due to the massive amount of physical damage which kept him unemployed for the better part of 20+ years. By then he had undergone over 80 major surgeries just to keep his body working; arms, hands, shoulders, legs, kidneys and bladder - nothing was left out of the mix. All of his doctors were pretty much in agreement with Agent Orange being the culprit and cause of all of this. But, still the VA denied his requests for service-connected disability classification. He kept fighting and in 2003 he was finally granted “service-connected” disability—but not for his physical conditions. Nope, the VA re-classified him service-connected disabled for combat-related PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). There was no mention of his physical conditions in his new VA classification. I guess the VA decided that all of his physical problems had disappeared.

Peripheral Neuro Neuropathy is one of the presumed Agent Orange diseases; this he has, and the VA still refuses to add this to his service connected classification. This government will go to great lengths to keep anyone and what they have from being connected to Agent Orange. If they didn’t do this, the government would then have to openly admit a lot of things—not the least of which is, as Henry Kissinger put it, the people in the military “are dumb animals” to do with as we will. Test animals for the makers of drugs and chemicals.

Forty years after extensive use of AO and the harm produced, this nation still denies the harm caused by Agent Orange. As a consequence, tens of thousands of veterans of that war are dead due to lack of treatment, lack of medical care and a host of other “lacks.” Forty years later this country still tries to cover up its use of a chemical weapon of mass destruction—Agent Orange—and now Depleted Uranium can be added to the list.

Forty years later, people are sent to Iraq where a new weapon of mass destruction is being used that will do more harm than what Agent Orange has done and is still doing—the new one is Depleted Uranium. This current government of ours is saying the exact same thing about the use of depleted uranium—there is no harm to humans from the use of depleted uranium. They said the same thing about AO and look at the death toll. The death toll from disease due to contamination by depleted uranium will be worse; it will be higher as the use of depleted uranium is nothing less than nuclear warfare. But then, no Empire has ever really given a darn about anything other than invade and conquer at any cost. The people running this nation right now - Bush and company - care even less than those who came before them, as evidenced by their own words and actions. As a result, we now have a nation, a governing body and a military that willingly and willfully, eats its own!

Additional information on the Agent Orange issue and lawsuit:

http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/entry/agent_orange

Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin

Agent Orange Project, Fund for Reconciliation and Development (Great resource. Includes links to material drawn from the class-action lawsuit presently before the U.S. District Court in New York City.)
Agent Orange Lawsuit Filed by Vietnamese Victims
Justice for Victims of Agent Orange (Petition)

Operation Ranch Hand: The Air Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia, 1961-1971, William Buckingham, Jr. (U.S. Air Force, 1982)
Preliminary Assessment of Environmental Impacts Related to Spraying of Agent Orange Herbicide During the Viet Nam War, Hatfield Consultants, Ltd. (Canada, October 1998)

“Agent Orange Victims Sue Monsanto,” Tom Fawthrop, CorpWatch, November 4th, 2004
“Vietnamese seeking redress from US in Agent Orange suit,” Matt Steinglass, Boston Globe, February 27, 2005
“U.S. urges Judge to Dismiss Suit On Agent Orange Use in Vietnam,” William Glaberson, New York Times, February 28, 2005

_______________________________________________

Jack Dalton is a disabled veteran of the American War in Vietnam and co-editor of the Project for the Old American Century http://oldamericancentury.org/index.htm His email address is jack_dalton@comcast.net