Greg Dobbs has a piece in the Rocky Mountain News entitled "The Poisonous Legacy of the Vietnam War." As a reporter for HDNet Televison, Dobbs and his t.v. team were the first western journalists to visit areas around former U.S. Air Force bases where Agent Orange was stored. Water supplies in Vietnam were tainted, and three generations of people living in the immediate areas around the bases have been born with grotesque birth defects.
The Vietnamese call it the American War. Of course, many American soldiers were also exposed to the poisonous chemical dioxin in Agent Orange. President Bush has asked Congress to appropriate $3 million for humanitarian aid and chemical mitigation. The Ford Foundation is adding even more funding.
Agent Orange, named for the color-coded barrels in which it was mixed and loaded onto aircraft, then sprayed on the trees and jungle foliage along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, to deprive the communists of cover as they moved men and equipment down from North Vietnam. It is just one aspect of the poisonous legacy of that war.
What about the way the media reported that war? What about the way our troops were treated when they returned home? What about the huge numbers of Americans who fled to Canada? What about the disgraceful way we left Vietnam, allowing the communists to slaughter millions of Vietnamese in the south? What about the courageous efforts of the boat people to escape in tiny boats, hoping to make it to freedom?
3 comments:
In honesty who knew that Agent Orange was so awful? My dad who served in Vietnam and who was exposed now has adult onset of diabetes because of it. He was spit on when he returned to the US. And he dumbstruck at the lack of the sacredness of life among the Asians, at least of that time. It's not an easy subject for me to feel objective about.
That he was spit on is just despicable. The left is still spitting our way, only now they are positions of power, running our country. Please thank your father for his service.
Yes, please thank your father for his service and sacrifice, Terri.
Your father is a Hero!
Thanks Bob, for pointing out what the cowardly MSM refuse to report about the Vietnam War.
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