Feature on BBC London News about damage to Vietnamese children caused by American use of Agent Orange. Did that cross the red line or was it merely an orange one?

JK2006 wrote:
Feature on BBC London News about damage to Vietnamese children caused by American use of Agent Orange. Did that cross the red line or was it merely an orange one?

What about all those Japanese maimed and killed by either terror or Nuclear bombing?

Unit 731 anyone ? www.google.co.uk/#q=unit%20731

I'll be pedantic, but Agent Orange was first and foremost a herbicide. Its decision to be used was to uncover vast tracts of jungle to enable the jungle hiding places to be more obvious from the air.........the consequences of human deformity and strife afterwards were not the primary design of the agent, were as a nerve agent weapon has only the intended effect........subtle difference in political terms, and I know it makes toss all difference to those affected, but it is a debatable difference

Well it was a weapon. And it was chemical - herbicide or not. And it killed people. But you could say that about a lot of things. I still don't understand the fuss about chemical weapons in Syria. Why are they provoking so much Western hysteria?

For me, the answer lies in the 'Treaties' of international agreement that outlaws their use.....it is then seen as a world policing job when these weapons are used........

A catch 22 in lots of ways, the West stockpile and produce them for fear of not having what an enemy might have, but then they stand by the international opinion that they shouldn't be used......hence the outcry that the conventions are being breached.

I guess the whole analogy is Nuclear weapons? But Chemical weapons are easier to come by, so maybe thats the western fear? That they are seen as a lesser weapon than Nuclear, they are easier to obtain and perhaps are percieved by the west as easier to deploy and less destructive than Nuclear to be used by an enemy.....whoever that enemy might be. Call it paranoia, call it insecurity, call it double standards or just call it international politics..........

Either way, its is agreed they are very nasty, they are very effective and they are just another form of killing weapon like an explosive type......maybe the UK hang up is based in the 1914-18 war and the sight of black and white Tommy Atkins hand on the shoulder of the bloke in from with bandages around his eyes, i don't know, but those images are newsreel, 99 years old, the recent images where children in colour 1 month ago................shocking

So a country uses chemicals to kill those of its citizens who it judges to be guilty of a certain crime. It also threatens other countries with the use of chemical weapons. How do we judge that country?


Well I guess it rather depends on which country it is.


The hypocrisy at play here astounds me.

Mr Reason wrote:
I'll be pedantic, but Agent Orange was first and foremost a herbicide. Its decision to be used was to uncover vast tracts of jungle to enable the jungle hiding places to be more obvious from the air.........the consequences of human deformity and strife afterwards were not the primary design of the agent, were as a nerve agent weapon has only the intended effect........subtle difference in political terms, and I know it makes toss all difference to those affected, but it is a debatable difference

you may judge the culpability of the US military-industrial complex from the link below; same rationale applies to their ongoing use of "first and foremost an anti-tank weapon" Depleted Uranium.

www.vn-agentorange.org/VFP_AO_policy_2008.html

Prior to its use in Vietnam, the U.S. military had not undertaken any Agent Orange toxicological testing of its own before ordering and deploying the chemical. The approval by the Army Chemical corps scientists of Agent Orange as safe was based on data received directly from V.K. Rowe, Dow’s chief toxicologist. Id. at 57.

According to Thomas Whiteside in his book “The Pendulum and the Toxic Cloud” the “American military, having developed 2,4,5,T as part of its biological warfare program in the years following the Second World War, unhesitatingly employed it during the war in Southeast Asia....without the Pentagon’s scientists ever having taken the precaution of systematically testing whether the chemical caused harm to the unborn offspring of as much as an experimental mouse.” (Whiteside is quoted Id. at p. 57).

The chemical companies which sought to protect a lucrative government contract and lucrative domestic business failed to disclose to the government the results of their internal testing. See April 19, 1983 New York Times article entitled“1965 Memos Show Dow’s Anxiety on Dioxin.” The memos referred to were part of those filed in the US Veterans case and mentioned to some extent in the various decisions. These memos clearly show that Dow had described the results which showed severe liver damage in rabbits and the fact that Dow could not find a a no effect level in the rabbits regardless of the level of exposure.

As reports of increased miscarriages, stillbirths and birth defects in Vietnam as well as domestically began to gain the attention of US scientists, it turned out that the National Cancer Institute had already (in 1962) contracted the Bionetics Research laboratories of Bethesda Maryland to conduct cancer studies on a number of pesticides including 2,4,-D and 2,4,5-T. The study was to be reviewed by a “blue ribbon” commission of scientists.” When in the summer of 1965 Bionetics tests on female mice and rats showed that 2,4,5,-T was a powerful teratogen, Dow objected that they had used a dirty sample. Id at 58.

Unfortunately, through a combination of industry pressure and White House concern that the report would feed growing anti-war sentiment, the report was not made public until 1969. When the Bionetics Study was eventually made public, the government ordered restrictions and later a ban on its use both in Vietnam and domestically.

In Obama's speech yesterday: 'That's what makes America special. That's what makes America exceptional'. Then he mentions 'humility'...