Discuss: Agent Orange: A Chapter from History That Just Won’t End

There’s no question that Monsanto has sold a lot of Roundup herbicide over the years. The comment posted March 26 incorrectly states that Roundup products contain 2,4-D.  Roundup products contain the active ingredient glyphosate and many so-called “inerts,” some of which have been disclosed in the scientific literature and are known to be more toxic than glyphosate.  It’s high time to end the secrecy of “inerts” and require disclosure of all ingredients on pesticide product labels.

Now I know why your mother Kathy, who is a good friend of mine, is so proud of you. Thanks for speaking power to truth. Great writing with emotion and facts.We have been trying to educate an apathetic public about the human costs of war (PTSD, agent orange and depleted uranium) for years. Take care. Aaron Davis Veterans for Peace/Vietnam Veterans Against the War Salt Lake City, Utah

Thank you Ben for your courage and humanity.

IN addition to all the places the US government has bombed - with increasingly toxic weapons such as Depleted Uranium used against the people of Iraq and Yugoslavia—let us also remember the people of Vieques, Puerto Rico, in whose homes and lands the testing of all weapons since WWII took place.

The US government needs to stop its production of these weapons, stop the sale of these weapons, and begin the real compensation and cleaning process.

The government won’t do it, though, unless the US people demand it.

My uncle returned from Vietnam and became a peace-loving hippie and an artist. I adored him as a kid: he paid special attention to me and encouraged my creativity. He died in 1979, from first testicular cancer and finally lung cancer. He was a victim of the Vietnam war just as certainly as anyone who was killed directly by the VietCong. I grieve that I didn’t have him around as I grew up the lone iconoclast in a Southern Baptist family. I can’t imagine how different it might have been. I wonder, too, about the cousins I might have had. I feel like something special was taken from me.

I liked the part in Ben’s writing about the contractor driver at the wheel of the vehicle taking you to the DavisMontham mothball base.  It is a mystery how our human attractions endure even in such eerie settings, and on such ironic adventures into our origins and conditions.

I drew a parallel, however, between the constellation of politicians who configured the US combat effort in that decade, and the bunch now under criticism for the strange strategies in US foreign war policy in 2001-2008.  The responsibility for development of planning gets divided among various experts, or pretenders at expertise; and a president approves; or, maybe, a president boosts the process along the way; or perhaps the president is a public politician figure who is a bit chary of making any waves to disturb processes long in existence before he got elected to lead the US government; and, likely, a blend of all those incentives. 

Ben should send a copy of this Orion article on the old C123 craft tour to the current three prominent presidential campaign candidates, to see what they think of how this story should develop their thinking in the foreign policy and domestic governance technique areas.  The article speaks eloquently for itself; so the accompanying note from its author needs to say only very little.  Let them provide a glimpse into their character in their reaction.

I totally agree with John Lopresti with regards to sending this article to the presidential campaign candidates.  So much still need to be addressed.—In Gratitude
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Hi Ben. I loved your story. Believe it or not, I am a lot like you. I have a similar story and my own defect, a nevus sebaceous. It happens kind of like the hand but is a skin/nerve. Also, I am ADD and have a child with asthma/allergy. I am now 37 and seeing the connections to the Orange. I never thought of my defect as that, but just an odd mole….and I never realized how the orange was everywhere. My Dad just did not realize he was in it but must have been.

Forty-three years ago (1965) I was at Bien Hoa AB VN. As everybody else, thanks to Agent Orange (AO), the VN followed me home. Despite my many side-effects of Dioxin, 43 years later, VA keeps rating me at ZERO % for AO illnesses.  I am still knocking my head againsty the bureaucratic VA wall of lies and deception. IOM, In its 2000 (2001) bi-annual report to VA Secretary admitted that due to so many variables in the data and the fact that the VN chemicals had never actually been properly studied, the information was just not there to make a quantitative deciion as to whether or not the personnel who served in Vietnam were or were not affected. We need to make a concentrated en-masse effort by writing our respective congressmen, for VA to acknowledge that the millions of dollars wasted on rigged “studies”, such as Operation Ranch Hand - have failed to exonerate the government or the manufacturers from causing deadly harm to those of us who served in VN, or in other places where AO was sprayed, stored or transported. It’s time to stop this cruel hoax against America’s patriots. Placido Salazar, USAF Retired, Vietnam Veteran