Here's just one little reminder for George W. Bush what Vietnam accomplished, since he said this weekend on his 30-year-late trip to Vietnam, how we need to use Vietnam as an example for Iraq and stay and finish our job.
Vietnam's toxic legacy
Officials move to address lingering effects of Agent Orange contamination
By Anthony Faiola
DA NANG, Vietnam - For a stark reminder of the Vietnam War, people living near the airport in this central industrial city can still stroll along the old stone walls that once surrounded a U.S. military base. But Luu Thi Nguyen, a 31-year-old homemaker, needs only to look into the face of her young daughter.
Van, 5, spends her days at home, playing by herself on the concrete floor because local school officials say her appearance frightens other children. She has an oversize head and a severely deformed mouth, and her upper body is covered in a rash so severe her skin appears to have been boiled. According to Vietnamese medical authorities, she is part of a new generation of Agent Orange victims, forever scarred by the U.S.-made herbicide containing dioxin, one of the world's most toxic pollutants.
For decades, the United States and Vietnam have wrangled over the question of responsibility for the U.S. military's deployment of Agent Orange. But officials say they are now moving to jointly address at least one important aspect of the spraying's aftermath -- environmental damage at Vietnamese "hot spots" such as Nguyen's city, Da Nang -- that are still contaminated with dioxin 31 years after the fall of Saigon.Though neither Nguyen nor her husband was exposed to the Agent Orange sprayed by U.S. forces from 1962 to 1971, officials here say they believe the couple genetically passed on dioxin's side effects after eating fish from contaminated canals. "I am not interested in blaming anyone at this point," the soft-spoken Nguyen said on a recent day, stroking her daughter's face. "But the contamination should not keep doing this to our children. It must be cleaned up."
During the war, American forces sprayed about 12 million gallons of Agent Orange over the jungle canopies and jade-green highlands of Vietnam. The most toxic of the herbicides used for military purposes, it defoliated countless trees in areas where the communist North Vietnamese troops hid supply lines and conducted guerrilla warfare.
Because Vietnam lacked the resources to conduct its own environmental cleanup, dioxin-related birth defects have been diagnosed in thousands of children whose parents were not exposed during the war. In many cases, families such as the Nguyens were not warned of the hazard until it was too late.
At least one group of victims has already made a formal push for compensation, filing a lawsuit in New York against the chemical companies that produced Agent Orange, including Dow Chemical and Monsanto. In the late 1970s, U.S. veterans filed a similar case and settled out of court in 1984 for a $180 million payment. The Vietnamese case was dismissed last year, but an appeal hearing is expected next month.
The recent advances toward cleaning up the environment are of little solace to these Vietnamese. In a country where birth defects are considered by some an embarrassing reflection of the ill deeds of ancestors, many of the children born with the most severe defects end up abandoned or living in squalid conditions with families too poor to pay for adequate care.The lucky ones end up in the Peace Village ward for Agent Orange victims at a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon.
A 2004 study by the Vietnamese government indicated that birth defects in Sathay were 10 to 20 times more common than the national average. Duc Nguyen is engaged to be married next month to a beautiful young woman he met through his work at the hospital. But he is still far from finding peace."I find it ironic that on one hand you put [Saddam Hussein] on trial for using biological warfare, but in another country where you sprayed chemicals for warfare, you neglect your responsibility," said Duc Nguyen, who is not related to Luu Thi Nguyen in Da Nang.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15692010/from/ET/
If it had been up to Bush, we'd still be in Vietnam spraying WMD on the civilians. Here's another reminder for Bush since he forgets Vietnam probably because he was too busy skipping out on his National Guard duty to get drunk: 58,000+ dead American troops and thousands more scarred and maimed.
