Weapons of Mass and Durable Destruction in Vietnam

Weapons of Mass and Durable Destruction in Vietnam and the ME
By Maryam, Mohammed Ibn Laith, Fatima.
Feb 19, 2008, 12:59


" 'Ongoing diplomacy' - what a nice way of saying genocide"

Three decades after US soldiers and diplomats scrambled aboard the last planes out of Saigon in April 1975, the toxins they left behind still poison Vietnam.

In the 3,160 villages in the southern part of Vietnam within the Agent Orange spraying zone, 800,000 people continue to suffer serious health problems and are in need of constant medical attention. Last month, members of a US Vietnamese working group reported that it will cost at least $14m to remove dioxin residues from just one site around the former US airbase in Danang. The cost of a comprehensive clean-up around three dioxin hotspots and former US bases is estimated at around $60m. The $3m pledged by US Congress last year is a pathetically inadequate amount set against the billions spent in waging war and deploying weapons of mass destruction.

This, as well as Israel’s use of outrageously huge
amounts of cluster bombs in south Lebanon in 2006, most of them leftovers from US’s munitions from the Vietnam war era, will certainly go unnoticed and unpunished while these same countries are waging and threatening wars in the ME in the name of cleaning the area from WMD. I think the lesson to be learned from Vietnam is that the goal of USrael is not to clean the region from WMD but to inundate it with its own, thereby renewing its stock, feeding the war industry, and prolonging the war effects on the ennemy’s civilian population, in the absence of a clear military victory against the enemy.

Source: Les Politiques: Weapons of Mass and Durable
Destruction in Vietnam and the ME

From the article Sophia linked to:

Why has Washington been so doggedly determined to deny any compensation to Vietnamese victims, even refusing to come up with humanitarian aid? A clue can be found in the intervention of the White House counsel in the Vietnamese lawsuit against the chemical companies. The US government intervened to argue that if the court permitted the case to prosper, it would undermine national security and limit presidential options in a time of war.

In the New York Court Seth Waxman, defence counsel for the chemical companies, argued there was a lack of legal precedent for punishing those who used poisons during warfare, and said US battlefield decisions could be harmed. "This does affect our ongoing diplomacy," he said, citing the use of depleted uranium shells by US forces in Iraq.

Source: Comment is free: Agent of suffering

U.S. warplanes dumped about 18 million gallons (70 million liters) of the defoliant on Vietnamese forests between 1962 and 1971 to destroy Vietnamese sources of food and cover. The plaintiffs seek damages from dioxin poisoning which decades later they say has caused cancer, deformities and organ dysfunction.

Source: Vietnamese appeal agent orange suit in New York | U.S. | Reuters

Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) constitute a group of persistent environmental chemicals. A number of dioxin or furan congeners, as well as some co-planar PCBs have been shown to exert a number of toxic responses similar to those of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), the most toxic dioxin. These effects include dermal toxicity, immunotoxicity, reproductive effects and teratogenicity, endocrine disruption and carcinogenicity.

Source: WHO - Assessment of the health risk of dioxins: re-evaluation of the Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI)

The judges appeared unmoved by previous cases from years following World War Two, when makers of the gas Zyklon B, used in Nazi death camps, were convicted of crimes.

Unlike those cases, the judges questioned if poisons used in war that were not directly intended to kill people and only found years later to cause harm violated international law.

"It’s a different circumstance here, is it not?" asked appeals court judge Robert Sack. "Is poison designed to kill or hurt?"

Source: Vietnamese appeal agent orange suit in New York | U.S. | Reuters

"This does affect our ongoing diplomacy," he said, citing the use of depleted uranium shells by US forces in Iraq.

"Ongoing diplomacy" what a nice way of saying "genocide". We Irakis know all about American "ongoing diplomacy":

13129 malformed children have been born in Iraq in the last five years. Their deformities have been caused by American Depleted Uranium munitions used in the American led 1991 "Desert Storm" war with Irak launched after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The war saw heavy use of depleted uranium rounds by American and British forces and was followed by a punitive sanctions regime enforced by the United Nations primarily at America’s behest. The sanctions included preventing Irak from importing drugs for the treatment of cancers and birth defects. The current war on Irak was launched on the pretext that Irak was failing to comply with sanctions and had weapons of mass destruction.

Source: Gorilla’s Guides: 13129

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

–60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Source: "We Think the Price Is Worth It"

According to the green zone government Ministry of Health the numbers of maimed children born with defects in Irak after the United States used over 940 thousand depleted uranium rounds in the war with Iraq in 1991 in the last 5 years is 13129.

The report from Al Melaf gives the statistics from a Ministry of Health briefing on the number of children born with birth defects since 2001 as 13129 in total.

The number of deformed children born last year was more than 1919.

Ninewa (Nineveh) province, has the highest number of children born maimed as 411.

Baghdad is next with 372 children born distorted.

Basra has seen the birth of 300 distorted children .

Between 30 to 40 children per month are born with defects attributed to their mothers inhalation of radioactive dust from depleted uranium rounds. The American army used depleted uranium during the last war and this was confirmed by a German team who visited Irak recently and were able to obtain a missile which proved after checking that the American forces used depleted uranium.

Source: Gorilla’s Guides: 13129

We Irakis know exactly what former U.S Solicitor General Seth Paul Waxman means when he talks about "ongoing diplomacy".

Maryam, Mohammed Ibn Laith, Fatima.


www.uruknet.info?p=41259

gorillasguides.com/2008/02/17/what-a-nice-way-of-saying-genocide/