Agent Orange In The Vietnam War

This article tells of an interview between a reporter by the last name of Vigeland and retired Lieutenant Colonel Roberts. During the interview, Vigeland and Roberts discuss the horrors of Agent Orange and Roberts’ personal experience with it. Back in 1981, Roberts was a First Lieutenant in the military. He was the facilities maintenance officer of the Futenma Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. Roberts explains that one day he was assigned to check out the high chemical readings in the water runoff from the base. The theory of the chemicals coming from a collection of underground fuel tanks, Roberts was ordered to build a gate. As the they were digging, they came across several barrels. The more they digged, the more barrels they ran across. After they were done digging, they found a total of one hundred barrels neatly placed. Some were new, some were old, some were even leaking, but they were all unmarked. The barrels only had reddish-orange markings on them. Roberts believes that this was the tell-tale marker of Agent Orange. Then, Roberts

The Vietnam war was a long, costly Armed war between America and Vietnam, that was an attempt to stop the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Vietnam Cong, up against south Vietnam and America. The US Troops used napalm in 1965 – 1972, (essentially an inflammable liquid used in warfare.) This mixture creates a jelly-like substance that when lit, sticks to anything within range of it for 10 minutes, the effects of napalm on human skin is devastating, It can kill anything or burn down any object that sounds in its way, A survivor Of the napalm strike called Kim Phuc once said ‘Napalm is the most terrible pain you can imagine’ the fire from napalm can burn up to 2120 degrees, Kim was one of the only people to

48. The purpose of Agent Orange was to strip leaves from trees and shrubs to turn lands into wasteland.

Agent orange was used in the vietnam war from 1961-1971 and it is a mixture of 2 herbicides.

The Agent Orange Act of 1991 is the only legislative pathway to add ailments to the presumptive list of service connected illnesses for Vietnam Veterans. It is set to expire on September 30th, 2015. If the Act is allowed to expire comprehensive research reviews will end. Without continued research reviews, some Vietnam Veterans will never be covered for the ailments caused by their exposure. If this legislation is not extended there will be no new ailments added to the service connected presumptive list for Vietnam Veterans (after the 2014 report is released this December).

Buckingham says that: “Although the final Defense Department recommendation12 upon which President Kennedy had based his decision authorizing a defoliation operation 11 called for the overt approach, Secretary McNamara continued to hold open the option of disguising the defoliation program as a South Vietnamese operation” (38). This was the option that the Air Force favored in 1961 when the first round of spraying started. A letter from Ambassador Nolting in Saigon recommends that the aircraft being used for Ranch Hand should use civilian markings and their crews should dress as civilians. This air of secrecy would surround Ranch Hand until 1966 when the campaign to defoliate Vietnam would be made

This article is about veterans who served in the Korean War in 1967 who has been affected by Agent Orange. AgentOrange is a defoliant chemical that was used for an herbicide warfare program that causes multiple health problems to people who have been affected by it.The veterans have asked Congress to grant them health care and compensation forgetting it. The Congress denied the grant and the veterans are furious. Because many of the veterans are currently suffering from diseases and illnesses that was caused by the Agent Orange, they wanted benefits. There has been more than1.4 million people who are trying to get the grant from the Congress. They had only granted veterans who served on the Korean Demilitarized Zone from April 1968 through August 1971 eligible for benefits and has at least one illness that is connected to the Agent Orange.

created to try to deprive North Vietnamese soldiers, or guerillas, of food, cover, and other resources during the war. The U.S. sprayed nearly 20 million gallons in all from 1962 to 1971 in Vietnam, eastern Laos, and parts of Cambodia as part of Operation Ranch Hand. Unfortunately, the effects of Agent Orange did not just hurt the Viet Cong soldiers and the environment, but also many South Vietnam soldiers and U.S. soldiers who had to go through the pesticide infested area. The entire environment that it covered was harmed very substantially and nearly every person who came in contact with it now suffers from an illness or has a very increased risk of nerve, digestive, skin, and respiratory disorders, as well as numerous cancers. The ruminants from the chemical have also had effects on the offspring of veterans with it in their system; anywhere from birth defects to cancers have been reported from the chemical

Agent Orange is a herbicide that was used to defoliate the jungles, meaning the United States military was trying to kill off the trees in Vietnam in order to take away places for North Vietnamese military men could hide (1). The Viet Cong did not fight conventionally against the American military, they could not do so and expect to win. This caused them to resort to guerilla warfare in order to strike and weaken parts of a division or unit. The Americans used Agent Orange as a defense strategy in order to take away hiding places for the Viet Cong to run to after hitting the American units (2). What is especially harmful to those who were around Agent Orange and where it was sprayed was the dioxin, which is a byproduct of one of the chemicals components. People still worked and breathed even with the residue of the toxin still in the air and in the soil, civilians and military personnel alike. The toxin carried in it a carcinogen that got its way into the water and in the soil. Slowly as the years have passed and Vietnam has been hit with a lot of monsoons clean water has washed away the toxic water, but not before it entered into the food chain and then started to accumulate into body fat and tissue in humans that was able to passed from a mother to their child threw breast milk. The American military, by word of the American government, dumped millions of gallons of Agent Orange onto the southern half of

The war in Vietnam was, and continues to be, one of the most controversial hot button topics in American history. The military’s use of dangerous pesticides, like Agent Orange, is a major part of this controversy. Agent Orange is a defoliant that was widely used to deforest dense jungle areas to reduce both hiding places and food sources for the Vietnamese. During the war, American B-52 bombers released over nineteen million gallons of Agent Orange over the Vietnamese countryside. After ten years of continuous dumping, 1971 finally marked the end of America’s use of Agent Orange and other herbicides. In 1974, the United States government, headed by Richard Nixon, swore the country would never again use chemical weapons in a first strike. (Levy and Scott-Clark)

The aftermath of the Vietnam War was not what many soldiers expected and this greatly impacted the lives of all involved. Their service wasn’t acknowledged like other war veterans and instead, they were viewed with distrust and anger and used as scapegoats for the travesties of the war they were forced to fight in. Despite the returned soldiers efforts to return back to civilian life, they found no support from the government, or elsewhere. This caused soldiers to develop many mental illnesses that continued to affect and impact their lives. They also experienced symptoms of Agent Orange, causing fatalities and health defects.

“We were told, ‘it’s totally safe and it won’t hurt you at all,” he added. “We were told you can drink it, you can brush your teeth with it, or you can bathe in it. It won’t hurt you. Those were lies.” (“U.S. Soldiers Sprayed Agent Orange across Korea” 1) Agent Orange was an herbicide used by the United States military forces in Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 to destroy their enemies’ food supply, land, and protection. Twelve million gallons of this toxin were sprayed. (Department of Preventive Medicine 1) It affected the Vietnamese and the American troops who were fighting in the same jungle. Little did the United States military know the effects of this dangerous herbicide. It caused many long-term complications, including health problems

It’s a familiar phrase with a chilling alteration. This was the catchphrase of “Operation Ranch Hand,” the nickname of the military mission to rain down 19 million pounds of herbicides over Southern Vietnam between 1962 and 1971. 11 million pounds of these herbicides were Agent Orange, an herbicide, named for the identifying orange stripe on its barrel, intended to devastate the dense vegetation and force the enemy into the open. At the time, the United States government insisted that the herbicides were harmless to humans and created no lasting harm. The main focus at the time was that this development would turn the tide of the war and most importantly, spare American soldiers’ lives. After further laboratory

During the peak of U.S involvement in the Vietnam War, between 1967 and 1969 the U.S employed a strategy that proved to be a disaster on many different levels. With over 500,000 of their troops serving in Vietnam at the time, the widespread use of herbicides, particularly Agent Orange began being sprayed over the Vietnamese jungle by planes. The aim of this was to eliminate the ‘invisibility' of the Viet Cong and offer a safe path for the American troops to follow. This was a good idea in theory, but what the American strategists didn't think of was the toxicity of the herbicides, and the fact that not only would the Viet Cong be exposed to it, but their troops and innocent South Vietnamese would be also. A widely speculated and argued repercussion of this is that many Vietnam veterans, and Vietnamese villagers began to give birth to babies with birth defects. However, a confirmed result

The destruction this chemical caused to the vegetation should have been the first clue that what destroys nature will in due time destroy us. We are the cause for this mess; but we should have been notified much earlier about the potential risk associated with Agent Orange. According to the Executive Summary on Operations Trail Dust and Ranch Hand, "On April 17,1995 Researchers have found that during the spraying of Agent Orange in southern Vietnam, dioxin levels in human tissue were as high as 900 times greater in Vietnamese living in southern Vietnam than those living in Northern Vietnam where Agent Orange was not used."(Arison5) It was not until 1993, when the Institute of Medicine News reported, "Evidence exists linking three cancers and two other health problems with chemicals used in herbicides used in the Vietnam War, a committee of the Institute of Medicine has concluded. Those diseases are soft tissue sarcoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and Hodgkin's disease as well as chloracne and prophyria cutanea tarda (PCT)."(Turner-Lowe1) An explanation of each disease follows: Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma refers to any group of cancers of lymphoid tissues that multiply. These are found mainly in the lymph nodes and the spleen. The symptoms are related to painless swelling of the lymph nodes in the neck or groin region. There is an attempted