US Is Finally Cleaning Up Agent Orange In Vietnam

derekmead writes "It only took 40 years. And yes, Washington still disputes Hanoi's claim that up to 4 million Vietnamese suffered contact with the defoliant, which was dumped en masse in a U.S. air campaign to scorch away the dense jungle cover under which guerilla fighters hid. But the AP reports that the U.S. is finally set to start cleaning up the mess. The numbers are staggering: Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed some 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and a galaxy of other herbicides on nearly a quarter of former South Vietnam. The defoliant ate through about 5 millions acres – a tract comparable in size to Massachusetts – of forest. An additional half-million acres of crops were decimated."

Comments

Re:What a waste of tax payer money!

[agm]

The money would be much better given back to the people it was taken from!

The atrocities

[Taco Cowboy]

The atrocities were just too many to be documented

Accounts such as

Rape

Women being gang raped
M-16 muzzle stuck into her private part
then trigger was squeezed

Cannibalism

G.I. cutting out hearts and livers of dead vietcon fighters
forced local food vendors to cook those organs
enjoyed cuisine made of cooked vietcon liver/heart

were very very common back then

As for the Western journalists who were stationed in Vietnam?

Even those who were anti-war - they got so horrified by what they saw they often "forgot" to report anything