In the book Scorched
Earth: Legacy of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam, Fred A. Wilcox sets out the
mission of discovering the consequences of “the most widely used herbicide in
Vietnam” – Agent Orange and its chemical – the dioxin, on the Vietnamese people
and their country. The author indicates that the use of herbicides to assist
the effort of control and defeat the communists by destroying their forest and
jungle cover was actually first approved by President John F. Kennedy. Even
though the dangerous use of defoliation directly on civilians and their
essential crops was revealed by the media, this program was continuously
carried out under the next two more presidential administrations. There were
many operations that used Agent Orange, but the most significant one was the
Operation Ranch Hand, which deployed more than 19 million gallons of herbicides
over 4.5 million acres of land. The book also indicates the effects of Agent
Orange on the land and people, including habitat destruction, birth defections,
cancers, and other diseases. Although the American Vietnamese veterans who got
contaminated by this chemical were received $180 million in compensation, none
of the 2 million Vietnamese who were directly and indirectly suffer from the
effects of exposure to Agent Orange received anything. As a result, in 2004, about
100 Vietnamese filed a lawsuit against these chemical companies to seek
compensation for the exposure. However, the American court failed to give
justice to those Vietnamese victims.
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