28 March 2006

Agent Orange victims gather to seek... justice?

Agent Orange victims gather to seek justice - Yahoo! News
Deformed children born to parents Vietnam believes were affected by the estimated 20 million gallons of herbicides, including Agent Orange, poured on the country were brought to the conference as dramatic evidence of its effects.
'The use of Agent Orange in Vietnam produced unacceptable threats to life, violated international law and created a toxic wasteland that continued to kill and injure civilian populations long after the war was over,' said Joan Duffy from Pennsylvania.

Uh... didn't John Stossel debunk this crap in 1996? He did a show about junk science and showed the USAF unit that loaded Agent Orange onto the aircraft. No one in Vietnam had more exposure to AO than these guys - their hazing ritual for new guys was to force them to drink a cup of it! Guess what? They're just as healthy as the rest of the population their age.
Could it be the deformed children are the result of thrid-world prenatal health care and relatively substandard preventive care? Wouldn't want to impugn our society, so let's just blame Agent Orange...

And what 'international law' was violated? Was Vietnam a signatory to any of these international 'laws'? And who's the enforcement regime for those 'laws'?

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