So I saw that there was a talk about Agent Orange use in Vietnam on Book TV. It turned out it was some guy, can't remember his name, along with Noam Chomsky. It was somewhat interesting until this gem came out from the guy who had just written the book. He said, "These companies sell this stuff to the government to make money and they didn't tell the government it was poisonous." This is incredible naivete I think. First of all, if you have a policy of burning down crops and forests with chemicals I'm pretty sure that you don't give a crap about any human life down there and not only that but the goal of a military operation is to inflict as much damage as possible. Is there any evidence at all that the government didn't know that these chemicals were poisonous? My guess is that they did and they probably expressly wanted it that way.
They had the thing where they would put these agents on their clothes for cameras to show it was not poisonous for people. Some didn't think it was poisonous. Most didn't know that for sure but didn't care. It is the same story as with DU today, most don't know what to think about it, but soldiers continue to be told it is nothing, and it continues to be used en masse.
Right but it's not like the government didn't know.
Exactly, and to say the government doesn't know that is utterly naive.
Government is made up of people. Do you think George W. Bush has a clue one way or the other if DU is harmful? The important thing is that they have an incentive not to know that it is, as do the manufacturers.
Oi. Yes I know it's made up of people. Doesn't change the fact that someone in the government knew about it and probably told others in the government. For example, top levels in the pentagon and the military probably knew about it and that's why they chose to use it.
The government has no liability. It acts like it has no liability.
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Clayton -
lol well pointless thread becomes even more pointless i guess.....on to 9/11!
There were a number of herbicides used in the Vietnam war during Operation Ranch Hand. By far the two most widely used were Agent Orange and Agent Blue.
From a chemical point of view Agent Orange is a mixture of 2,4,5-Trichlorophenoxyacetic acid and 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid. Both are synthetic auxins (plant hormones), and both in themselves are only moderately toxic to vertebrates. The big problem was production of the former component requires strictly controlled temperatures to avoid formation of a p-dioxin which, as you may know, is part of an extremly dangerous family of chemicals. Whatever the p-dioxin byproduction was a known issue to Monsanto or not is still a hotly debated topic to this day. My personal view is they knew, and the US government knew, but just didn't give a damn. As an historian said "Vietnam was not a war of niceties".
Agent Blue is another matter completely. It's made up of cacodylic acid and its salts. Cacodylic acid is arsenic based, so no rocket scientist is needed here to understand how toxic it is. I say is because it's still used as a weed killer worldwide, including most of the so-called civilized West. Agent Blue was used to destroy rice paddies in Vietnam: rice is an extremely resistant plant and will survive hormone-based weed-killers.
It's also worthy noting Operation Ranch Hand was authorized by that holy man, John F. Kennedy, with the stated goal of "denying the insurgents food and cover" in 1961. It started the following year and ended in 1971. From the beginning there were doubts. Even if the chemicals used had been harmless, the operation was questionable under the terms of the Geneva Convention (regarding the use of chemical weapons and, most critically, the destruction of crops). This doesn't mean anybody in the Kennedy Administration gave a damn about Vietnamese peasants. The main risk was giving the Soviet Union a "morale advantage": after all Francis Gary Powers had been captured just the year before and huge embrassement was only avoided when the Soviets inexplicably (and foolishly) shot down an RB47 over international waters, evening the odds.
actually?
The Anarch is to the Anarchist what the Monarch is to the Monarchist. -Ernst Jünger
Porco Rosso: lol well pointless thread becomes even more pointless i guess.....on to 9/11!