by James Glaser
September 4, 2003

I don't like to talk about them either, but when I see the President of the United States pointing his finger at other countries, I see us as being hypocritical.

How can we hold others to standards we fail to keep? Almost every time President Bush talks about Iraq now he brings up Saddam's chemical attack on the Kurds and uses that as an excuse for our attack on Iraq. Yes any chemical attack on innocent civilians is a crime and those that order it have no place in government. What about our crimes?

This month in the Department of Veteran Affairs publication "Agent Orange Review," Vol. 19, No. 2, there is an article about the United States use of chemical weapons on MILLIONS of VIETNAMESE people. Also on James Glaser and several hundred thousand other Americans serving our country.

On April 17, 2003, the prestigious scientific journal "Nature" published an article by Doctor Jeanne Mager Stellman of Columbia University and several of her colleagues which indicates that more herbicides were used in Vietnam than was previously reported and the amount of dioxin sprayed almost doubled.

According to the Agent Orange Review, "The spray inventory is expanded by more than seven million liters. Furthermore, the estimates for the amount of dioxin sprayed was almost doubled."

"The article indicates that census data shows that millions of Vietnamese people were likely to have been directly sprayed." I was directly sprayed on as were thousands of other Americans.

The Vietnam Veterans sued the companies that made Agent Orange and Agent White and Agent Pink and Agent Purple and they won because those companies along with the Pentagon knew that these chemicals could kill you or make you sick for the rest of your life. They sprayed it anyway. I got the maximum award of $3600.00.

The companies that were sued by the American Veterans were Dow Chemical, Monsanto, T.H. Agriculture, Hercules, Diamond Shamrock, Uniroyal, and Thompson Chemical.

On August 25, a UPI report tells about a study done by the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine that indicates Agent Orange residue is responsible for high blood dioxin levels among the residents of the Hoa City area in Vietnam.

"The spraying of defoliant ended 30 years ago, but Dr. Arnold Schecter of the University of Texas School of Public Health in Dallas said people are affected by eating highly contaminated foods, such as ducks, chicken, and fish." "Very high levels of Agent Orange were found in most types of animals studied. The highest levels were found in ducks: up to 343 parts per trillion, compared with a usual level of less than 0.1 part per trillion."

Here in America, Vietnam Veterans have been dying from Agent Orange and all the other chemicals sprayed on them ever since they came home. These chemicals have caused birth defects in the children of some veterans and the Veterans Administration is paying those children disability pay for their suffering at the hands of our government.

Millions of Vietnamese have suffered the same fate as our Veterans, but nothing is being done for these poor sick innocent civilians that our government attacked with chemical weapons during our war over there.

Sure what Saddam Hussein did to the Kurds was a crime and when and if we capture him he should stand trial for it. For the same reason that we should put Saddam on trial, there are American Government officials that are every bit as guilty of the Crime of using Chemical Weapons on Civilians. In Iraq we talk about some guy called Chemical Aly that was in charge of the chemical attacks in Iraq, well there are American Generals that not only sprayed chemicals on innocent civilians, but on our own troops as well and these generals (there were many of them because we sprayed chemicals for years) should be in prison. These generals killed thousands of American troops. That is a fact Jack.