Toxic Rhetoric: Agent Orange, DU, and a "Culture of Life" Following up my recent post on so-far-unsuccessful efforts by Vietnamese citizens to find justice after 30 years of Agent Orange poisoning, a new piece I wrote for Adbusters' blog is now online. An excerpt:

For going on 30 years, the US government and its corporate accomplices have hidden behind a thin veil of technicalities to avoid responsibility for Agent Orange: what is morally, anecdotally, and, some would argue, scientifically obvious is ignored in hopes of putting the Vietnam legacy—specifically, its potential for billion-dollar litigation—behind them.

But not so fast. A present-day Agent Orange may be seething in the soil of another land the US so nobly seeks to "liberate." Radioactive weaponry—from bullets to smart bombs to cruise missiles—has left millions of pounds of cancer-causing dust behind in Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. According to Katsuma Yagasaki, a scientist at Okinawa's Ryukyus University, the 800 tons of depleted uranium (DU) dropped in Afghanistan is as radioactive as 83,000 Nagasaki bombs, and the DU used in Iraq so far—40 million pounds in 2003 alone—is equivalent to 250,000 Nagasaki bombs. And its effects are being felt at home: according to a Veteran's Administration study of babies born to Gulf War I veterans, 67 percent had serious health problems including missing organs and limbs, fused fingers, organ malfunction or anophthalmos (being born without eyes)

Full story here. For more on DU, click here.