Poisoning the Servicemen-- And Keeping Quiet About It

You probably have heard of the health problems that Vietnam War veterans have suffered as a result to exposure to Agent Orange.

What you probably don't know is that the airplanes used to spray Agent Orange were heavily contaminated with dioxin, the active ingredient of Agent Orange. The Air Force brought many of those airplanes back and assigned them to the Air Force Reserve, which flew the airplanes into the 1980s. The pilots and crewmen who flew and worked on those airplanes have since been coming down with Agent Orange related ailments.

The Air Force knew that the airplanes were contaminated, so much so that they refused to sell the airplanes as surplus and, instead, very quietly shredded and melted them down. The Veterans Administration does what they do best: Deny that there is any causal relationship between dioxin contamination and the veterans' ailments and deny any benefits.

We, as a nation, asked (and in some cases, forced) those guys to serve the national interest. Now that they are suffering as a result of that service and they have asked for help, the answer they are receiving is: "It sucks to be you, now go away."

And this latest bit of coverup and stabbing the veterans in the back can be laid at the feet of the Obama Administration and former Defense Secretary Gates:

Records show that some C-123 planes were held in quarantine storage in recent years, and then disposed of by shredding and smelting in 2010. In June 2009, an Agent Orange consultant to the Secretary of Defense had lobbied for the “immediate destruction” of the planes, in part to avoid attracting media attention to the health claims of stateside veterans.

“A whole new class of veterans may claim that their exposure was due to the fact they were members of aircrews or mechanics associated with the contaminated aircraft that returned from Vietnam,” the consultant, Dr. Alvin L. Young, wrote in the June 26, 2009, memo.

Lies and coverups. That's what the military does and that's what the VA does when it comes to the needs of veterans. What the VA has done with regard to the Agent Orange veterans for many decades (and with the Persian Gulf War veterans) is to deny that there is a problem and hope to kick the can far enough down the road that most of those men and women die before the VA is forced to pay any benefits.

This shit is just wrong. But that's the mindset of this nation: Glorify the men and women in uniform and then kick their asses to the curb once the uniform comes off.