These children are Real! Their Agent Orange Deformities are REAL as well.

[leftchick]

Someone here at DU the other day tried to suggest the photos of the "bug-eyed" boy below were fake. Sadly they are not. It is one of the thousands of horrific stories that show the US war crimes in Viet Nam...


http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-02/05/content_303315.htm


Agent Orange, children and the Viet Nam War



Two boys's eyes open wide in at the Peace Village at Tu Du hospital in Ho Chi Minh City February 3, 2004.



Hoa (R) and Nhon, both born with stunted limbs and 12 fingers, stand at their front door at their home in Dong Ha, north of Hue in central Viet Nam, February 4, 2004. Three Vietnamese who say they or their families became ill from Agent Orange defoliant used by the United States in the war nearly 30 years ago have filed the first lawsuit against makers of the product, a victims group said.



A Vietnamese girl with no arms reads using her feet to hold a book at the Peace Village in Tu Du hospital February 3, 2004. The hospital's chef de service Doctor Ng Thi Phuong Tan suspects many of the children are deformed in the womb due to exposure to Agent Orange. Two-thirds of the children at the Peace Village are from areas that were heavily sprayed by the highly toxic defoilant during the Viet Nam War.



A girl born without eyes sits in a cot at the Peace Village at Tu Du hospital in Ho Chi Minh City February 3, 2004.

on edit: Article to explain photos...
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/624/624p18.htm

~snip~

Deformities
Dr Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong is the director of Tu Du Hospital, the major gynaecological and maternity hospital for Ho Chi Minh City and 32 provinces in the south.

Last year, the hospital performed 44,000 deliveries. About two babies a day are born malformed. Many of them do not survive very long after birth. Dr Phuong says the hospital staff usually do not tell the parents the real reason for the baby’s death; they simply say that the baby was “too weak”. They fear that if they tell the truth, husbands will abandon wives who they think are contaminated by dioxin.

Dr Phuong is careful to be balanced in her presentation. Since problem pregnancies are more likely to end up at the hospital, she says, Tu Du’s numbers should not be regarded as representative of the whole of southern Vietnam.

But try explaining statistics to the mother of one baby boy born the night before our visit, who was born with no eyes.

The war ended in 1975, but the effects continue, and no-one knows for how long. Ironically, this baby’s mother was born in that year. Her parents lived in an area sprayed with Agent Orange but seemed to suffer no ill effects. She herself has no known genetic problems, and her first child was normal

[sakabatou]

1. HOLY --

Jeeze... man that's really horrifying...

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. A shame these pics can't be more widely disseminated.

As far as commercial media is concerned ( and textbooks publishers for that matter) Viet Nam did not occur.

[me b zola]

13. Yes, they need to be seen

People would be more critical of a president that wanted to lead us into war, but perhaps that is exactly why they remain mostly hidden from view.

[G_j]

3. OMG

when, oh when, will it end? I feel so ashamed.

[leftchick]

5. Imagine 30 years from now...

and we are seeing the results of DU in Iraq and chemical weapons in Fallujah. It will never end as long as profits are to be made.

:(

[benevolent dictator]

22. you can see them now.

Do a google images search on depleted uranium, you'll find images from the first Gulf War, and we can only assume there will be more and worse deformaties from this war.

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22depleted+uranium%22

or try http://www.aeronautics.ru/archive/du-watch/iraq_images/

it's absolutely sickening.

[paula777]

29. OMG - total horror. How do they know that these were caused by depleted

uranium? I know people are born with birth defects all the time - Does depleted uranium cause the burns that some of them have? Oh my god - these are the worst photos I've ever seen. The pain these babies must be in ... intollerable

[benevolent dictator]

30. Well, considering that

they're consistant with the birth defects that would occur due to radiation, and they started occuring after the soldiers returned home after the war (soldiers who had healthy children prior to leaving), it's due to the Depleted Uranium.

And, it's probably not the only cause, but it's certainly a major one. Not to mention the fact that Depleted Uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Ugh.

[lenidog]

4. They aren't the only ones Snopes picked up the story and to the

best of their ability have declared them true. Americans rarely see children born with such defects. I doubt that defects such as this have been common in this country since the days of thalydimide. (sp?) Its also a shock to the system you don't want to believe that children have such defects.

[Kindigger]

6. This story was on 60 Minutes II? the other night

Vietnam asked the US for compensation for this. Our government decided Agent Orange isn't responsible, although they have finally admitted it in connection with our soldiers, and paying compensation accordingly.

[leftchick]

7. It sounds like the GIs got shit...

An out of court settlement of $180 mil? Weren't there thousands of GIs affected? But it is better than what these children have gotten which is ZERO!
:(

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=717904

Though they have long suffered in silence, a group of Vietnamese victims took their case to an American court this year, demanding compensation from the U.S. chemical firms that made the defoliants. A federal judge threw the case out.

U.S. government scientists still do not officially accept the link between Agent Orange and Vietnamese health problems.

But American G.I.'s also were exposed during the war, and they finally received compensation for diseases associated with Agent Orange, including a $180 million out-of-court settlement by the chemical companies.

At Tu Du hospital, where children with the most severe deformities are treated, doctors were dismayed by the dismissal of the Vietnamese suit.

"How will the victims of Agent Orange ever find justice," asked Dr. Nguyen Thi Thuy, "if those who used the defoliant won't accept moral responsibility."

[Llewlladdwr]

21. Actually, that's not *entirely* correct.

Snopes stated that the pictures did not appear to be doctored. They were unable to comment on the claim that Agent Orange was responsible for these birth defects.

WHO doesn't list birth defects in its list of dioxin effects either:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs225/en/

[Bridget Burke]

27. Thalidomide defects were not common in the USA

A doctor with the FDA "obstructed" the drug's release in this country. Now, drug approval has been considerably "streamlined."

[leftchick]

8. shameless kick for the babies...

:(

[Karenina]

9. Deformities have already arrived

in the U.S. courtesy American-spread poison in Iraq. Let's see how long it takes y'all to notice... :SIGH:

[leftchick]

25. I remember reading about them after GW number one...

I have no doubt what we are seeing here will come back to haunt us for years to come.

[Beam Me Up]

10. RECOMMEND people! The horrors of war, of which these are only

a few, WILL NEVER END so long as we pretend they do not exist. Will never end so long as some men profit from war. Will never end so long as we hide in our denial.

[all.of.me]

11. this is very sad.

to think the effects of agent orange are passing down through generations. aren't some of these the grandchildren of people originally affected by agent orange? it makes me sick how tenacious that stuff is. maybe tenacious isn't a good word. insidious? i don't know.

and what are we, the mighty us of a, doing about it?! having another war, of course!!

[understandinglife]

12. MissionNOTAcccomplished - May 2 2005 is just the BEGINNING of our....

........www.missionnotaccomplished.us



We must stop the atrocities, now. What we do know is that 30 or more years from now, the consequences of Bu$h's atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere will, once again, be the burden of generations of yet to be born children.

[leftchick]

15. Thank you for the link....

these shits in office never read history. Even if they did they would not change a fucking thing.

:banghead:

[understandinglife]

16. Nomintated. (nt)

www.missionnotaccomplished.us - May 2 2005 is just THE BEGINNING OF MNA

[G_j]

14. nominated n/t

[Bouncy Ball]

17. My father in law is dying of a very aggressive form of luekemia

brought on by heavy Agent Orange exposure. He also has had tuberculosis.

It's no myth. It's no secret. And it's no joke. He's 59 years old.

[two gun sid]

18. This post should be read by as many people as possible....

the photographs are shocking. Nominated.

[chlamor]

19. Godammit-This Sucks

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

– General Douglas MacArthur

[KittyWampus]

20. It's So Painful To Acknowledge This. And Yet, The Kids Find Ways To

play and get along in the world.

Humans can be so creative and wonderful but also destructive and mean.

[UdoKier]

23. A HEARTY F*U*C*K Y*O*U to all the people who still support

that war and the one we're in.

Just yesterday I saw and ASSHOLE with a sticker that read "Veterans Against John Kerry".

GODDAMN YOU. Diss the man for trying to save your worthless ass and end the suffering like in these pictures? Go to hell.

I had my qualms about Kerry, but his Winter Soldier testimony was one of the main reasons I fell in behind the man. I had hoped that some of that courage and decency still remained.


But there are still SCUM in this country who say that we "shoulda nuked'em"

Just go straight to hell, NOW and stop tormenting the rest of us.

[dsnail]

24. Legal Challenge Against US Dismissed

Agent Orange -- Thirty Years After
by Harold Williamson

The latest insult to our sensibilities by the U.S. Justice System occurred on March 10 when a federal judge dismissed a damage suit filed against American chemical companies in what is the first legal challenge in the U.S. court system on behalf of millions of Vietnamese victims suffering from the aftermath of some 80 million liters of Agent Orange that was dumped on them by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. And because of sovereign immunity, the U. S. government has not been sued....
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Mar05/Williamson0315.htm

[earth mom]

26. Words can not express how sad this makes me!

:cry:

No doubt the Iraq war will cause similar harm. How can people be this cruel to inflict this kind of damage?! Where is the outrage from the majority of this country over this war which is based on LIES?! :grr:

[leftchick]

28. A Book: Agent Orange:Collateral Damage in Viet nam

<snip>
Agent Orange:
"Collateral Damage" in Viet Nam
January 2003
by Philip Jones Griffiths

When I was covering the war in Viet Nam there were reports from Ha Noi in 1967 claiming that millions of people had been victims of chemical warfare. Officials in Saigon dismissed these as crude propaganda and for us journalists in the South there was little opportunity to verify claims made by the North.

In the summer of 1969 four Saigon newspapers ran stories with pictures of deformed babies born to women who had been sprayed with Agent Orange. The South Vietnamese government argued that the deformities were caused by venereal diseases and President Thieu closed down the papers for "interfering with the war effort." After such moves, tracking down any victims proved difficult.

In 1970 I heard stories that babies were being born without eyes. Remembering my time working in hospitals, as a pharmacist, in London, rumour had it then that the staff induced acidosis in a baby born seriously deformed (killing the child) to protect the mother from the trauma of seeing her baby. I assumed something similar could happen in the hospitals and orphanages of Viet Nam, except I reckoned, in those run by Catholics.

Over the next few months I visited as many such places as I could find. In almost all cases I was denied access, usually by polite smiling nuns. At the risk of sounding paranoid I became convinced they had been told to keep the press away.

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0401/griffiths_intro.html

there is a link to photo galleries at the site with more graphic photos. Children born with deformities stared showing up within the first couple of years after the use of Agent Orange. There is also a link to help out these people abandoned by the US government.