THE FAILURE OF the U.S. Senate in December to pass the Blue
Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act is the latest in a long history of wrongs
associated with our country’s use of Agent Orange.
Time is running short for many of the veterans who are
suffering ailments that may be related to the use of lethal herbicides in the
Vietnam War.
You could say the wrongs go back to the 1960s and the
decision to use Agent Orange to clear the jungles of Vietnam — without knowing
the possible effects on U.S. troops.
But that’s history now, and there’s nothing to be done
except perhaps learn from the disaster.
What could be done is to extend to the estimated 52,000
so-called Blue Water Navy veterans and Marines who were on Navy ships the same
Agent Orange-related benefits that those who served on the ground or on inland
waterways can receive. Instead, the Department of Veterans Affairs has
repeatedly chosen to deny the benefits to those who served on ships just off
Vietnam.
And Congress has dragged its collective feet on legislation
that would ensure sailors and Marines who patrolled the offshore waters have
the same benefits as other veterans affected by Agent Orange.
When officials approved the use of the herbicides in
Vietnam, they naively thought that since they would be targeting enemy areas,
the dioxin in the herbicides wouldn’t harm U.S troops. They were wrong.
Then, when increasing numbers of Vietnam veterans and their
families began reporting cancers, type 2 diabetes, leukemia, birth defects and
other ills associated with Agent Orange, it took lawsuits and challenges all
the way to the Supreme Court before veterans began to get help from the
chemical companies that made the herbicides. That delay was wrong.
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