In the end,
the military campaign was called Operation Ranch Hand, but it originally went
by a more appropriately hellish appellation: Operation Hades. As part of this
Vietnam War effort, from 1961 to 1971, the United States sprayed over 73
million liters of chemical agents on the country to strip away the vegetation
that provided cover for Vietcong troops in “enemy territory.”
Using a
variety of defoliants, the U.S. military also intentionally targeted cultivated
land, destroying crops and disrupting rice production and distribution by the
largely communist National Liberation Front, a party devoted to reunification
of North and South Vietnam.
Some 45
million liters of the poisoned spray was Agent Orange, which contains the toxic
compound dioxin. It has unleashed in Vietnam a slow-onset disaster whose
devastating economic, health and ecological impacts that are still being felt
today.
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