Agent Orange In The Vietnam War

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Agent orange
Matthew Lambert

I chose to do my History research task on the use of Agent Orange and how it affected people in the Vietnam War.

Nature
The name ‘Agent Orange’ came from the orange stripe on the barrel that they used too keep the herbicide in. From 1961 to 1972 the U.S. military conducted a massive program with the aim to destroy the Vietnam jungle and forest so the Vietnam and Viet Cong troops fighting the U.S. American planes and helicopters deployed a liquid spray out from the aircrafts and used it over rivers, canals, roads, military bases and on crops that could have been used to supply Vietnamese troops with food. But the effects hurt more than just the forest and enemy troops, it contaminated crops and water that innocent Vietnamese people needed and were getting affected by it and it affected people for four decades. By the end of the war the U.S. had deployed over 19 million gallons of herbicides over 4.5 million acres of land. The amount of herbicides use by the U.S. was enough to blanket 25% of the whole country.

How and why this issue arose
The only reason for the United States to use this terrible chemical was to give the Vietnam troops less cover in the forests so that it would be much easier to defeat them. This chemical should never been used because …show more content…
In addition to the massive environmental impacts of the chemical warfare, Vietnam has reported that roughly 400,000 people were killed or heavily damaged as a result to the exposure to the herbicides like Agent Orange. Also half a million people were born with serious birth defects, and over 2 million people suffered and are still suffering from cancer or other illnesses cause by Agent Orange. In 2004 a group of Vietnamese citizens filed a lawsuit against over 30 chemical developing companies, including the same companies that created Agent Orange. The Vietnamese people won the lawsuit, which obtained billions of dollars worth of

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