Fixed it. Can you promote it if you can? The new video is really good.

In reply to this comment by Fedquip:
*dead

Sorry Farhad, stumbled into this one while researching
http://www.mahalo.com/Agent_Orange

Twiddles is right, its not just the bunker busters (which are also built using depleted uranium- makes for a bigger bang apparently), but all sorts of other smaller arms use DU as well. Frankly, you should be educating yourself on this MGR, if only out of concern for your own safety, chances are you were exposed to some of it during your service... and who the fuck knows what else, if history and experience have taught us anything is that in the quest to kill and maim efficiently the US army has been very adept at exposing both the enemy and its own soldiers to a plethora of nasty things... I mean, crap, how many older veterans do I know that are just now exhibiting symptoms of agent orange exposure? Or those of that in between generation that have Gulf War syndrome due to exposure to an as yet undisclosed substance? Too freaking many is the answer... too freakin' many.

And Twiddles is also right in that the assumption that Iraq was shit before we rolled in is completely ridiculous... things may have been relatively crappy in 2003 (see stats below), but you have to realize that our campaign against the stability of that country has been ongoing since the first Gulf War, and it has had a direct effect on the population, and undoubtedly accounts for much of the resentment of the Iraqi population towards their American 'liberators'. If it helps you to understand this, I'll shoot some statistics your way, these are all, by the way, directly from Phebe Marr's The Modern History of Iraq, in which she details the impact of US sanctions on Iraq:

"Oil production dropped 85% between 1990 and 1991 and began to increase again only after sanctions relief in 1997... Iraq's per capita income, which had stood at just over $2,000 in 1989 before the Gulf War, had fallen to $609 by 1992... Before the war, good imports were estimated to be about 70% of Iraq's consumption. These were now drastically reduced. Famine was avoided by an effective rationing system, but calorie intake fell from an average of 3,000 calories a day to about 2,250, most of these provided through a ration 'basket' provided by the government.... By 1995 the UN secretary general noted that living conditions had become precarious for an estimated 4 million people. The Food and Agriculture Organization claimed that child mortality had risen fivefold.... The damage to the education system was also severe... one report claimed that of the 250 primary schools in the center and south of the country, over 80% were in poor or critical condition. Credible figures show that the literacy rate, which reached 67% in 1980, fell to about 57% in 2001..." And I could go on, there is lots more where that came from, and I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Iraq.

But my point is We did that. One can argue that it was punishment on an evil dictator for daring to invade poor helpless Kuwait, and our continued sanctions on that country were meant to cripple him militarily as well as economically, in the hope that his people would rise up and overthrow him. However, that obviously did not happen, for a number of reasons, the primary one being that he was insanely good at keeping the population repressed and too afraid to step out of line. In the end, we may have removed him from being a regional power but we encouraged him to turn on his own people and increase his stranglehold upon them.

I was against the sanctions back in the 90s and I still think that they were one of the worst crimes against humanity that our nation has ever managed to get away with. I think it is of ultimate importance that our generation, (MGR- I'm not that much older than you), recognize now what we did, that we, as a country, completely fucked up another country (and arguably an entire region), so that when we are in charge, we do not repeat these same mistakes again and again.

In reply to your comment:
“that freaked me out you should have said more. i thought you were some chinese hater

In reply to your comment:
“

In reply to your comment:
“God Bless the Dupont Chemical Corporation!” what do you mean”

Dupont Chemical Corp manufactured Napalm, and Agent Orange. There's a semi-infamous picture of a napalm bomb where a solder wrote the what I said on it.”

My personal belief is that we must always address the questions of the people no matter how ridiculous initial claims are.

- Copernicus was prosecuted for his ideas about the Solar system.
- Galileo was prosecuted for his ideas.
- We still can't separate religion from goverment policy. In the US and elsewhere.
- Gulf of Tonkin incident was ridiculed as well, then it turned out to be dubious.
- Agent Orange is still claimed to have caused no harmful effects.
- Depleted uranium still is denied having any effects post Gulf War 1 and Gulf War 2.
- PTSD was only identified post-Vietnam when effects were seen in WW2, at the time they were dismissed as 'battle fatigue' and 'cowardice'.
- We went to Iraq for WMD. Don't let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud.
- The US administrations handling of the war is claimed to be reactionary in light of overwhelming odds, when it reality is it failing due to mismanagement and poor planning.

And on and on and on....

For your consideration ladies and gentleman please meet Quantum mushroom, spokesman in favor of corporate genocide.

The US Veterans Administration has listed prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, type II diabetes, Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, soft tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy, and spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange as side effects of the herbicide.

Clearly our veterans are obviously lying to us.

"Birth defects are common. According to a U.S. Air Force study, one of every five children born to Air Force veterans who had sprayed Agent Orange had a minor or serious birth defect. The birth defects weren't caused by Agent Orange. The same rate of birth defects was observed in men who had never sprayed Agent Orange.

It makes far more sense to treat illnesses and birth defects in Vietnam as they are treated in other countries. To spend money on efforts to link Agent Orange with common diseases that have many known causes is to squander funds that can treat suffering people. To barrack and parade deformed children in "Peace Villages" may elicit sympathy, but it's certainly degrading to children who already have burdens to bear. Richer countries have spent billions investigating possible links between diseases and birth defects and Agent Orange and the dioxin in it. They have found nothing convincing."

Agent Orange was the nickname given to a powerful herbicide and defoliant used by the U.S. military in its Herbicidal Warfare program during the Vietnam War. Agent Orange was used from 1961 to 1971, and was by far the most used of the so-called "rainbow herbicides" used during the program. Degradation of Agent Orange (as well as Agents Purple, Pink, and Green) released dioxins, which have caused harm to the health of those exposed during the Vietnam War.

Agents Blue and White were part of the same program but did not contain dioxins. Studies of populations highly exposed to dioxin indicate increased risk of various types of cancer and genetic defects; the effect of long term low level exposure has not been established. Since the 1980s, several lawsuits have been filed against the companies who produced Agent Orange, among them being Dow Chemical and Monsanto. U.S. veterans obtained $180 million in compensation in 1984, while Australian, Canadian and New Zealand veterans also obtained compensation in an out-of-court settlement the same year.

In 1999, 20,000 South Koreans filed a lawsuit in Korea; in January 2006, the Korean Appeal Court ordered Monsanto and Dow to pay $62 million in compensation to about 6,800 people. However, no Vietnamese have obtained compensation, and on March 10, 2005 Judge Jack Weinstein of Brooklyn Federal Court dismissed the lawsuit filed by the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange against the chemical companies that produced the defoliants/herbicides.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_orange

While I find it commendable that Robert McNamara did do this film. I can't accept his explanations for the use of Agent Orange as being simply "I don't remember".

I felt that the documentarian gave his subject too much leeway because of a wider message he wanted to put out post the war in Iraq.

Still a monumental film that needs to be watched. What I would to see now is the same treatment of Henry Kissinger.