In article ,
Arny Krueger wrote:
"David Looser" wrote in

Mind you the use of chemical defoliants sounds a lot like chemical
and/or biological warfare.

That is a really broad brush you're weilding there. The defoliants were
mostly 2, 4D which is a household chemical in the US.

That seems a very odd comment.

Bleach is a common household product. But is also sometimes used by bank
robbers to squirt into the eyes of people and make their robbery easier.

Many simple 'everyday' chemicals can also be used for other purposes. e.g.
the use of such to make large car-bombs for terrorist activity. As I think
has been seen in the USA as well as elsewhere.

So I'm not sure why one chemical being "houshold" for some purpose somehow
means its use in a conflict for other reasons can be dismissed.

The problem I think David was referring to was the deliberate use of
'chemical agents' for (declared) purposes of defoliating lare areas of
land. Said chemicals then had all kinds of side-effects and damaging
consequences.

It would equally seem odd to me to dismiss dropping napalm on civilians
because "people use similar gels like vasaline at home".



The Vietnam war cost the US dear.

Not really all that bad.

All the deaths, the injuries and broken lives.

Vietnam 58,209 deaths
Korea 53,686 deaths
WW2 405,399 deaths
WW1 116,516 deaths

It would be interesting to now compare those figures with the totals for
the two WWs. And perhaps with the total deaths in the earlier two.


There has been an unfortunate tendency in the west to
understate the Soviet contribution to the defeat of
Hitler.

I don't know about that.

Honest answer. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

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