"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

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
vaseline 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.

Google is your friend!

The executive summary - American losses in every major war we were involved
in after the Civil War have been minimal. In the past 150 years we have been
highly successful at cutting our losses and our enemies lost big time, in
every war we participated in, even the ones that we didn't win.