WASHINGTON - March 30 - Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign (VAORRC), a project of Veterans for Peace (VFP), is sponsoring a fact-finding delegation of US veteran leaders that will be in Vietnam from March 28 to April 8, 2010.
The delegation will survey the lingering effects of dioxin-laced herbicides like Agent Orange sprayed by U.S. forces during the American War on the people, animals and environment of Vietnam. The delegation will be hosted by Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange/dioxin (VAVA).
Members of the delegation are:
Michael Ferner, President Veterans for Peace
Geoff Millard, Chair/Board of Directors, Iraq Veterans Against the War and journalist
Michael Uhl, Veterans for Peace Board Member and author
Ken Mayers, Veterans for Peace Board Member, and accounting consultant
Susan Schnall, VAORRC Board Member and public health nurse
Paul Cox, VAORRC Board Member, Vietnam Veterans Against the War member, and civil engineer
The delegation will visit Agent Orange victims in hospitals and care facilities, and in particular meet with affected families living in rural areas where health-delivery resources are less available and poverty persists.
Estimates of Vietnamese ill from widespread and persistent dioxin residues, now reaching into the third generation since Vietnam's reunification in 1975, range from three to five million victims. Herbicides contaminated by dioxin were sprayed from 1961 to 1971 over approximately 1/8 the land area of southern Vietnam as a part of the US arsenal used against the Vietnamese resistance.
Delegation members are available for interviews upon their return home to the U.S.
"Agent Orange is not an artifact of a long-ago war, it is a bomb that continues to explode in the lives of the people of Vietnam, today," said Vietnam veteran PaulCox. "It is time for the US to step up to help the Vietnamese as they have finally done for US veterans."
Veterans For Peace is a national organization founded in 1985. It is structured around a national office in Saint Louis, MO and comprised of members across the country organized in chapters or as at-large members.
The organization includes men and women veterans of all eras and duty stations including from the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), World War II, the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf and current Iraq wars as well as other conflicts. Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary.
Contact:
Veterans for Peace Mike Ferner, Dennis Lane, 314-306-0024
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