Use of Agent Orange

Press, 25 May 1984, Page 12

Use of Agent Orange

Sir, — The cynical justification of the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — that it saved lives — is again trotted out by Admiral Zumwalt (May 23) to justify the spraying of the defoliant Agent Orange over Vietnam’s jungles during the Vietnam war. Despite the tragedy of the effect that contact with Agent Orange has had on his own son and grandson, Admiral Zumwalt remains unrepentant. The enormity of this justification lies in the realisation that the lives saved are those of soldiers, men presumably whose metier it is to die. The lives sacrificed are those of civilians, old people, women and children, including babies, indiscriminately. The ecological consequence of spraying poisonous chemicals over the habitat of an aggressor’s victim are matched in their evil by the biological consequences to succeeding generations of children, which is what is happening in Vietnam today, on a mass scale, repeating the tragedy suffered individually by Admiral Zumwalt’s family. — Yours, etc.,

M. CREEL. May 23, 1984.