We owe huge debt to Vietnam vets

Today is National Vietnam Veterans Day, which was established by President Obama on March 29, 2012. The president’s call was to “… reaffirm one of our most fundamental obligations: to show all who have worn the uniform of the United States the respect and dignity they deserve, and to honor their sacrifice by serving them as well as they served us.”

At least 4,200,000 young men answered the call to duty in the 1960s and signed a blank check to our nation for a value up to and including their lives. Before the war was over, we had cashed some 56,000 of those checks. While the president recognized that we, as a nation, “… shunned or neglected …” our returning soldiers, the true horrifying facts of how they and their families have been treated are not only shameful, but a travesty of justice.

In the summer of 2012 a study of Vietnam veterans living in North Idaho was completed by VST. The study consisted of personal interviews and a written survey developed with the help of Dr. Jeanne Stellman, a highly respected Columbia University scientist. The survey encompassed questions regarding veterans’ exposure to the Agent Orange chemical that was sprayed throughout South Vietnam during the war. The results of that chemical exposure are shocking.

Many of our North Idaho Vietnam veterans arrived for interviews with their wives. Often, tears were shed as they talked about their time in Vietnam and their treatment when they returned home. Examples:

1. A veteran who was in Hue during the war remembers finding an arm and hand sticking out of the ground. Excavators were called in and a large grave was uncovered. The Vietcong had buried alive more than 1,000 mothers and their children — their eyes and mouths were still open. He still has nightmares of this finding.

2. An Army captain, who had been working to start a school for children in the small hamlets, had to cancel the project. A young boy came to class with bombs wrapped around him.

3. An Army NCO, who had been wounded, had been sent back to the U.S. with more than 150 other wounded men. They were transported on stretchers in an Air Force cargo plane — in racks of four stretchers deep. When they arrived at Travis Air Force Base, they were transferred to the hospital on carts. The path to the hospital passed under a pedestrian bridge. People on the bridge spit on the wounded as they passed below, strapped to their stretchers and still bleeding.

4. Others talked of rocks being thrown at them; hecklers attending burial services where a family was putting their soldier to final rest, shouting at and belittling them, even when a small boy was hugging his father’s casket. This was the welcome we gave our young men when they returned home from the war that we, the citizens of the United States, sent them to fight.

The survey uncovered detailed data on the impact of the toxic chemical Agent Orange (that was laced with dioxin) on Vietnam veterans and their children. That data was then combined with four years of research on a multitude of scientific studies, by independent scientists, that clearly identified the true impact of Agent Orange on humans, our Vietnam veterans and the children they fathered. The culmination of the study and the research has been published in a report called “FORGOTTEN — Our Innocent Children — Born and Being Born with Deformities — Caused by their fathers’ exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.”

One hundred and nineteen Vietnam veterans took the survey out of 1,818 known Vietnam veterans in Kootenai County, or 6.55 percent of the total number of Kootenai County Vietnam veterans. Twenty percent of those who took the survey and participated in the interviews had deformed children. Because the survey met the statistical criteria for a valid analysis, one can apply the 20 percent number to the total number of Vietnam veterans as of 2012. Consequently, it is highly possible that we may have at least 600,000 children in the United States born with deformities caused by their fathers’ exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

Without any question, our government knew the danger of Agent Orange long before they ordered its use. Yet, when asked by Admiral Zumwalt, the commander of Naval Forces during the Vietnam War, they lied and said “there was no danger to humans.” As a result, South Vietnam had millions of gallons of Agent Orange sprayed on their forests and farmlands. In the process, untold numbers of our soldiers and Vietnamese citizens were sprayed directly with Agent Orange, or came in contact with Agent Orange by simply walking through the fields.

It is absolutely mindboggling that our government would lie about this danger, spray our soldiers with a chemical known to be 150,000 times more dangerous than arsenic, then deny responsibility. They refused to acknowledge the consequences of their actions and refused to provide needed care for the deformed children fathered by Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange. The “FORGOTTEN” Report mentioned above was mailed to every sitting United States congressman/congresswoman in 2013. Only one responded.

Hundreds of thousands of Vietnam veteran families, with deformed children, are carrying the full burden of the war on their shoulders. President Lincoln’s quote, “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan,” was misplaced when our Vietnam veterans returned home. Hopefully, Lincoln’s quote will eventually return as the standard of our national conduct. Time will tell.

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Richard E. Phenneger of Post Falls is a veteran and president of Veteran Services Transparency, Inc.