Word: vietnam
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...After years of meetings, signings and photo ops, the U.S. held another ceremony in Vietnam on Dec. 16 to sign yet another memorandum of understanding as part of the continuing effort to manage Agent Orange's dark legacy. Yet there are grumblings that little - if anything - has been done to clean up the most contaminated sites. Since 2007, Congress has allocated a total of $6 million to help address Agent Orange issues in Vietnam. Not only does the amount not begin to scratch the surface of the problem or get rid of the tons of toxic soil around the nation...
...There is still risk to people living in those areas," says Thomas Boivin, president of the Vancouver-based Hatfield Consultants, an environmental firm that has been identifying and measuring Agent Orange contamination in Vietnam since 1994. The good news is that Hatfield's studies indicate that even though 10% of southern Vietnam was sprayed with dioxins, only a handful of hot spots - all former U.S. military installations where the herbicide was mixed and stored - pose a danger to humans. The bad news? "If those were in Canada or in the U.S., they would require immediate cleanup," Boivin says...
...Responding to complaints that America is dragging its feet, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam Michael Michalak said the $1.7 million most recently allocated to conduct an environmental assessment of the Danang air base is being done to comply with both U.S. and Vietnamese law and is a necessary step toward cleanup. "We're investigating many promising techniques," Michalak said following the signing ceremony in Hanoi. Careful study is required if the job is to be done right, he added. "We know there is dioxin in the soil," he said. "But what method do we use to remove it? Where...
...wasn't until the 1970s, when Vietnam and Watergate sparked a revival of antigovernment conspiracy theories, that the word Roswell started perking ears. In 1975 officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Defense Command agreed to attend the world's first "serious" international UFO conference to hear new evidence, but after a self-proclaimed "abductee" reneged on his promise to take a polygraph test, the federal attendees left the gathering, skepticism intact. That didn't deter conference organizer Allen Hynek, founder of the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston, Ill., and a tireless campaigner to legitimize...
...Before the Obama Administration assumes that General Petraeus' track record in Iraq is transferable to Afghanistan, it should reflect more on a critical U.S. mistake in Vietnam. Much of the reason for the U.S. failure there can be traced to the assumption that General Edward Lansdale's successful approach to defeating the Philippine Huk insurgency would also work in Vietnam. Price Bingham Melbourne...