Vietnam Veterans Mark 30th Anniversary of End of Vietnam War

When: Saturday, April 30, 1-4 PM
Where: Pizza Uprising, 2467 W. Grand

On the 30th Anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) call on policy makers to remember history instead of repeating it.

"On April 30, 1975, the last U.S. helicopter lifted off the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon. If our leaders had only learned from their mistakes, we would not now be occupying another country, spending billions, confronting a determined guerrilla opposition, and bringing death, injury and illness to thousands of Americans and Iraqis," said Barry Romo, a VVAW National Coordinator.

On April 30 in Chicago will host "Remember Vietnam" in Chicago, the home of its national office, from 1-4 p.m. at 2467 W. Grand Ave. U.S. veterans and supporters will gather to watch films, hear speakers and sign petitions in support of Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange. VVAW members will also assert that the Agent Orange of today is depleted uranium.

VVAW fears that current Iraq vets and Iraqi civilians will be subject to similar illnesses. Depleted uranium is one of the major contributors to the appalling health problems of veterans of the first Gulf War. Of the 696,841 individuals who served in the conflict, 100,000 had died by May 2004. Of the survivors, 30 percent had permanent disability claims granted by the Veterans Administration. No one can say precisely how many of these deaths and illnesses were caused by depleted uranium, as opposed to other sources of toxic contamination, but experts believe the role of depleted uranium has been significant.

By June 28, 2004, only 15 months after the beginning of the current Iraq war in which the U.S. again used depleted uranium, 27,517 of the new veterans had come to VA hospitals and outpatient clinics, many with illnesses consistent with known effects of depleted uranium.

"Once again, we have poisoned our own troops with the weapons we are directing at the enemy," says VVAW National Staff David Curry. “In Vietnam, the defoliant, ‘Agent Orange,’ was used to destroy crops and remove vegetation that enemy troops might use for cover. The chemical caused cancers, immune system disorders, liver problems and birth defects in the children of the Americans soldiers and the Vietnamese who were exposed. We are now poisoning new generations of soldiers with the use of depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

On March 10, 2005, a U.S. judge dismissed a class action suit against the U.S. chemical companies that manufactured Agent Orange by the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange. U.S. District Judge Jack B. Wienstein found that the plaintiffs could not prove that Agent Orange had caused their illnesses.

Ironically, Judge Weinstein was the same judge who heard a case brought by U.S. veterans against manufacturers of Agent Orange that was settled for $180 million in 1987. "We deplore Judge Weinstein's latest unjust verdict, and we support the claim of the Vietnamese to compensation for the same illnesses that have affected our veterans and their children," said Curry.

VVAW also notes other lessons from Vietnam unlearned:

violations of the rules of war at both My Lai and Abu Graib;

the underestimation of an occupied population's will to resist;

the echo of the military draft with the current "back-door draft" of soldiers and reserves kept beyond their time;

the coming draft of medical personnel, and

the grossly exaggerated predictions of catastrophic consequences if we refrained from intervention.

"At the present moment, the most important lesson from Vietnam is that pulling out did not lead to a disaster there. We now have friendly relations with the Vietnamese government. We need the courage to cut our losses in Iraq sooner rather than later and, in so far as possible, to repair the damage we have done to American GI's and the people of Iraq. The U.S must stop producing this era's Agent Orange, the depleted uranium weapons that will be continuing to damage both Americans and Iraqis for years to come," said Romo.