Flipper Babies

No joke this. The American's get to relive a horrible bit of their past rehashing some of their atrocities in another misguided war they embarked upon in the name of freedom. Yep, I'm talking Vietnam. It appears 30 years after the event, those Vietnamese maimed, disfigured and diseased by Agent Orange are out for compensation from the US companies that created the poison. About bloody time.

For those unfamiliar with Agent Orange, it was a defoliant used by the US military to kill the jungle in Vietnam. You see the Americans had a hard time bombing the North Vietnamese who were hiding in the jungle, so they came up with Agent Orange. The problem was Agent Orange didn't work all that well, and was laced with chemicals that not only killed plants, but caused cancer, birth defects, and a host of other poisonous problems.

But why the focus on this, other than to lambaste the American military? Well I'm juxtaposing it with another atrocious poisoning they've engaged in during the most recent misguided war they've embarked upon in Iraq. The poison this time is called depleted uranium, a metal used to make effective armor piercing ammo that also ignites on impact. It comes from spent fuel rods used in nuclear reactors; and yes boys and girls it is radioactive, with a half-life of thousands and thousands of years. So in a few years if not sooner we'll start to see stories of Iraqis maimed, disfigured and diseased by depleted uranium. They've already been talking about it in the Guardian.

Now at the risk of appearing anti-American, I want to point out that, no in fact, I love Americans. I'm just anti-poison. I don't care who you are, where you're from, or why you're poisoning a bunch of innocent civilians. It's wrong whatever your reasons.