Vietnam: Home

herbicide that was used by the U.S. military

Following the end of the Vietnam War, scientists discovered that Agent Orange produces dioxins as a by-product during the production process.

19 million gallons were sprayed.

VVAW activists went on to initiate veteran "rap groups" and help gain official recognition of the health ramifications of exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange.

Code name for missions involving the aerial spraying of herbicides.

More than 30 years after coming home, scores of Vietnam War veterans still ask: "Why are we ill?"

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A memorandum issues presidential approval of defoliant operations in Vietnam.

The overall effect was to present a serious psychological impact against the United States and Southern Vietnamese.

Knowing American intervention would be limited, the communists avoided open confrontation and quickly returned to reestablish control in eastern Cambodia after American withdrawal.

The Ho Chi Minh Campaign, an April 1975 attack on Saigon, gave the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, North Vietnam) the decisive victory.

Although the agreement initiated a cease-fire that began the next day, the United States did not withdraw all of its troops until April 30, 1975, when the South Vietnamese surrendered to North Vietnam and the city of Saigon fell to the communists.

By 1969, as U.S. public opinion went increasingly against the war, U.S. policy changed to Vietnamization, and President Richard Nixon began to withdraw U.S. troops.

Return primary responsibility for the conduct of the war to South Vietnam.

The Ho Chi Minh Campaign, an April 1975 attack on Saigon, gave the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, North Vietnam) the decisive victory it had fought so long to achieve.

Thieu had done all he could to prevent the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam.

Vietnamization makes no provision for a political accommodation between the communist and non-communist forces in
South Vietnam.

Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.

McNamara later admitted tearfully that America's pursuit of the Vietnam War had been "terribly wrong.

The conventional wisdom that prevailed in the years immediately following the fall of Saigon--and which dominates dialogue in many circles today--was that the Vietnam War was not only unnecessary, it also was unwinnable.

That's no way to fight a war-at least according to the lessons the American military learned in Southeast Asia a quarter century ago.

Part of the tragedy was that those U.S. policymakers who dogged the war, sent the poor and young into battle, never took the time to understand what it was all about. Five minutes of Vietnamese history could have taught lessons which, if learned, could have saved millions of lives.

Nixon and his advisors developed a new strategy they called Vietnamization.

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I want to end the war to save the lives of those brave young men in Vietnam.

VVAW activists went on to initiate veteran "rap groups" and help gain official recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Anxiety disorder that develops after exposure to a traumatic event that evoked intense fear, horror, or helplessness

Before the Vietnam War, psychiatric consensus held that soldiers who recovered from an episode of mental breakdown during combat would suffer no adverse long-term consequences.

Vietnam veterans who experience PTSD have a feeling of helplessness, worthlessness, dejection, anger, depression, insomnia, and a tendency to react to tense situations by using survival tactics.

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President Richard M. Nixon announces benefits for returning veterans and touts programs designed to reintegrate Vietnam veterans into society.

gasoline thickened to a gel

Napalm bombs explode on Viet Cong

A flame-throwing tank of the U.S. First Tank Battalion

Terrified children run from South Vietnamese soldiers after an aerial napalm attack

Many weapons, including booby traps and mines, were homemade in villages.

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Staff Sergeant T.L. Moran interrogates a member of the Vietcong, a guerrilla-warfare organization dedicated to overthrowing the American-supported government of South Vietnam.

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Kissinger also notes some of the U.S. government's significant failures, including unrealistic military predictions, inconsistent political, economic and military policies and a failure to recognize "the nature of the conflict."

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