Poem of choice:
Rainbow Death
America did not foresee
Green, pink, purple and other colors death potpourri!
Expecting others to pay a high price.
Now thinking twice?
Toll on the innocent and unborn.
Omnipotent and disregarding who will mourn.
Reflective about all the illness, birth defects and prematurely dead.
All the deceit continues to spread.
Nefariously America led astray -
Generations untold WILL pay -
Execrable effects of agent orange spray!
Hubert Wilson was a Vietnam War veteran who served in the USAF Security Service. Along with about a dozen intelligence school grads, Hubert was trained for around 14 months at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, before being assigned to several locations in 1970. About half of the intelligence school grads ended up in Da Nang (an Agent Orange hotspot) in the 6924th Security Squadron. The others were assigned to Shemya Island in Alaska, with the 6984th Security Squadron. Shemya Island turned out to be even more contaminated than Da Nang and this had consequences on Hubert’s life.
Approximately 15 years ago, Hubert started experiencing unexplained headaches and pains in his limbs. Four years ago, Hubert’s medical condition deteriorated and he started experiencing Parkinson-like symptoms such as shakiness when moving, horrific headaches and limb pains. No physician could diagnose his illness. Hubert’s educated guess was that the heavily contaminated drinking water at Shemya during my year there as an intelligence analyst had caused all of these problems. Organo-phosphate toxins may not run their toxic course until 20 to 30 years after initial exposure.
Although Hubert has mobility issues, his brain still functions (almost) as per normal. He decided to turn to writing just like his deceased father and the late singer /writer Johnny Cash.
Hubert’s short poem talks about a dangerous ingredient of warfare (chemical warfare that is) which was ‘agent orange’. This ‘agent orange’ is basically the codename for a herbicide developed by the United States which was used in the war against Vietnam. ‘Agent Orange’ was among a few other kinds of herbicides in the ‘Rainbow Herbicide’ herbicide program the United States had employed in the Vietnam War. (For your information, herbicides are sprayed on crops to, well, get rid of some kinds of weeds and encourage the growth of some kinds of plants)
Anyway, according to Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, over 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to ‘agent orange’ during the Vietnam War. This resulted in more than 400 000 deaths and disabilities among the people, and also about 500 000 children born with birth defects (what a scary thought!).
From 1962 to 1971, Agent Orange was clearly the most commonly used of the ‘Rainbow Herbicides’ used by the United States in their herbicidal warfare program against Vietnam. Agent Orange was only one of the toxins produced by the United States during the program (there were also several others, like the colours of the rainbow!). These herbicides were extremely harmful and those exposed to large amounts of them developed several illnesses and disabilities over time.
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/2010warpoetry.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange
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