Excerpt:


Diplomats in Vietnam warned Washington that halting USAID’s efforts to clean up the massive deposit of postwar pesticides would be a catastrophe for public health and relations with a key strategic partner in Asia.

In mid-February, Trump administration leaders received a desperate warning from their diplomats posted in Vietnam, one of the most important American partners in Asia.

Workers were in the middle of cleaning up the site of an enormous chemical spill, the Bien Hoa air base, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio abruptly halted all foreign aid funding. The shutdown left exposed open pits of soil contaminated with dioxin, the deadly byproduct of Agent Orange, which the American military sprayed across large swaths of the country during the Vietnam War. After Rubio’s orders to stop work, the cleanup crews were forced to abandon the site, and, for weeks, all that was covering the contaminated dirt were tarps, which at one point blew off in the wind.

And even more pressing, the officials warned in a Feb. 14 letter obtained by ProPublica, Vietnam is on the verge of its rainy season, when torrential downpours are common. With enough rain, they said, soil contaminated with dioxin could flood into nearby communities, poisoning their food supplies.

Hundreds of thousands of people live around the Bien Hoa air base, and some of their homes abut the site’s perimeter fence, just yards from the contaminated areas. And less than 1,500 feet away is a major river that flows into Ho Chi Minh City, population 9 million.

“Simply put,” the officials added, “we are quickly heading toward an environmental and life-threatening catastrophe.”


  • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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    12 hours ago

    Agent Orange

    Oh the irony. And he put hundreds more clowns in charge, proudly claimimg that he’s letting them “go wild”. We’ve all known that the USA hasn’t been the No. 1 in everything for a long while now, but to actively push it further down with such speed…

  • REDACTED@infosec.pub
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    12 hours ago

    This sounds like another win for China. They could swoop in to further estabilish global influence and goodwill of people

    • Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.org
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      10 hours ago

      I was just thinking the same about the EU. This could send an important message to the world. That it’s not every man for himself just because one country decided to go to shit. But I doubt our leaders even fully share that sentiment.