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Vietnam War leftover ordnance has killed 42,000

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If they would have dropped Xmas presents. They should fight wars with love, not with hate.

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The north Vietnamese now probably wished they had made friends with the US as opposed to communist China and Russia. What the hell has communist Russia and China ever done for Vietnam except condemn them to poverty.

They could have attracted huge investments in their country and be enjoying wealth and prosperity like Australia rather than living in poverty, producing and selling narcotics, afraid to walk the earth.

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Hieu’s figures apparently did not include casualties in neighboring Laos and Cambodia, which were also heavily bombed by the United States during the conflict and where thousands of people have also died in ordnance accidents since 1975.

Gee, the United States sure has the blood of a lot of innocent people on its hands.

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Add those 42 000 to the 100 million killed by Communism.

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Telepromter, 100 million killed by Marxist revolution,that is 28 million more than WW2 Japan/USA/German nuclear revolution.

I didn't know this,thanks for info.

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That's why they hate America, not because it's *"Free."*****

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Like a video I saw of Afghans trying to take something out of the road after they were told not to touch anything they found. As filmed from a distant aircraft it also caught the moment these 4 disappeared into liquid form. Some people never learn.

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rajakumar: teleprompter has a sense for exaggeration. I can't wait for the references

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The remains left behind an illegal unjust war are just as terrible as what remains left behind a war that is just.

We as human beings need to refine the way we do war in the future as so to kill each other now and not leave future generations feel the burden for something that isnt their responisibility.

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War sucks and there are always leftover bombs that kill people. I understand that in France they still occasionally find leftover bombs form WWI.

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Hurtado: Not sure there are any just wars just better cases made by leaders/the media

LIBERTAS: Most of the ill will over the Vietnam war is forgiven, Americans aren't hated in Vitenam any longer.

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It may cost tens of billions of dollars to finish the job, he said.

It boggles the mind. And I still don't get it. What was the use of it all, the stupidity, the greed, the aggression, the human sacrifice, the arrogance and ignorance of a nation that considered itself developed but was so tragically flawed. It all left a sad and unforgettable imprint on history whose legacy will be felt for centuries to come.

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War sucks and there are always leftover bombs that kill people.

Yes, and lah-dee-dah.

An 8-year old girl and her 5-year-old brother will be blown to bits when they stumble upon a gift dropped from a high-altitude bomber by the United States. The pilot and crew were in no danger, and Laos never did anything against the United States. But war sucks.

Think about that the next time you see images of people jumping to their deaths from the WTC. War sucks. (And what goes around comes around.)

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The north Vietnamese now probably wished they had made friends with the US as opposed to communist China and Russia. What the hell has communist Russia and China ever done for Vietnam except condemn them to poverty.

Ho Chi Min was open to working directly with the USA but unfortunately the US government at the time wanted to put its own puppet government into place to they created a new president. Typical CIA scan that failed. Get your facts straight.

Anyway, the Vietnam war is the gift that just keeps on giving. Good thing Vietnam has moved on and now is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. If you go there you quickly realize that they do not care about the war because they won it. Most there are too young to remember it. Only the neocons in the USA want to fight the war over again because the USA lost.

Regarding Telepromters numbers, christian fundamentalist has caused 1 billion deaths. Source is the same as Telepromters, basically out of the hind quarters.

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yabits: Not sure how you equate the 9/11 with the Vietnam war. The attack on the WTC was terrorism, the bombing of North Vietnam was in support of our allies at the time the South Vietnamese. But hey why bother with details the US just gets what it deserves eh?

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the bombing of North Vietnam was in support of our allies

And the bombing of Cambodia and Laos? Countries that never did anything to the United States? (Laos being probably the most bombed country on earth, thanks to the U.S.)

Things in this world connect in funny ways. Next time you feel you want to get all up in arms about the "innocent" victims of terrorism on the retail level (a la Al Qaeda), consider the victims of the wholesale terrorism that the U.S. has caused: Victims of herbicide spray whose horrors play out for generations. Young kids in southeast Asia getting blown apart because of a war they and their parents had absolutely nothing to do with.

To say that the U.S. can hope to escape what it has coming to it is like hoping that there is not a just God in heaven.

The South Vietnamese, by the way, were a U.S. creation. Very, very few nations of the world recognized them -- and only because the U.S. was in a position to pressure those few countries into it. The country that for nearly 2,000 years was one Vietnam was temporarily divided following the French defeat, and was supposed to be reunified via a U.N.-supervised election in 1956 -- an election the U.S. and its South Vietnamese puppet government prevented from happening. That's right, concoct an "ally" in order to justify murdering millions of people. Nicely done.

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Yabits: Correct that the US was responsible for preempting the 1956 elections, correct also that the innocent still continue to suffer. That said your view of America as the ultimate evil prevents you from asking some other important questions. Why were Cambodia and Laos bombed, because at the least they couldn't control their borders to keep the North Viatnamese from launching attacks from inside their territory and at worst they actively supported Ho Chi Minh. How many people did the communists murder when they overran the south? Did you ever wonder why so many Vietnamese refugees are living in the US now? Most of the residents of the South were not exactly cheering the invasion from the north. I grew up with a fair number of refugees from the South and their fathers were fighting for their country not for the US. To say the Vietnam war was a fiasco and that tons of innocent people were killed is correct. But it's not as black and white as you would like it to be.

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Time for the war crimes tribunal to get to work. But first, a worldwide ban on depleted uranium.

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usaexpat, yabits is only trying to justify his own little jihad on the USA. He's pretty good at that. As bad as some of the things the USA has done I really wonder what the world would be like if every nation just had the power of what the UN has: to say " Hey don't do that. It's not nice. Stop it. " and that is about it. Ignored most of the time. With that kind of free reign we'd have a really bad world situation today. And most of the bad ones are because of the UN and their "all for one and one for all" philosophy and "do nothing about it except issue declarations" enforcement. But guys like yabits will tell you it's all one country's fault. His favorite one to hate.

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That said your view of America as the ultimate evil prevents you from asking some other important questions.

My view of America is as of any other country: it is capable of both evil and good, and has done plenty of both. Slavery, the annihilation of native peoples, unjust wars (Mexico, Spain, southeast Asia, Vietnam). Many in America believe it is all good. The truth is much different.

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Yabits- No American believes that our country is all good, or perfect. Where are you getting this information? I think most of the posters here are simply sick of the non-stop death to America great satan posts you read so often here. Dig into any country's history, they've all committed atrocities at one time. America is no better or no worse than any other country, but at least we know that. Fun fact? Did you know my country gives more monetary aid to foreign countries than any other? If we really were the jarks you take us for, we could just keep all of it. Jeez, is it even possible for the people here to lay off the anti-American nonsense for a day?

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yabits is only trying to justify his own little jihad on the USA.

I simply speak the truth. If America had made a concerted effort to clean up the dangerous ordnance it left behind, and/or accepted responsibility for the thousands of people killed and maimed, it could have some claim to trying to do the right thing in this situation.

There are many within the U.S. who really make efforts to do the right things. But there are also very many who actively stifle the attempts to have the country do the right thing.

It is not all one country's fault, but since WWII, America has been the acknowledged "leader of the free world." The best leadership is by example, and America has not set the best example for other nations. It's usually "Do as I say and not as I do."

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No American believes that our country is all good, or perfect. Where are you getting this information?

I read it in the attitudes of people who post as you do.

If we really were the jarks you take us for, we could just keep all of it.

There are a great many Americans who believe we should keep all of it. Whether or not they are "jerks," the fact remains that, as a percentage of GDP, the United States gives far less than many other nations.

Jeez, is it even possible for the people here to lay off the anti-American nonsense for a day?

As the article states, the innocent people living exposed to the danger of the massive amount of unexploded ordnance, will face this danger for decades to come -- without a day's rest. Sorry, but your offended sensibilities have to take a far distant place behind the realities of these people, their children, and their children's children.

If more of us Americans would face up to the truth, responsibilities, and real costs of our actions, perhaps we would drop fewer bombs on people to begin with. Had we allowed the democratic process that we supposedly believe in to have taken place in 1956, Vietnam likely would have been united under the rule of Ho Chi Minh (who was a hero to the Allies in WWII) -- as it eventually did become in 1975.

All those bombs would not have been dropped, and all those lives not wasted and not still threatened today.

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Yabits: on that much we can agree if the 1956 elections had gone ahead Ho Chi Minh would have ended up ruling Vietnam. That's why we supplied the south and fought the war. In the end it failed but Ho Chi Minh as president was not what we wanted. I would say that as for your thought that the US should clean up the ordinance left behind I'm all for that. Problem is it's only recently that The Vietnamese would even entertain that idea, American presence wasn't exactly welcomed after the war. Now we should fund and assist with the cleanup.

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In the end it failed but Ho Chi Minh as president was not what we wanted.

I would hope that most Americans would want to get behind cleaning up the ordnance in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. I appreciate that you are for it.

Regarding the quote above, the sad reality is that the Vietnamese who were most against Ho Chi Minh were those Vietnamese who adopted the religion (Catholic) and customs of the French colonialists -- especially concentrated around Saigon in the south. You can best compare these Vietnamese to the Vichy French, who collaborated with the German occupiers. They were a powerful minority, but a minority nonetheless.

We may not have wanted Ho Chi Minh, but a majority of Vietnamese did. I believe he easily could have been on good terms with a United States that remembered its past against English colonizers.

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Yabits: My view of America is as of any other country: it is capable of both evil and good, and has done plenty of both. Slavery, the annihilation of native peoples, unjust wars (Mexico, Spain, southeast Asia, Vietnam).

hehe....uh....and the good? ;)

I know, I know. You love your guilt and misery. I'll leave you to it. There are plenty of "Rah Rah USA!" people in the US who balance you out.

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and the good?

Wonder how much tsunami and earthquake relief it will take to make up for the tens of thousands of innocent Indo-Chinese killed, and the children who are yet to be killed over the next 100 years from the leftover ordnance in Southeast Asia alone.

You love your guilt and misery.

No. It's people like you who love your denial and turning a blind eye towards the evil you are very much part of. What you'll leave me to is constantly reminding people of that fact. I'll leave you to your denial.

As for "Rah rah USA," never before in human history has there been a nation whose ratio of thinking highly of itself while bringing misery and destruction to others was so high.

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Yabits: What you'll leave me to is constantly reminding people of that fact

I understand. On one side we have Americans who cheer "USA USA!" and feel the US can do no wrong. And on the other end of the spectrum we have people such as yourself who define every situation in terms of "What can America be blamed for?" You guys are pretty the same in terms of having a blind, one-sided focus.

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And on the other end of the spectrum we have people such as yourself who define every situation...

Every situation? That is an absolute lie -- yet another in a continuing string.

This "situation" relates to the unexploded bombs dropped on Southeast Asia by the United States that have killed so many innocent people and continue to do so. If you can find something from the positive side of the prospect that people over there will be facing this danger for the next century, I'm all ears.

No country on earth has devoted more of its own GDP to producing ever more efficient methods and means of killing other human beings as the USA has. The amount dwarfs by comparison the crumbs brushed off the American table as humanitarian assistance. You want to accentuate the positive on that, go right ahead. The book I read tells me that the nation that exalts itself shall be humbled, and that "pride goeth before a fall."

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Yabits: This "situation" relates to the unexploded bombs dropped on Southeast Asia by the United States that have killed so many innocent people and continue to do so. If you can find something from the positive side of the prospect that people over there will be facing this danger for the next century, I'm all ears.

Why would I find something positive about it? I actually even support the removal. Not that you're really interested in hearing my opinion on the matter. You're here to lecture.

No country on earth has devoted more of its own GDP to producing ever more efficient methods and means of killing other human beings as the USA has. The amount dwarfs by comparison the crumbs brushed off the American table as humanitarian assistance.

And here's where we abandon the issue at hand and turn this into an exercise in "just more evidence of the evil of America." Guess what? I'm guessing that no country on earth has devoted more of its own GDP to protecting and saving more human beings as the USA has. I bet you get real angry hearing that, tho. You need your guilt, and you probably hate me for getting in the way.

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I'm guessing that no country on earth has devoted more of its own GDP to protecting and saving more human beings as the USA has.

The reason you have to resort to "guessing" is because, unlike some people, you have never devoted any actual time and effort to determining what the balance sheet is in reality. I don't have to guess that anyone presenting the hard and cold facts would be set upon by you and your unfounded guesswork. Such awesomely blind ignorance evokes pity, not anger.

Telling someone they need their guilt over something very wrong done in their name -- such as the massive bombing of civilian population areas in Indo-China -- is like telling them they need to be normal. I think it is a sign of evil or insanity for a person not to feel guilty in light of horrendous wrongdoing done by their country.

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It may be a matter of how a person's moral compass and scale are calibrated.

Being nice to people and being somewhat generous are normal and therefore the midpoint of the scale, not tipping it either way in my estimation. Some people, apparently, want to see basic, decent normal behavior as actually a tilt to the positive. Midpoint for them might be described as "we didn't do anything to hurt or help you today."

What tips the scale to the good is something like being generous until it actually hurts. Self-sacrifice and all that. The reason Indo-China is still dealing with as much leftover ordnance over 30 years later is because of a distinct lack of goodness on the part of the very country that was most responsible for dropping it.

If this ordnance was on American soil and killing U.S. kids, Americans wouldn't be so worried about the billions it would take to clean it up. It's only because it's happening to someone else's kids that Americans can hem and haw about the costs. Or, better yet, put it out of their minds.

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Yabits: The reason you have to resort to "guessing" is because, unlike some people, you have never devoted any actual time and effort to determining what the balance sheet is in reality.

I've seen your balance sheet. On one side is "crumbs of foreign aid" and on the other are detailed accounts of atrocities that extend well beyond ordinance in Vietnam. Asking for any kind of balance from you is treated as if I'm asking you to ignore anything the US could ever be blamed for. You have a one-track mind just like the blind patriots have a one-track mind. If we put the two of you in a room then maybe we could balance you guys out and meet somewhere in the middle where we belong.

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being on the top is not easy.

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yabits here's a little test. let's see how far apart we all are.

can you say after WWll america took a bold and positive action by supporting our enemies, where as in the past the tradition was to punish them?

we built up germany and japan. we let the people choose their own destiny (of course with a little guidance and regulation).

now can you admit in contrast the soviet union put a strangle hold on the people in eastern europe?

can you say to the wonks, who compared our relationship with japan and western europe to that of the soviets and eastern europe, that they were full of it?

can you say to these wonks that the idea of the US supporting these countries forced the soviets to strangle their neighbors is ridiculous? can you say that?

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On one side is "crumbs of foreign aid" and on the other are detailed accounts of atrocities that extend well beyond ordinance in Vietnam.

Millions of dead Indo-Chinese, and millions of displaced Iraqis (including tens upon tens of thousands of dead) both in wars that were of complete choice and had nothing to do with the defense of the United States make "detailed accounts" very difficult to get into. (There are just too many of them.) A nation would have to do an awful lot of selfless good to come anywhere near a balancing point. As well as deceiving itself into believing that black is actually white -- and that all this leftover ordnance, for example, actually brings about positive benefits.

put the two of you in a room then maybe we could balance you guys out and meet somewhere in the middle where we belong...

Your one-track mind compels you to come to absurd conclusions like this. It's like saying that all that was needed to reach a conclusion that Enron was a viable company in 2001 was to put two experts in a room, one of whom thought the company was in trouble, and other who thought that everything was super-great.

Regarding the balance sheet of destruction-caused vs. aid-given, those who advocate reaching some happy, mythical medium by clouding things up are essentially expressing their support for cooking the books.

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inkjet: I feel that answers to your questions would take this discussion too far off topic, and so I don't want to invest a great deal of time in writing a lot in reply.

I have something of a unique background in being a Vietnam vet whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Poland around the time of WWI. Suffice to say that, growing up in a largely Polish neighborhood in the 50s and 60s, I was exposed to a lot of discussion about what was happening behind the Iron Curtain, and my family maintained lots of contact, including visits, with the family that remained over there.

I think I can tie that paragraph back to the topic on ordnance in Indo-China by saying that it was the force of anti-communism that caused so much of this continuing misery over there. When WWII ended and it was believed that Soviet expansion represented a new kind of threat, then aid flowed to western Europe out of dire fear and self-interest, not out of a spirit of generosity. The original plans for how to treat postwar Germany were in fact draconian. (Source: American Policy and the reconstruction of West Germany, 1945-1955, by Diefendorf, et. al.)

It is this great American tradition of self-delusion that what we initially did out of dire fear of communist expansion and influence in western Europe gets somehow converted into us being so gosh-darned generous. It doesn't help matters that most of this "aid" was in the form of loans that Europe had to pay back.

Another myth that Americans told themselves was that once a nation was under the grips of communism, that was it: that nation could never be free again. And so if the choice was between being red or being dead -- a false choice indeed -- that death was better. This is the Big Lie, American version, and U.S. policy was such that the United States was fully prepared to launch a nuclear holocaust on the world in order to prevent an ultimate "communist victory."

This is why those Americans who do it can justify themselves that killing millions of people in Indo-China was for a noble cause. It was better for Americans that those people were dead rather than living and "red." We killed them for their own good; destroying the village in order to save it.

If you told the average American anti-communist back then that the Soviet Union could completely dismantle itself and its "empire" peacefully, without any kind of violent war, this was something beyond their imagination. It is this widespread American belief that the "other" is so evil that it is worth destroying the whole world rather than fall to it, that ultimately makes America fall prey to the much greater evil from within.

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If you told the average American anti-communist back then that the Soviet Union could completely dismantle itself and its "empire" peacefully, without any kind of violent war, this was something beyond their imagination.

reagan was one of those cold war guys. it wasn't past his imagination was it?

but you answered enough of the question. i know who you are, it all fits. you failed my test.

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Yabits: Millions of dead Indo-Chinese, and millions of displaced Iraqis

Iraqis? It sounds like you have a standard lecture you pull out and this thread tipped it off. My guess is you added Vietnam into the fold while giving us the cut and paste material.

Regarding the balance sheet of destruction-caused vs. aid-given, those who advocate reaching some happy, mythical medium by clouding things up are essentially expressing their support for cooking the books.

People who lack balance often convince themselves they have a legitimate reason to do so.

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reagan was one of those cold war guys. it wasn't past his imagination was it?

That the Soviets could put a leader like Gorbachev in charge certainly was beyond his imagination. Not unless you believe in visionary hindsight.

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This "situation" relates to the unexploded bombs dropped on Southeast Asia by the United States that have killed so many innocent people and continue to do so.

Ya but its not just ordiance by the US its also about all the ordinance by all nations/sides that participated in that conflict. Chances are the majority of those that have been injured or killed by these ordinance are american munition, but not all 42000 are from US munitions. I think every american is for helping clean up munitions left over from vietnam, when it comes to cambodia and laos, ya I agree the US should help there too in removal and funding but vietnam also needs to help in those countries in terms of funding and removal also considering they were the key reason why the conflict spread to those countries.

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Ya but its not just ordiance by the US its also about all the ordinance by all nations/sides that participated in that conflict.

that's not yabits' department.

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from a practical point of view should the vietnamese government have cleaned up themselves.

the US left in kind of a hurry.

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Ya but its not just ordiance by the US its also about all the ordinance by all nations/sides that participated in that conflict.

The percentage of the ordnance in Laos and Cambodia that can be traced back to the U.S. has got to be in the high-90s.

Go back, look at the numbers in the article: 15 million tons of bombs dropped by U.S. forces alone.

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Iraqis? It sounds like you have a standard lecture you pull out and this thread tipped it off. My guess is you added Vietnam into the fold while giving us the cut and paste material.

There is a phrase often used regarding U.S. military involvement since the mid-1970s: "the lesson of Vietnam." Regarding the Iraq invasion, it does not appear that the U.S. learned very much besides how to kill human beings more efficiently. Like Vietnam, Iraq was a war that the U.S. talked itself into. Some lesson.

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yabits-you forgot 8 years in Afganistan.

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yabits-you forgot 8 years in Afganistan.

and with obama promising more. what can we do about this guy?

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Yes I read the article yabits, thank you for pointing out something I already read. 15 milion tons used in vietnam war, 800k estimated to have been left undetonated in vietnam. My point was when it came to laos and cambodia, it shouldn't just be the US doing all the work in removing and funding the removal of the ordinance considering vietnamese also have ordinance left behind, definately not as much as the US as I had previously pointed out that its most likely that the majority belonged to the US in those countries, and the fact that they(vietnamese) were the reason why those countries became battlegrounds.

Has got to be in the high 90's? Any actual evidence of this? I know that the US used more ordiance in laos then in all of ww2, so it is a possibility but considering how much ordinance was being passed along through those countries vietnamese it may also be a stretch to put it in the 90's.

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Ok it seems to be that people, inkjet and yabits for example, misinterpreted my orignal post when I said it was from all sides of the conflict, I was saying that the US wasn't responsible for every single one of the 42,000 people killed by the left over ordinance. I was saying that the 42,000 were killed by left over undetonated ordinances from all countries that participated in that conflict, korean, austrailian, french, north vietnamese, russian(2k troops there), south vietnamese, american etc.

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Chances are a good amount of those 42,000k heck maybe even more then half of them were killed by american munitions still left behind but not all 42000 of them..

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heck maybe even more then half of them

LOL!! You ain't even close.

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well what is the number then yabits?

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According to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, 15 million tons of bombs were dropped by the U.S. in Indo-China. (Over 80,000 bombing runs in Laos alone -- the most bombed country per head in the history of the world.) Nearly ten percent of the munitions did not detonate, according to VVMF.

Source: http://www.vvmf.org/index.cfm?SectionID=285

That makes approximately 1.5 million tons of unexploded U.S. ordnance.

A released CIA document mentions two years of munitions supplies from the Soviet Union, China and communist bloc nations to North Vietnam during the years 1967 and 1968 as 91,000 tons and 55,000 tons respectively. (This was the height of the war.) If we estimate on the high side that 85,000 tons were sent for each year of the nine-year war, that comes to a total of 765,000 tons.

Source: http://www.faqs.org/cia/docs/62/0000969858/COMMUNIST-MILITARY-AID-DELIVERIES-TO-NORTH-VIETNAM-DURING-1968.html Make sure you browse the original document from the link at the bottom of that page. The stats are on page 7 of 17.

If we estimate again on the high side that twenty percent of the communist-supplied ammo did not detonate -- highly unlikely -- that brings 153,000 tons as opposed to 1.5 million tons -- a 1-to-9 ratio.

Like I said, you weren't even close in your statement that "maybe more than half" were killed by U.S. munitions. The number is closer to 90% in Vietnam and nearly 100% in Laos and Cambodia, since the communist forces weren't the ones dropping ordnance on those two countries.

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A note on my post above, regarding two years of munitions supplies from the communist nations to North Vietnam:

Those supplies include many tons of small caliber ammunition that would not fall into the category of the type of ordnance that is causing so much of the problem today. This serves to bolster the probability that it's U.S. ordnance that is more than 90% of the problem.

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that is not evidence yabits. I asked you for a breakdown of the 42,000 people killed and what they were killed by, like a mine, hand grenade, missile, mortor shell/artillery shell. What actual evidence do you have to support that nearly 90% of the 42,000 were killed by US munitions. do you have any evidence that shows the victims and the wounds they recieved and by what?

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All we have are facts and figures of how much munition was used by the US in the war. That can give us an idea of how much munition may remain and who it most likely belongs to but it is not evidence that 90% of the 42k killed were killed by US munitions. Again what actual evidence do you have that it is for certain 90% of those killed were killed by US munititions? again citing how much munition was used by the US in that war is not evidence. Remember your the one who is making the claim that it is a fact that more then 90% of those casualties are from US munitions. The fact that you are now changing your argument from fact to probability suggests you don't have any evidence for you "fact" claim that it is above 90%.

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Also another thing to think about is that I said probably more then half of them. well 90% is more then half of them isn't it? So how could you claim then I wasn't even close when what you said is the exact samething of what I said, just in a different way.

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The US has been involved in almost all wars since its existence, except for maybe the ones it blatantly ignored.

The US has been responsible for the deaths of millions of people. We don't need to tally, and debate any of this.

The US is a death machine, and right now its rolling towards Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea.

Quit talking about it and figure how to turn it off guys.

Moderator: You are off topic.

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Also another thing to think about is that I said probably more then half of them.

You said maybe more than half of them.

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The fact that you are now changing your argument from fact to probability suggests you don't have any evidence for you "fact" claim that it is above 90%.

LOL! Imagine a pistol with a ten-chamber cylinder, nine of which are loaded with U.S. bullets, and the tenth a communist bullet. Then line up a thousand mannequins, spin the barrel, walk up to the first one and fire into it. Then replace the spent cartridge with exactly the same type of bullet, spin the barrel and repeat the operation on each mannequin.

The laws of statistics provide the basis for the claim that roughly 90% of the targets will have been done in by U.S.-made bullets.

But there are two other significant factors which further tilt the odds that it is U.S. made ordnance that is causing more than 90% of the casualities. The first factor is type of ordnance. We got our 9:1 ratio by assuming that ALL of the communist supplied munitions were of the type that would remain a serious danger. This can't be the case.

The second factor is location. The North Vietnamese did not bomb themselves, and they did not bomb Laos or Cambodia. The U.S. pulverized those places with millions of tons of bombs, and heavily bombed areas of South Vietnam too. The thousands killed and maimed in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam in the years since the end of the war have a certainty in the high-90 percent range as being caused by U.S. ordnance.

At some point, common sense has to take precedence over the delusional, unfounded belief that the United States, while responsible for well over 90% of the most dangerous unexploded ordnance, is somehow only responsible for "maybe" a shade over "half" of the victims.

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ya exactly yabits I said maybe because I don't know because there is no official reports. Maybe means its a possibility and that is might not also be a possibility. Point still stands, saying maybe more then half is the same thing as saying 90% just different. So there is no way I could be way off.

Your mannequins examaple doesn't work because there is more then enough ordinance by your own citation that would be more then enough to kill 42000k just by the vietnamese side of the war.

My issue isn't the ratio or the actual number of them dead or how much of a percentage the US is responsible for, my issue is that you claimed I was way off and the only numbers you have are just munition numbers.

Your ratio also means we can't assumbe all US supplied munitions were of a type that would remain a serious danger either. Lets say for the moment it is indeed a 9:1 ratio, the ratio alone does not mean that 90% of those killed goes to US, it just means that there is a 90% chance they were killed by a US munition, in fact you could make the claim that all those killed were actually killed by vietnamese ammunition.

Second factor, ah the north vietnamese may not have necessarily bombed themselves but that doesn't mean that it is impossible that there own munitions lying around in ammo dumps didn't pose a danger after the war ended nor does it that hidden weapon cache don't pose a danger. Also when it comes to laos and cambodia, you don't have to bomb them in order to have ordinance, you can transport it by hand or by truck and leave it on the side of the road. Well considering how much ordinance was being sent through by the vietnamese and considering how many times they were targetd by the US it is very much possible a significant amount of vietnamese munitions were left behind or were not retrieved after those airstrikes. Look at how much munition was left behind by the vietnamese when the US did that ground assault with south vietnamese troops into cambodia that was ordered by nixon that basically gave away just how far we were going to go and so all they had to do was just pullback and wait.

I'm not doubting that that there could be or most likely be a certaintly high percentage, maybe even 90%, but I'm not going to go around and say that it is as a fact.

Whoa where did I say a "shade over half of the victims". I said maybe over half because it isn't a confirmed fact, the other reason why I said over half instead of three quarters or 90% percent is because there is no hard facts for how many the US ordinance did kill, as a result leaving it at over 50% instead of 90% leaves a lot of room for error. I wasn't saying it was over 50% but under 55%. I was just saying it was over 50%, so any number over 50% is a possibility.

It is a possibility though that vietnamese munitions could be the cause of more then 10% of the deaths, again having 90% of left over munitions does not mean you are responsible for 90%. For example lets say I flip one hundred coins, heads and tails, since the possibility of it being either heads or tails is 50% then by your argument heads should come up around 50% of the time as is tails or atleast very cloes to 50%, but if you do it in real life you don't always get it to be 50/50, in fact it is possible that it could end up being 75 heads and 25 tails or 100 heads and 0 tails, so would you say then that it is delusions and unfounded belief that heads or tails could come up 75% of the time? How about 90 or even 100%? Is it common sense that it is not possible that you could have heads come up 75% of the time? There is more then enough vietnamese munitions left to have caused every single one of those 42000k deaths, as a result it is possible they caused more then 10% of the deaths.

As you can see my issue here is you claiming that it is a fact that it is around 90% were killed by US munition without real hard evidence, meaning a list of the 42k poeple and what munition they were killed by.

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The ordnance has killed a lot more than that. Almost everything that the US left behind was used up in wars with China and the Khmer Rouge. Heck. It is what I would have done. And if somebody steps on a poorly laid mine years later, I could blame it on the Americans.

In case people have not heard, the blame the Americans game is going strong these days, just like the blame Obama game, the blame Bush game, and all the rest. Sooner or later, we will all be guilty of something.

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