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Episode 2494 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature portions of a paper about the secret bombing and biological warfare committed by the U.S. in Laos.
The paper was submitted to the Scientific Research Publishing service by Professor Kenneth R. Olson of the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, USA and David R. Speidel of the Natural Resource Conservation Service and Foreign Agricultural Service, Benton, Missouri, USA.
In this episode the portions of the paper dealing with bombing and herbicide use will be featured. According to the writers, for ten years (1964-1973), the CIA, with the assistance of the US Air Force, conducted intensive daily aerial bombing campaigns over northern and southern Laos using automated air war techniques. Local mercenary armies and U.S. military units were sworn to secrecy. Two-thirds of Laos was subjected to 580,344 bombing missions and a total of more than two million tons of aerial-dropped explosive ordinance. The bombing equates to one B-52 plane load of bombs being dropped every eight minutes for nine years—about two tons of bombs per person. Laos holds the per capita record as the most heavily bombed country in world history.
They also found, along the southern mountainous spine between Laos and Vietnam ran the Vietnamese military transport route, known as the Hồ Chi Minh Trail. Like in Vietnam, the area was extensively and sprayed regularly with herbicides. Unlike with Vietnam, few outsiders know about it.
The primary objective of this study was to: 1) determine locations of potential dioxin TCDD and arsenic hotspots as a result the secret chemical spraying missions on the Hồ Chi Minh Trail in Laos and 2) determine environmental and human health effects from the spraying of tactical herbicides containing dioxin (TCDD) and/or arsenic.
Listen to episode 2494 and discover more about the secret bombing and biological warfare committed by the U.S. in Laos.
