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The Depression Of The Vietnam War

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Thinking back to the days of one’s youth, one might recall taking a family trip to the local amusement park during the warmer months of summer. Standing, walking, or even running, one can spend hours underneath the beating heat of the sun. Moving from ride to ride, families pass by tents spraying mists of cooling, refreshing water to help soothe the pain from standing out in the sun. Children run back and forth through the mist, laughing with excitement. There is hardly a care in the world when the family is having so much fun. Now replace the amusement park with the jungles of Vietnam, and the tent, now a two engine C-123 cargo plane, sprays deadly chemicals instead of harmless water on the young American soldiers stationed there. This was the situation many Vietnam veterans were placed in during the conflict in Vietnam, and they were clueless and unprepared for the aftereffects of the chemicals sprayed across the battlefields. The chemical that was being sprayed across Vietnam was a potent herbicide that came to be known as Agent Orange, named after the color band that wrapped around the canisters it was transported in. This herbicide, while extremely efficient at its job of destroying forests and crops, it also did a great job at harming humans. Since the end of the war in Vietnam, many negative health effects of Agent Orange such as cancer and birth defects have come to light. Even though these health effects were caused by the spraying in Vietnam, many

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