IG Farben, referred to below, was a cartel of BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies. Bayer developed Zyclon B which was sold both as a pesticide and for the purpose of gassing concentration camp inmates.
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Re: Use of Agent Orange Not A War Crime Says Judge
From: Giuseppe Furioso
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To The Editor,

Today's New York Times (3/11/05) reported that Judge Jack B. Weinstein had dismissed a lawsuit brought on "behalf of millions of Vietnamese that claimed American chemical companies committed warcrimes by supplying the military with the defoliant Agent Orange." 

The civil suit sought billions of dollars in damages for environmental clean up and for the legacy of birth defects and other health problems
associated with dioxin, which is the active ingredient in Agent Orange. In his ruling to dismiss the charges, Weinstein said that the United States was party to "no treaty or agreement, expressed or implied" that made the use of "herbicides in Viet Nam a violation of international law". He further pointed out that until 1975 when then President Gerald Ford adopted a policy against the use of herbicides in war, only gasses that had anasphyxiating or toxic affect on humans where outlawed. Defoliants that "were designed to affect plants and may have had unintended harmful side affects on people" apparently did not meet Judge Weinstein's criteria for a toxic or poisonous agent.

I find Judge Weinstein's reasoning astounding insofar as anyone with an IQ above 70 has to know that anything that will kill plant life is also toxic to humans... all one has to do is read the label on any popular weed killer.

Now if something such as "Round-Up" (a commercial weed killer) used by homeowners to kill dandelions warns that it can be fatal to animals if ingested, the consequence of Agent Orange which was designed to defoliate an entire jungle, have to be obvious even to an idiot.

Perhaps the good judge would have rendered a different opinion had he researched the case of Dr. Bruno Tesch. Tesch was the inventor of the infamous Zyclon B that allegedly was used by the Germans to exterminate millions of the Judge's fellow tribesmen. Following World War ll, Tesch and a colleague were arrested as war criminals for supplying the Germans with vast amounts of this commercial pesticide. Both were found guilty and executed.

Joe
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NY Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/nyregion/10cnd-oran.html