were manufactured and sold by american chemical companies including tao monsanto and diamond shamrock. at the time vietnam was divided into north and south the us supported the government of south vietnam and military intervention intensified after nine hundred sixty five. but the us made strong resistance from guerrilla forces who used dense jungle as their base of operations. defoliants brain was begun in an effort to deny coverage to the guerrillas by eliminating the jungle folliot. as the war escalated the spraying of deval eons increased dramatically and much of the land in south vietnam was contaminated and left barren. the

defoliant known as agent orange was made from the same chemical substances as herbicides used in the us but it was twenty five times more potent. agent orange also contained dioxin the most toxic chemical ever produced. dioxin remains in the environment for many decades and causes a variety of health problems. several million vietnamese and american soldiers who fought in vietnam were affected by agent orange. their children and grandchildren continue to suffer the effects. dioxin remains in the soil of vietnam today and the land has yet to recover.

in the train one nine hundred sixty six and sixty eight a lot of chemical was sprayed into wrong so on mountains and along the border with lice and all. that they did i get it for them the hills were covered with large trees that yeah. thank. all those. that want to be after the chemicals were sprayed all the trees died from truong sawn to acquiring tree for one tree and. i'm not knocking we used to have many precious animals in this area we have had it you know it. you know why. they were elephants and tigers bears and lions i want to live a lot on my back i got the i.q. they were precious birds including peacocks. i. mean much how i want

to be they were all destroyed by the war not only by bombs but by chemicals. in vietnam agent orange was only sprayed in the south but there are many think dims in the north as well first they were exposed in the jungles of the south while fighting in the north vietnamese army. after serving in the war these veterans began to develop cancer diabetes and other illnesses. many of their children are born with health problems and the effects have carried over into the third generation. i have six sons and a daughter i do know my daughter has trouble with her eyes. she

has six fingers. this is the youngest son he is mentally disabled. right. one of the grandsons has problems with nerves and breathing. the other grandson has skin disease. it way what i did when i fought in the south i saw chemicals being sprayed from airplanes overhead. i became blind when i was two. since then my life has been very hard. i am now twenty eight and life is dark and

difficult. i hope that the society will take care of me and that i will be able to say again. the midwestern town of canfield ohio. had their bounds or the daughter of a vietnam veteran lives in this small town with her husband aaron and two sons. my father bill morris was in vietnam in one nine hundred sixty eight through one nine hundred sixty nine he was in long binh. and he would also go out on convoy i was born in one nine hundred seventy two. my mother actually had two miscarriages prior to me my birth experience was pretty

traumatic for her because i was born with multiple problems. i was missing my leg and my fingers and my big toe on my right foot and my mother said that there was a gasp everyone was shocked and all she saw was the. oxygen mask or whatever to kind of knock her out my parents really truly honestly believe that what had happened was as a result of my father's exposure to agent orange in vietnam and so that's when my parents started pushing and trying to get the word out so i was interviewed for local newspapers and. i would be photographed and our story would be told in newspapers primarily once when i was a teen in the band because it was big news i mean you her a girl with one leg marching in a high school competitive band in

a very small town i mean it was news i was born without my my fingers on my left hand and on my right hand. my hands really honestly never really stood in the way for me except for an outward sign to other people that i wasn't the same i use my hands a lot in my artwork i find myself drawing my hands quite a bit because to me. they're my hands you know just as if anyone would. but they do tell a story they tell us story of. how the oxen. if. in october two thousand and ten had their

end and visited vietnam for the first time for their first stop was with the family of an in quantum named province. and i wonder if. they haven't come back from. enough harm and stop a doctor who. only know. your eyes are red they are always like this even if. you know nothing i say what i said what is it normally let's face it right now i don't know what. i do getting bigger if you don't like you are going to. think that it was

a. joke my daughter is twenty seven and the son is twenty five. he walked past she is in great pain when she has her period. bad bad and sometimes the pain is so bad she can't eat for three days. nights all modern day her brother cannot see and needs to be fed. very. few that have yet to be their daily life. i entered the military in one nine hundred seventy three and was stationed in denying not. going out and i was building roads to get to know you ask him what he thought it was the problems with children where did you first understand that there were any oh wait out with me when i came home from the

war and the children were born i was shocked to get it i never imagined it was because of agent orange. that got us we thought an ancestor might have had a serious disease but. you know we checked the family histories and found nothing. goodnight i'll get that off but why have you not got. no place as a mother it is painful to have told her night this. that but they are so unfortunate compared to other children you talk. with connie don't you know no one is willing to accept our children. which we. they are adults now and they would like to work with. when you think. i. am going you know that no one will hire them. but.

i don't know. that it is hard on one stair and to be a parent of children like the. climb up what. they probably need to know. you know him well you never. can you ask her but you'd like to tell the children to bed. that page or america what you would like to tell them and you don't want to use the very day that it did the day go on you might need to build the family the night. i feel sympathy no please be strong. and.

i'm also trying hard to be happy. like you are you're not. really really wanted was a. question and. i was a little. heather and ran an antique store on weekends. my father was alive when i got married he really really really loved it he was comfortable with there and. i think that was what huge fear for him he was

afraid that i wouldn't find anyone. and when he met aaron he knew he knew that aaron loved me he got to walk me down the aisle and. very very good memory for me when i was born and had all these issues and he blamed himself and my mother didn't know when she was having miscarriages he dabbled in alcoholism or while he was in prison by vietnam. and he didn't live his life because of that what a tragedy. i must've been about six or seven maybe eight years old maybe at the most and i remember hearing my parents fight and. it was typically you know they would carry on. and then one of them would peel out the

driveway in the car you know out of anger and i remember my dad got quiet and i was in my room and i heard him go into the bedroom i was little and i remember i was in my night clothes and i went to the door and i saw him standing by his upright dresser with his heels on the dresser. and i look and he had a pistol and he and. i was little i didn't know i didn't know that he was probably very close to committing suicide at that point in time and i went to him and i remember just be a little like the daddy if it doesn't work go first try try again that was my eight year old wisdom at the time and you know. you turned around and you looked at me and. said you try try again and you put the gun down father's death was really it was service connected they

did connected his exposure to agent orange he would always say i didn't realize i was taking my children. or he said. floored me if i hadn't known he said if i had known what would happen to you. i would have dodged the draft and for my father to say that that was huge and to hear that come out of his mouth was shocking to me it was shocking but it just spoke to the guilt that he carried from the moment my father. went into the draft our life always centered around vietnam. always of course there's been times fits and i would call in fits and spurts in my life believe it that i would become so impassioned in our power and i

have to do something about this agent orange stuff and it just still there that's the unfair and i can't believe this one of the last times i found sharon perry on facebook believe it or not it was i had googled or something children of agent orange or children american veterans soldiers children you know and those kinds of things and asians i guess he was there and i was. like her i you know i just cried and we laid there's other people because when you fight this first so long and our country is so large that you feel isolated.

when my husband died everything that i base my life on my beliefs my value system it was turned on its head he always told me from the time that i'm met him that you know we were going to get married that he he was going to die long formally indicted fifty six it is it is my understanding that his death is. attributed to exposure to agent orange because he did serve in country in the brown water navy on the rivers

and he had yes he had diabetes and perfectly raw other secondary illnesses. that started with agent orange legacy. after my husband passed away of course what the american people need to know that's that's who needs to know is that the families of vietnam veterans are on the brink they are there they are devastated with the circumstances though they face today that they've been living with for years with untreated post-traumatic stress disorder with illnesses and cancerous caused by agent orange their children are ill their grandchildren are ill in these families are devastated they're having to fight for any benefits that they get this straw in my family killed my husband and that's enough to keep me going to live day i die and i get

discouraged yes and then i meet somebody who says you help me and that gets me to the next day. sherry t. keith's parents divorced soon after she was born. her father who she reconnected with when she was twenty six was a vietnam veteran who carry deep scars from the war he died of cancer in two thousand and nine i was more or less an accident. they got married long enough so that i would not be considered illegitimate so that i would have my father's name by the time i was two i think i'd been to. four or five different doctors about it and it to a dermatologist diagnosed me with alopecia universalities in my in my case which

means i don't have any body hair really anywhere also when i was almost sixteen i had not started my period yet so my mom took me to the doctor to just kind of you know see what was going on and the first doctor the we went to took a look and said i need to refer you to a specialist and she didn't really explain what she saw or anything to us she decides when she to go over here to the specialist so he went to go see a doctor at the university of alabama in birmingham. not remembering his name just right now and he did a pelvic examination and then they did an ultrasound and some others hess i believe they even may have done a crown was on check to make sure it was really supposed to be a girl what they found out was that i didn't have a uterus and that my vagina was only about you know that big it wasn't normal everything looked normal from the outside but on the inside nothing was right and they said you're not going to have

a normal sex life you're not going to have children. and that was really hard you know in your early teens in your late teens early twenty's at college most of your peers are having sex so to not even be able to and to try to go on a date with someone and of course you date them long enough they're going to expect something to happen and nothing happens or you actually have to look at them and say i can't explain it i mean that's that's really hard. to have two such remotely small things happen to one person seems like statistically speaking there has to be a cause and maybe it's a similar cause how you know why would two such unique things happen without having some. pot you know at least possibly same cause you know i don't know if i'm phrasing that right but how can that be how i feel about not being able to have

children at this point in my life at forty i'm probably as ok with it as i can be it was i've had two different men in my life who have chosen not to have a long term relationship with me because i can't have kids and that hurts in fact the man i'm married to now at one point i told him that i would not marry him because i could give him children and he was like oh you have a kid i don't even know i don't but yeah i have missed out on things i've had things taken away from me and i'm angry i've come to terms with it but it's not fair what i've found over the last year or so becoming involved with agent orange is you know there's there's so much stigma associated with saying i have a problem by reproductive system i think there are fewer people that are willing to talk about it now now that i've opened up and said this is what it is it is hard to

talk about it's embarrassing i'm not precisely thrilled that everyone will do this and get to find out that i don't have a uterus but at the same time i think it's important for people to know and i don't think it's something to be ashamed of but that has taken me probably twenty years to get around to to say i have nothing to be ashamed of i mean all those years dealing with p.t.s.d. and vietnam and aging or any of you nominated or is that's what it's like all those years you know america's moved on left us stuck in time how dare they. we're going to come out and we're going to we're going to take over where the veterans voice has has been stopped has been discontinued they think that that's all that was necessary to hide their lives but they're wrong because they forgot about the widow this is

a piece they did after my daughter danielle and i had the diagnosis with her spine are in the process of getting the diagnosis this is. agent orange is evil and. my has been bud and six very much like like he did and my youngest daughter lizbeth and she's in prison and my everything that's happened to us plus service asperger's and the alcohol and drug abuse as a result of his p.t.s.d. and other illnesses in this all came about because of danielle spine problems he access to that vertebrates putting a part. moscow

warms of the un human rights body which claims syrian leaders for the houla massacre puts the pace planet risk because the investigation still ongoing. president putin reaffirms his style not taking sides during top level visits to paris and berlin at a meeting you leaders on home soil. from palaces to prison egypt's ousted president hosni mubarak begin serving life for his part in killing protesters last year but thousands are enraged to what they see as a soft sentance. the world's top whistleblower julian assange loses his extradition appeal from britain to sweden on sex assault charges.

hello and welcome you're watching the weekly here on r.t. a roundup of the top stories of the last seven days with me kevin know it and first russia's warning that the u.n. human rights resolution condemning the syrian leadership for last week's who live massacre risks to railing the peace plan moscow called it premature because the investigation's ongoing and that therefore is putting pressure on the security council where russia is resisting foreign military action on sunday president assad insisted his troops had nothing to do with the slaughter of more than one hundred people in the city he blamed armed rebel gangs for the attack at outside forces for instigating the conflict to trigger intervention washington which backs the syrian opposition and the push for regime change admits there are plans for military action sports neil clark a contributor to britain's guardian newspaper he told me western states are using the recent tragedy in houla as a pretext for a possible intervention. for the very first time we heard about this massacre.