Vietnam Weapons Of War: Over 42,000 Killed By Leftover Mines, Bombs

HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnam's prime minister says more than 42,000 people have been killed by bombs, mines and ordnance left from the Vietnam War, and more continue to die 36 years after the war ended.

Nguyen Tan Dung told a mine action donors' conference Monday that more than 62,000 others have been wounded by accidental explosions of weapons from the war.

U.S. Ambassador David Shear told the conference that the United States has provided $62 million to help Vietnam deal with "this painful legacy."

The U.S. Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund says more than 350,000 tons of land mines and explosives remain scattered across the country.

Comments

[King Nine]

11:26 AM on 12/06/2011

Hey, if the VC/NVA wanted the South that badly maybe they should have thought twice about it. We're giving them $62,000,000???? Time for Linebacker lll.

[clintnapril2]

10:36 AM on 12/06/2011

" The purpose of war isn't to determine who is right, Only, who is left" I feel for the people who have to live knowing there might be ordinance around, and the innocent people who have been affected.

[Michael D Ballantine]

01:56 AM on 12/06/2011

We could do more for the Vietnamese people. At least we didn't pollute the country with DU like in Iraq and Afghanistan. None of our military adventures since WWII and have produced positive results for us or for the nation's we attacked. When will America learn that war is not our best option or even an option. Instead of rushing to arms, we need to give diplomacy a chance. Now as we look upon our next military adventure in Iran, we should pause to consider the real cost to the innocent people caught in the cross-fire. It is not the leaders that bear the burden of our crimes, but the ordinary people trying to scratch a living from the soil. We have an unpaid debt to Vietnam, and $62 million is chump change.

[MrDoughnut]

05:43 PM on 12/05/2011

The Americans that got drafted were just as unhappy fighting the 1%'s war. Next time send Wall St to do their own dirty work!

[MrDoughnut]

05:33 PM on 12/05/2011

Had Hanoi surrendered way back in the 1960's this would not have happened.

[Christina-Xena]

06:03 PM on 12/05/2011

This type of post-war "collaterial damage" is a problem in many countries regardless of which side "wins." And oftentimes it's the kids, farmers and livestock who are the victims of such abandoned landmines and minefields long after the conflict has ended.

The use of landmines is should be agreed to be banned by any country of which the United States has refused so far to sign such an agreement. And short of that there should be at the minimum only used in clearly marked border areas labled as a landmine field. Also once the war is over there should be a required clearing of such weapons.

I suggest the phrase: "no mine left behind" as a good slogan.

[psuffield]

04:00 PM on 12/05/2011

Too damn bad! The North should have listened to us. But I suppose maybe now...after 36 years since the end of the war that North should just admit that Democracy is a much better path to follow and that we were right. Yet, they can't do that can they? Nope. The price for North's overthrow of South Vietnam and reunification for communistic-tyranny is stil being paid for, and I doubt very much if the Communist authorities care very much about that consistant payment in blood.

I guess this is a better ending for them rather than for us to have invaded them (like we should have done in 1965).

[cuoi]

04:22 PM on 12/05/2011

OSS supported Uncle Ho in1948. Read their Declaration if Independence. Sound familiar? The nerve of any country to try to assert their independence! Time to get into the present. The doctrine of Mr. X, proven to be a failure, has been replaced by Mr. Y : A National Strategic Initiative.
Obviously you have not lived in Vietnam recently...

[Danilo-11]

08:51 PM on 12/05/2011

Are you saying that those landmines would have disappeared if South Vietnam had won?

[bensawya]

03:40 PM on 12/05/2011

Third world toilet...... Who cares.

[cuoi]

04:24 PM on 12/05/2011

Is that what you think? You may wish to consider your thinking...few people wish to become a toilet...

[bensawya]

05:11 PM on 12/05/2011

I was there in 1969. I used it for what it was good for. Burying the enemy and a place to take a dump. Thats the only two good memories I have of the place except the view out the aircraft window the day I left. Don't eat the rice or veggies if you visit there. They still use raw human waste for fertilizer. Go there sometime and them perhaps you could have a comment with some meaning.

[MrDoughnut]

05:34 PM on 12/05/2011

Will take their low price cigarettes over China products.

[bensawya]

05:45 PM on 12/05/2011

I don't smoke anymore so they can keep them also.

[ascri38223]

02:59 PM on 12/05/2011

Pick them all up and drop them again on Pakistan and Afganastan!!

[MrDoughnut]

05:35 PM on 12/05/2011

Hire visa workers to do it then give Americans back their jobs

[Danilo-11]

02:12 PM on 12/05/2011

As usual, the media giving us only 1/2 of the story and hiding most of the hard facts. Here's the facts not mentioned http://www.icbl.org/index.php/icbl/Universal/MBT/States-Not-Party

[cuoi]

04:26 PM on 12/05/2011

Jeez, Vietnam?!! I am shocked. They should have been one of the first. Thank you for this cite.

[Robert Frano]

01:33 PM on 12/05/2011

Re: ‘Nguyen Tan Dung told a mine-action-donor-conference, that 62,000+ casualties have been wounded by left-over ordinance; the story also reports 42,000 deaths, (amid 35 kilotons of 'left-over’s')!
Germany just recovered a (1.8-ton) WW-2 ‘air-dropped-left-over’; superficial media coverage notes not a single year has gone by, since WW-2, w/o such recoveries, although this 'conventional’ device was a real ‘crowd-pleaser’! Most of the city evacuated...

A German U-Boat (U-846, if memory serves), has ‘mercurized’ the surrounding ocean-floor off Norway, a result of a british-torpedo-mediated 'discontinuence' of 'lend-leased' mercury, intended for Japanese ammo-fuses…

In my hometown, there's the “Keeler Tavern” which has an unexploded 1775-77-era cannon-ball in the outer-wainscotting; all the children I grew up with have touched this unexploded-item, but, thus far, retain their fingers!

Lost lives & limbs, (and ‘closet-industries’ to replace limbs), is an old post-conflict issue!
Seems like whereever the corporate-welfare-effort plies it’s highly-profitable businesses, they also leave their ‘toys’, post ‘pacification-by-village-destruction’, as they move to 'pacify' the next village...!

Where are the pro-lifers amidst all this preventable death-&-destruction??!
Too busy ‘ministering’ to their pet-constituency, the 'UNBORN', (L.O.L.!)? Does this 'ministry' include vasectomy-doomed-sperm?
Hysterectomized eggs?? How is this this 'ensoulment' process performed & by whom?! Perhaps its intended as a Bachmann-administration profit-generator; Maybe it's ‘proprietary’!

[Mochilero]

01:21 PM on 12/05/2011

There is a large cottage industry in Laos turning leftover ordinance into souvenirs. A greater tonnage of bombs were dropped on that tiny country than fell on Germany during WWII. And we (supposedly) were not even at war with them.

[psuffield]

04:12 PM on 12/05/2011

We weren't at war with the Laostian people but their governement turned a blind eye towards the presence of Vietnamese troops who were running supplies, ordinance, and troops through their country. When the Laostain people protested the Vietnamese would threaten them and even kill a very of their people. It wasn't until the South Vietnamese army invaded in 1971 backed by the few remaining U.S. troops that the Ho Chi Min road was finally brought to an end.

The communist North violated the soverigty (spelling maybe off) of Laos and Cambodia, two independent nations so that the North could achieve its aims of reunification with the South and implement a communist governement through out Vietnam. This is what we were trying to prevent but the "hippies" of course felt differently.

[cuoi]

04:28 PM on 12/05/2011

Some of us "hippies" were there...

[Mochilero]

10:28 PM on 12/05/2011

After Dien Bien Phu, the US was signatory to a treaty that national elections be held in Vietnam in 1956. When the time came, it was completely apparent that Ho Chi Minh would win in a landslide, so we reneged. None of our involvement was ever justified, and I find your view typically revisionist of those who will never admit that we were wrong. Whether or not the Laotian government was turning a blind eye or not, there is still no ethical justification for massive bombing that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and is still killing them today with unexploded ordinance.

[Dear Maxie]

01:01 PM on 12/05/2011

See the VVMF Project Renew website at
http://www.vvmf.org/RENEW
Project Renew works in Quang Tri Province in Vietnam to help identify UXO and to help people injured by explosions find sustainable sources of income. The War still continues to injure and kill people.

[forty8r]

12:51 PM on 12/05/2011

People are still killed or injured occasionaly in Europe by ordinance left over from WWI which is almost 100 years ago.

[american-dolt]

12:51 PM on 12/05/2011

War, the Gift that keeps on Giving.

[Grousefeather]

12:45 PM on 12/05/2011

Where do the "right to life" folks stand on this issue?

[Yossarian22]

03:42 PM on 12/05/2011

Well, the victims are outside of their mothers' uterus, so who cares?