Thanks to Judith and co
May 28th, 2008 at 1:12 pm by David FarrarLater today we will have an official apology to the Vietnam Veterans for their treatment over the years. It is not just overdue, but is the end of some shabby behaviour from both the former National and current Labour Government.
In 1998 a National government commissioned the Reeves Inquiry (headed by Sir Paul Reeves) to look at the effects of Agent Orange on the children of Vietnam Veterans. The Inquiry Report stated that our troops were not exposed to Agent Orange. That untruth was repeated in the later McLeod Report (authored by Dr Deborah McLeod from the Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences) commissioned by Labour in 2001.
In the uproar that followed the release of the McLeod Report John Masters, commander of the last artillery unit to serve in Vietnam, remembered that hidden away at the bottom of an old trunk he had a classified map which detailed the extent to which Phouc Tuy Province had been sprayed. He got Ross Miller to approach Judith Collins to see if she might be prepared to help. She was (it turns out one of her cousins also served and still has chronic ill health from the experience) and Judith went public with the map.
On the day existence of the map was revealed, the then Minister of Veterans Affairs (Hawkins) went on the 6.00 News and derided the map as a possible forgery. This allowed Judith to persuade the the Health Select Committee to unanimously proceed with an inquiry.
Of particular interest to Vietnam veterans is that the inquiry revealed the existence of a secret file in the New Zealand Defence Force which detailed chapter and verse how NZ servicemen in Phouc Tuy Province were sprayed with just under 2 million litres of Agent Orange. That file was never made available to either of the two Inquiries.
Thanks to John Masters, Ross Miller and Judith Collins, the truth came out. Without them, the Agent Orange story would have never been told.
The ‘Apology’ will go some way to healing the wounds. For then 700 who have died since then, many before their time, it comes too late. We all owe Judith Collins a debt for taking up a cause no-one else wanted to listen to.
Tags: Deborah McLeod, John Masters, Judith Collins, Paul Reeves, Ross Miller, veterans, Vietnam
May 28th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Chris Trotter was on National Radio yesterday about 4:40pm saying that the Veterans didn’t deserve an apology, that they deserved what they got because they had been fighting on the wrong side [my summary].
Vote:Apart from the obvious statement that the role of a soldier is not to determine the political issues of the day, but to carry out the mandate of the government within the laws of war, I was wondering at which point the Labour Party explicitly called for “troops out”? He insisted that the volunteers had known that they were fighting a bad war.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Yes, credit where credit’s due, and well done Judith Collins for her role in helping to expose this shoddy little cover-up. But lets not forget the role played by Green MP Sue Kedgley who had been calling for the inquiry into Agent Orange exposure for years.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Can anyone recall what antics Clark and Goff may have been up to in welcoming home the troops?
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Chris Trotter needs to pull his head in, in my opinion. And Helen Clark needs to personally make the apology. I have heard first hand from a number of Vietnam Veterans who, on informing the Prime Minisister that they were, in fact, Vietnam vets, they have been given a VERY cold shoulder from Dear Leader. This contrasts sharply with the effusive nature of her greetings towards WW2 and Korean vets. She is well known as a protester against the war, which she had every right to do, and more power to her, but as the Prime Minister, she needs to remember that although she has the right to hold an opinion, she does not have the right to treat those who served at the insistance of the government of the day with such supreme indifference.
Regrettably, Mr Trotters opinion is still prevalent on the left!
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
“on informing the Prime Minisister”
I was going to amend the typo, but as we all know, the Prime Minisister is H2, innit??
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
BTW, good discussion on this over at frogblog.
And if that is Chris Trotter’s view, it is not one shared by me. New Zealand shouldn’t have been in that war, but the reality is that we were, so should have looked after our vets much better than we have done. It wasn’t their fault they were there.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Congratulations to Judith Collins – and yes, Sue Kedgley too – though Collins, as a member of one of the parties who, as DPF rightly admits, had treated Vietnam veterans very poorly, had more to lose than Kedgley and thus showed great courage as well as compassion.
Now this is the kind of principled action by a Parliamentarian to which they should all aspire. A pity that – admirable though it is – set against the behaviour of most of her fellow MPs it’s nowhere near enough to restore most people’s faith in that institution.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
The Prime Minister’s apology needs to be on behalf of the crown but also a personal one. She was one of those who made the vets homecoming so bad in the first place.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
hang on a minute.
Why an appology? For what? Soldiers sign up and take the consequences. War is not pretty.
If an appology is due, it is due tot he Vietnamese whose country was invaded, whose civilians were indiscriminately bombed, burned, raped and murdered. And whose people still suffer today due to unexploded ordinance.
Agent Orange, well if its caused as much havoc in NZ as some claim, just how much worse is it in Vietnam?
It was a dirty, squallid little war that NZ would have been well advised to keep out of
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Trotter is a low life scum bag who has no respect or decency, mind you given that he is of the opinion that it is quite acceptable for the left to steal and lie just as long as they stay in power then nobody should really be surprised at his comments.
The apology is long overdue and well deserved but I fear it is not genuine, Clark and many from her party were the same wankers who spat on these men when they did return from Vietnam, make no mistake this apology is only happening because it is election year, those who doubt me should remember the words of dear leader when she said she was prepared to do “whatever it takes”
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I note that Clark refused to actually say “Sorry”, what an evil maggot she is, lets hope that Comrade Espiner and co make a big deal of her pathetic attempt at an apology.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Toad – Chris Trotter was rabbiting on this an National Radio on 24 April.
It can be implied from what he said that we should commenorate particular war dead bepending on the alleged ‘worth’ of the campaign that they were killed in. For example if the campaign was wrongly conceived by some toffee nosed high class idiot of a British Army general, then the dead from that campaign should not be commenorated, nor presumably should the soldiers involved have received gongs, no matter how brave they were.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
DPF: “That untruth was repeated in the later McLeod Report (authored by Dr Deborah McLeod from the Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences) commissioned by Labour in 2001.”
Nice to see the acknowledgement that the Labour/Alliance Government commissioned the report. A small point… would that be the same Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences whose study of policymaking to reduce smoking around children you were criticising just last Friday?
And yes, well done Judith, Sue and others for getting this attended to after all these years.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I recall this war and a couple of my schoolmates were Artillery Officers in it. I certainly didn’t discern anything other than support for our troops over there. Towards the end there was certainly a vociferous anti war minority mainly based around the universities but I don’t think it reached into the heartland. The cold war was in full swing at the time and the spread of communism was a very real threat towards which the protest movement seemed sympathetic.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Helen Clark’s background in the anti-Viet Nam movement and her long term antipathy to anything from the USA makes me regard her move as hypocritical. She rushes off to Europe and Turkey to follow up on battles in past wars.Instead of sending veterans for free she sends over bureaucrats and maori to do dances and waiata. We know her background, so I see her efforts with veterans affairs as nothing more than playing politics.
Vote:I find Helen Clark lately as an angry looking face and nasty things floating out of her mouth while her face is covered in a THICK layer of makeup. Now she looks like an aging geisha girl.
Watching parliament today I was angered by that aging Marxist-Greenie Keith Locke making a full blooded attack on the USA.Keith Locke certainly supported the north during the Viket Nan war, Locke has the sound of an out of date Stalinist.
May 28th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
you talk drivel neil..locke didn’t attack america..
imho turia gave the best speech..
..with anderton as runner-up..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
and baxter..”..Towards the end there was certainly a vociferous anti war minority mainly based around the universities but I don’t think it reached into the heartland..”
didn’t reach into your ‘heartland’..eh..?
you were wrong then..
and in your support of the iraqi invasion/occupation..
you are wrong now..
(brownie points for consistancy..!..tho’..!
eh..?
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Neil said: Keith Locke certainly supported the north during the Viket Nan war
Neil, it wasn’t a matter of supporting the “North”. The Vietnam War wasn’t a ware between the artificially created “North” and “South” but before the US intervention was a a civil war. The US had no business intervening to suppress the self-determination of the Vietnamese people – that point I am sure Keith Locke would have agreed with. While the North was run by a communits regime, the South was run by a puppet US regime – neither held democratic elections. But as Dwight D Eisenhower wrote in 1954 “80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh” if elections were held.
Are you suggesting that it is justifiable for the US to militarily suppress the democratic will of a people, simply because the expression of that will is not in US global interests? Presume you think the Iraq War is justified too, despite the fact that it was embarked on only as a consequence of the blatant lies Cheney told to Congress.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Oh, and I’ve just noticed this post from Green candidate Catherine Delahunty on this topic over on frogblog. Very sensible observations from her imo.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
oo-err..!..toad’s here..!
toad lifts her skirts..and sniffs disdainfully..at the mention of moi..
..she won’t be happy being ‘bracketed’..like this….eh..?
her nose will be ‘quite out of joint’..
she claims i don’t at all times carry myself ‘with dignity’..(unlike her cited example..ol’horizontal-bike/hysterically colour/pattern-challenged mike ‘the spoiler’ ward..
phil(whoar.co.nz
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
If an appology is due, it is due tot he Vietnamese whose country was invaded, whose civilians were indiscriminately bombed, burned, raped and murdered. And whose people still suffer today due to unexploded ordinance.
Or we could apologise for deserting them to the evils of communism just because they got politically inconvenient.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
While the North was run by a communits regime, the South was run by a puppet US regime
So the North wasnt a puppet of the Soviet Union?
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
“..she claims i don’t at all times carry myself ‘with dignity’..”
Don’t exaggerate whoar. Dignity went missing from your dictionary long, long ago.
Vote:Otherwise, how come you remain on the dole, living off the back of your fellow citizens? Where is the dignity there?
May 28th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
toad
Are you suggesting it is justifiable to sit back and watch Saddam murder his own people just as long as the Yanks do not do something about it?
Really, you often claim that the Greens (and Locke in particular) are not anti USA yet every chance he (or you) get you cannot wait to remind us just how “evil” the USA are.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
raising my (now 13 yr old) son..?..man-o-lo..?
since he was a little baby..?
heaps a ‘dgnity’ there..eh..?
what do you do exactly..in your life..
that has ‘heaps of dignity’..?
eh..?
man-o-lo..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
bb is almost becoming an historical artifact..eh..?
a voice from another era..
someone should donate him to the museum of transport and technology..(?)
maybe he might donate himself..?
they could set him up in his own little rightwing diaorama..
eh..?
(‘reds under the bed’..(a living/moving/speaking example of a time in history..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Big bruv, Are you suggesting it is justifiable to sit back and watch Mugabe murder his own people just as long as the Yanks do not do something about it? (In which case we would be able to join them, I guess.)
Because that’s what’s happening, right now.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
radvad wrote:
“Can anyone recall what antics Clark and Goff may have been up to in welcoming home the troops?”
Can anyone recall what antics radvad may have been up to when walking past a primary school the otherday?
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Why do the words, “Rudd”, “Labor”, “Election Year” and “Aboriginal” come to mind?
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Finally the apology from the kiwi government for soldiers that served in Nam. Pity Klarkula is all over it like a nuke bomb and gets the brownie points , but what else would you expect in election year, maybe a Ministry of Men’s Affairs? Yeah right ! Delta Bravo.Anybody caught voting liarbour should be the subject of a court-martial. Ask any front line soldier who respects and welcomes air cover support, like a Sky Hawk, as long as it’s not covering them with acid rain. Where is the kiwi air support madam speaker?
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Jafa
If the Yanks did go into Zimbabwe you and your left wing mates would be all over them like a rash, however is seems that those from the left are happy to see people killed or dying of starvation just as long as the nasty evil USA are not involved.
Vote:May 28th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Before you lurch into “cover up” theories DPF:
1. The existence of the “secret file” was not known by any of us. It was not hidden, and it was certainly not a “cover up” – we just didn’t know it existed.
2. The Reeves inquiry and the McLeod inquiry were conducted carefully and with integrity. They were not “shabby”, and shame on you for suggesting that David. They did not know of the existence of any map or secret file. The evidence when they did those inquiries was that NZ troops had not been directly exposed to Agent Orange. They based their reports scrupulously upon the scientific evidence available to them at the time.
3. Then again, I suppose me writing this is proof that I am part of the conspiracy…
[DPF: If you refer to "us" it would be useful for you to identify the us. There was a cover up in that the file was not made available to the inquiries. It doesn't mean those doing the inquiries covered up, but someone failed to make the file available or just didn't bother look hard for the evidence.
And the fact remains that even without the map, the testimony and words of many veterans was effectively dismissed as self serving. If the map had never been located, their tesimony would never have been accepted]
Vote:May 29th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Greenjacket … I note the word “us” in your post. Please don’t insult me with your garbage that Reeves & McLeod were conducted carefully and with integrity. Every Vietnam veteran knows that isn’t true and the Health Select Committee Report supports that view. Both the Government and Opposition yesterday in the House agreed those reports be consigned to the ‘dustbin of history’ and we thank them for that.
So, by the word “us’ you indentify yourself as part of the cabal that were behind those reports. I am happy to post under my name. Why don’t you have integrity to post under yours … Dr _ _ _ _
Vote:May 30th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
The next apology should be from the US Govt, Monsanto and the Dow Chemical Company to the people of Vietnam for poisoning their country with 20 million gallons of Agent Orange as well as Agents Purple, Pink, and Green. Truly appalling.
Vote: