Vietnam+Veteran+Treatment

Tennessee chose to make a holiday for the Veterans of Vietnam that were poorly treated in their homecoming. Life magazine came to their holiday, and reported what they found. [|Life Magazine- Vietnam veteran treatment]

[|video link]

**How were vietnam veterans treated in comparison with other veterans? ** They made the veterans out to be bad people who were animalistic. We didn’t even thank them until 1982 when the memorial went up. __[]__ __Virtually nothing was done to aid veterans and their loved ones who needed assistance in adjusting__ . __Then a torrent of fiction, films, and television programs depicted Vietnam vets as drug-crazed psychotic killers, as vicious executioners in Vietnam and equally vicious menaces at home.__
 * Americans seemed to shun the 2 million-plus Americans who went to Vietnam
 *  1.6 million who served in combat
 *  the 300,000 physically wounded
 * the many more who bore psychological scars
 * the 2,387 listed as "missing in action,"
 * and the more than 58,000 who died.
 * Not until after the 1982 dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., did American culture acknowledge their sacrifice and suffering, and concede that most had been good soldiers in a bad war.



Yet this altered view of the __Vietnam veterans as victimizers__ , if not as brave heroes, was not accompanied by new public policies. Although most veterans did succeed in making the transition to ordinary civilian life, many did not.
 * __More Vietnam veterans committed suicide after the war than had died in it.__
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> __Even more-(perhaps three-quarters of a million)-became part of the lost army of the homeless.__
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">__And the nearly 700,000 draftees,__
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> __many of them poor,__
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">__badly educated,__
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> __and nonwhite,__
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> __who had received less than honorable discharges,__
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">__d__epriving them of educational and medical benefits, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> found it especially difficult to
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">get and keep jobs,
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> maintain family relationships,
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">and to stay out of jail.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Although a majority of Americans came to view dysfunctional veterans as needing support and medical attention rather than moral condemnation, the Veterans Administration, reluctant to admit the special difficulties faced by these veterans and their need for additional benefits, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">__first denied the harm done by chemicals like Agent Orange and by the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) afflicting as many as 700,000, and then stalled on providing treatment.__

[|http://www.vn-agentorange.org/veterans.html]

picture taken in 2011

How was Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War? Agent Orange was a chemical used to clear out jungle areas. Planes would fly over and drop the chemical over specific areas of Vietnam. (specific areas shown in the linked map below)The effects are disgusting and too graphic for my own liking. Major birth defects were also an effect of agent orange. [|Agent Orange Map]