This is a story of betrayal and power. It is a story about people who lived in a beautiful house that was threatened by an infestation. The people asked their friend, a powerful king, to come to their house to help rid it of the threat. The king came, and brought his children to help. The king also brought a deadly poison to fight the infestation, and in the process of using it to battle the menace, poisoned the people's house, their children, and even his own children. He left the house without defeating the infestation, allowed the poison makers to become rich, told the people he was no longer their friend, did nothing to clean up the poison he left in the house, didn't help heal the people's children, or do much to help his own sick children. And worst of all, for generations to come, the poison sickened the progeny of his children and the people's children. When the people asked the king why he would not clean their house or help the sick children, he said simply, "I am the king and I do whatever I wish, and help whomever I choose."

The beautiful house is Vietnam, and the people's children are Vietnam's children. The moral of the story is, be careful whom you select as a friend.

An allegorical, fairy tale way of describing a travesty might seem like an inappropriate approach, but what happened in Vietnam is surely a story with no happy ending, and the people in this story are certainly not living happily ever after.

Claims of what the United States (U.S.) military did to the people and soil in Vietnam during its occupation of the country, and subsequent toxic, or poisonous defoliant spraying operations there, has been an ongoing horror story of "alleged" health problems, misery, frustration, and as some people state, an unconscionable violation of human rights. The worst part, if the story is true, is that the parties responsible for the health problems have done hardly anything, or nothing to help the people who have suffered the most, the Vietnamese people. For those allegedly injured by the toxin, their health problems are believed to be more than mere coincidence. Their concerns are more than an attempt to place blame. Rather, the coincidence presents a correlation that may exist between the presence of the U.S. military in Vietnam, prior knowledge by the chemical manufacturers of Dioxin's presence in the defoliants, the spraying of the toxic defoliants by the military, and resultant health problems suffered by the American Vietnam

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