I am glad the “spray the people” came up. For those of you too young to remember the Americans used a chemical weapon called “Agent Orange” or 245T(a defoliant with nasty side effects) in Vietnam. Perhaps some of you would like to see the administration and all involved tried in the International War Crimes Court as well? In Afghanistan the idea was to burn the poppy fields and get the farmers to grow edible crops instead. What happened to that idea? As far as I can see it was a non starter as when free and fair elections came along you would have a lot of peed off farmers without a livelihood and a mighty annoyed Taliban who relied on the income to wage war by extorting money from the growers. So what happens? Drugs still get into the UK and people still die from addiction from them. Do I care if one Taliban gets slotted or people die in this country for its continued production. I think you know my answer.
Wiki(but plenty of other sources)
In 1961 and 1962 the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to destroy vegetation and food crops in South Vietnam. Between 1961 and 1967 the US Air Force sprayed 12 million US gallons of concentrated herbicides, mainly Agent Orange (containing dioxin as an impurity in the manufacturing process) over 6 million acres (24,000 km²) of foliage and trees, affecting an estimated 13% of South Vietnam’s land. In 1965, 42% of all herbicides were sprayed over food crops. Besides destroying vegetation used as cover by the NLF and destroying food crops the herbicide was used to drive civilians into RVN-controlled areas.[46]
In 1997, an article published by the Wall Street Journal reported that up to half a million children were born with dioxin related deformities, and that the birth defects in North Vietnam were fourfold those in the South. The use of Agent Orange may have been contrary to international rules of war at the time. It is also of note that the most likely victims of such an assault were small children. A 1967 study by the Agronomy Section of the Japanese Science Council concluded that 3.8 million acres (15,000 km²) of land had been destroyed, killing 1000 peasants and 13,000 livestock.
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