Wikipedia Rule One:

Do not rely on Wikipedia alone, particularly for controversial topics.

First, no source is given for the horrific picture of the Vietnamese man. Even if it is authentic, it would be very difficult and perhaps impossible to know whether his condition resulted from any environmental factor, including Agent Orange. Horrible birth defects are, unfortunately, always with us. The other pictures are equally questionable. The issue of Agent Orange can't be decided by anybody's unsourced or propaganda-source photographs. Only medical and epidemiological research can establish the medical, including the statistical, risks posed by any substance.

Second, always beware of the words "linked to." All they mean is that somebody has offered *some* evidence that two things *may* have *some sort of* connection. That's all! The real question is how real and important is the "link" - assuming it's real at all.

Here is the list of conditions recognized by the Veterans Administration as possibly caused by Agent Orange exposure.

http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange/diseases.asp

It's reasonable to suppose that further research will show additional conditions. Any "link" to birth defects, however, though widely promoted by concerned veterans' families in the '70s, seems to be especially weak.

Not all the conditions listed are equally serious, and most result from unusually heavy Agent Orange exposure.

More to the point: not everybody exposed to Agent Orange develops any of these conditions. As far as I can tell, the *precise* risk of *any* medical consequences to anyone, soldier or civilian, from simple Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam is still quite unclear despite years of study. But it appears to be rather low.

If Agent Orange were really as lethal as propagandists have claimed, there should be, forty-odd years later, an enormous number of such cases.

Agent Orange is bad for you. But it was not the health scourge of Vietnam that propagandists claim. The real risks of exposure in Vietnam were roughly comparable to the risks involved in handling any sort of herbicide or pesticide. People deserve compensation for ill effects because they were exposed without their knowledge, not because Agent Orange was an "illegal" weapon.

Because its use was not intended to kill people, it was not a "weapon" at all. (Though that obviously doesn't mean that it was a harmless substance.)

The threat of Agent Orange appears to have been far less, for example, than the exposure of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers to clouds of airborne asbestos, a known and very dangerous carcinogen, by Osama Bin Laden on 9/11.