We are in the midst of the 148th anniversary of Sherman's march to the sea.

[regexcellent]

So let's see... either:
1. It can't be proven in court that agent orange is harmful, but they didn't think $180 million was worth the effort of defending
2. It can be proven

Hmmm.....

Lawsuits are insanely expensive, and even if Dow won the lawsuits wouldn't be over, and even if Dow won the public outrage wouldn't be over. Who is actually right has absolutely no bearing on anything.

[giblets]

Lawsuits are insanely expensive, and even if Dow won the lawsuits wouldn't be over, and even if Dow won the public outrage wouldn't be over. Who is actually right has absolutely no bearing on anything.

I don't know what a team of lawyers costs, but $180 million? Really? I think you're just falling back on an ideology that sees corporations as hapless victims of an irrational mob.

[kentonio]

So let's see... either:
1. It can't be proven in court that agent orange is harmful, but they didn't think $180 million was worth the effort of defending
2. It can be proven

Hmmm.....

If they could have defended, why wouldn't they? How is it good PR to pay out and basically admit you caused thousands of birth defects and other hideous medical effects?

[Dinner]

Gribbler suffers from anti-science know nothing-ism when it comes to the health effects of Agent Orange.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange

[Lonestar]

ITT: A bunch of butthurt Southerners who are pissed off that Union forces had to live off the land because Confederate raiders were making it impossible to be supplied by rail.

[MichaeltheGreat]

But he freed slaves along the way, so I think it evens out.

Sherman didn't give a rat's ass about freeing the slaves. He wanted them running around loose to create even more disorder and confusion, and if they starved, were shot, or whatever else, he didn't care one way or another. Sherman was very good at applying overwhelming firepower to soft targets, and at defeating outnumbered mediocre commanders. When you start with three times the manpower and more than ten times the industrial base, taking four years to win a war doesn't confer any bragging rights.

[Lonestar]

When you start with three times the manpower and more than ten times the industrial base, taking four years to win a war doesn't confer any bragging rights.

In that case The same applies to WW2

[MichaeltheGreat]

Not really, because Dow doesn't still make Agent Orange. Tobacco companies still sell tobacco.

Nobody on this forum has been able to provide any kind of reasonable evidence for Agent Orange actually being dangerous. All anyone's been able to turn up are bull**** meta-studies and unrelated crap about "oh, this person pays money to this person for political reasons so clearly I am right."

There is a huge amount of scientific and medical journal literature on the subject. Agent Orange killed my brother - I got to watch him fight three extremely rare, concurrently developing, rapidly metastasizing cancers all originated in the testes area. He was a member of the 196th Assault Support Helicopter Company, providing support missions to fire bases and FOBs in II Corps AOR. As such, he was directly oversprayed at least six times, and routinely operated out of LZs with kill zones created by Orange. The primary causation for the carcinogenic effects of Orange was contamination by 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD) a very well documented, undisputed and extremely potent carcinogen. Dow in particular exercised very poor quality control in its manufacture under its DoD contracts for rainbow agents,

Dow settled for two very simple, related reasons. First, they were going to lose the vast majority of their objection to discovery motions, which would have exposed their knowing shipment of contaminated constituent materials (which could not have been used in the US or many other countries) for mixing into Orange under their DoD contract. Second, their last line of defense was that the contract officers and others in USG knew of the contamination and accepted the product.

[MichaeltheGreat]

In that case The same applies to WW2

Not really. We had the population, but at the start, we had neither the military force (especially with the disparity in training or experience) nor a major advantage in militarily relevant manufacturing - both of those were assembled on the fly as the war moved on.

[Lonestar]

Not really. We had the population, but at the start, we had neither the military force (especially with the disparity in training or experience)

Baloney, we had the biggest navy by tonnage even after Pearl Harbor. People seem to forget that.

But hey, no training and experience at the start means it's an impressive feat?

So then the Union army was pretty impressive, huh?

nor a major advantage in militarily relevant manufacturing

I guess we had the US Navy built overseas. Same with all those trucks?

- both of those were assembled on the fly as the war moved on.

Hey, if "assembling on the fly" is an impressive feat then it means what the Union did was also impressive, as one of the two armories in the US was seized and the tools moved to Richmond(Harpers Ferry)...so, the North started out nto nearly as good as you're implying, from a war-making standpoint.

Meanwhile, the Confederacy couldn't replicate what the Revolutionaries of 1776 did despite the odds being much more in their favor. Or how the Union forces didn't really bring superior numbers that often to individual battles, as most of their troops were tied down guarding bridges and railroads.

(Sherman's March is a particularly good example of this: there were twice as many Union troops stretching from Atlanta to the Ohio then in Sherman's Army).

Oh no, nope, nothing impressive with conquering a area bigger than Western Europe without any war-making industry to speak of at the start. Those damn Yankees didn't perform a impressive feat at all!

[MichaeltheGreat]

Baloney, we had the biggest navy by tonnage even after Pearl Harbor. People seem to forget that.

Because it's pretty irrelevant to preparation for land warfare in Europe. And most of our navy at the time was obsolescent.

But hey, no training and experience at the start means it's an impressive feat?

So then the Union army was pretty impressive, huh?

Not really. Both the Yankee army and the Confederate army were equally inexperienced and the officer corps equally out of grade (regular army captains and majors typically held brigade and division commands) The US army of WW2 was far larger and was massively green with both limited training and almost non-existent modern combat doctrine, compared to the Germans who'd been working on doctrine and officer corps development for 15 years, plus had over 3 years combat experience by the time the US started getting on the ground.

I guess we had the US Navy built overseas. Same with all those trucks?

We had the US Navy built for WW1 and the 1920s. Oh, and naval aviation? Remember the Brewster Buffalo and TBD? Top of the line for the US. How much of the pre-war Navy was still around and on the line in late 1943, even?

Those trucks didn't exist at the start of the war, nor did the manufacturing capacity to make them. The real US accomplishment in WW2 wasn't on the battlefields, it was the expansion and overall size of military manufacturing capacity. Ultimately, we built Sherman tanks faster than the Krauts could build 75 and 88 ammo.

Hey, if "assembling on the fly" is an impressive feat then it means what the Union did was also impressive, as one of the two armories in the US was seized and the tools moved to Richmond(Harpers Ferry)...so, the North started out nto nearly as good as you're implying, from a war-making standpoint.

Manufacturing muzzle loading muskets, bayonets and leather kit isn't quite the same as manufacturing ships, tanks and aircraft coming off a depression. Plus a great percentage of US weaponry was imported.

Meanwhile, the Confederacy couldn't replicate what the Revolutionaries of 1776 did despite the odds being much more in their favor. Or how the Union forces didn't really bring superior numbers that often to individual battles, as most of their troops were tied down guarding bridges and railroads.

The odds were far less in their favor. The British had bigger problems on the continent, and could never allocate anything near the majority of their forces on land or sea to dealing with the revolutionaries, and they had major supply and sustainment issues anyplace where farms weren't largely in tory hands. Distance and financial constraints meant the British had no real chance against sustained resistance. Sure, they could take and hold major cities and resupply by sea at enormous expense, but for what point?

(Sherman's March is a particularly good example of this: there were twice as many Union troops stretching from Atlanta to the Ohio then in Sherman's Army).

Supply line security has always been an issue in ground warfare. And the same thing affected the CSA.

Oh no, nope, nothing impressive with conquering a area bigger than Western Europe without any war-making industry to speak of at the start. Those damn Yankees didn't perform a impressive feat at all!

Nope, they didn't.

[Aeson]

I haven't read this thread ... but I think if Sherman had had Agent Orange to destroy the Confederate economy with the death toll would have been lower.

[kentonio]

Baloney, we had the biggest navy by tonnage even after Pearl Harbor. People seem to forget that.

If most of that is obsolete, how does that help the US?

[giblets]

Sherman didn't give a rat's ass about freeing the slaves. He wanted them running around loose to create even more disorder and confusion, and if they starved, were shot, or whatever else, he didn't care one way or another. Sherman was very good at applying overwhelming firepower to soft targets, and at defeating outnumbered mediocre commanders. When you start with three times the manpower and more than ten times the industrial base, taking four years to win a war doesn't confer any bragging rights.

Food was still the main input for supporting armies during the Civil War, so the "ten times the industrial base" part was not quite as important as it might seem. As far as I know, Confederate soldiers weren't fighting without guns or anything.

[regexcellent]

Michael, just because your brother got some rare cancer doesn't mean agent orange did it. Being sprayed by agent orange even six times shouldn't be a high enough concentration of dioxins to be dangerous and in any case the stuff breaks down in direct sunlight. Agent Orange doesn't even have very much dioxin in it anyway. The concentrations present per square meter of spraying area was pretty small.