Today in history

January 18

1962
U.S. began spraying foliage in Vietnam to expose Viet Cong guerrillas. The U.S. dropped millions of gallons of herbicides such as Agent Orange, sparking charges the United States was violating international rules against using chemical weapons during war.

Many of the herbicides were later found to cause birth defects and rare forms of cancer in humans.

Agent Orange: An Ongoing Atrocity

1982
Greenham women ‘keen’ outside House of Commons.

1985
For the first time since joining the World Court in 1946, the United States walked out during a case. The case concerned U.S. paramilitary activities against the Nicaraguan government. The Court charged the U.S. violated international law with its actions against the Sandinistas, and ordered the U.S. to pay reparations to Nicaragua in June 1986.

For the Reagan administration, efforts to undermine the Sandinista government in Nicaragua had been a keystone of its anticommunist foreign policy since it took office in 1981.
The U.S. government ignored the decision and Congress later banned further U.S. military aid to the Contras in 1988.
Congressman Michael Barnes of Maryland stated that he was “shocked and saddened that the Reagan Administration had so little confidence in its own policies that it choose not even to defend them (to the World Court).”