A federal appeals court in New York will hear oral arguments today in a lawsuit filed by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange. The lawsuit accuses over 35 chemical companies including Monsanto and Dow Chemical of knowingly providing the U.S. government with a poisonous agent that was then sprayed indiscriminately on millions of civilians during the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese Red Cross estimates 150,000 children have been born with birth defects since 1975 because of Agent Orange. U.S. veterans including David Cline of Veterans for Peace have backed the lawsuit.

David Cline: “If you want to end a war, you have to help the victims and the veterans seek justice, and the Vietnamese people are standing up for their rights. And as American veterans, we are supporting and want to see that all victims are given some amount of justice.”

Vietnam’s President Nguyen Minh Triet is expected to raise the issue with President Bush on Friday when Triet becomes the first Vietnamese head of state to visit Washington since the end of the Vietnam War.