Since there is no vegetation along the banks of the river that provides any useful purpose other than concealment for drug runners and illegals, your arguments are specious. Where I come from, a bank without vegetation is called a beach.  If the defoliant saves one of our Border Patrol officers from getting injured or killed, the moral imperative of the defoliant/herbicide is attained.

California and Massachusetts are discovering the predictable result of encouraging so-called sanctuary cities to welcome illegals into the social programs.  On the one hand you have weeds along the river. On the other hand you have bankrupt cities that can’t afford to take care of their legal citizens much less the illegals.

By the way,  “Orange”  was sprayed about three gallons per acre which is the equivalent of .009 of an ounce per square foot. Sprayed from C-130’s  less than 6% ever reached the ground. As I recall, after spraying, ground troops typically didn’t enter the sprayed area for another month.  Dioxin degrades in sunlight  after 48 to 72 hours. 

Quibbling about which weeds are good and which weeds are bad distracts from the point of the project which is to deny concealment to those entering the country illegally. What is your real reason/motive to question the use of chemicals to clear undergrowth and weeds where growth is undesirable for any reason?  

I prefer to wash the trace amounts of fertilizer/herbicide/pesticide off my produce before cooking and/or eating it.  The choice is yours. I spent many a summer working on my uncle’s dairy farm drinking unpasteurized milk from the tank. Your fears are overblown.

Before we rake our farming and cattle industry over the coals I suggest that more cancers are caused by obesity, drinking alcohol, super-sized and Big Gulp drinks from 7/11,  too much sugar consumption, fat intake, smoking, and  lack of exercise. Let’s keep things in perspective, shall we? I find it precious that people are being coerced into forsaking high fructose corn syrup for cane/beet sugar. Substituting cane sugar for HFCS  in a 64oz big gulp will not extend your life. Fascinating that government is using the same arguments to get us back on cane sugar as they used to get us off it and onto HFCS in years past.

As a Veteran, I am acutely aware that initially the VA denied that there was a connection between Agent Orange and increased cancer risk among “ranch hands” personnel. In any case, the use of Agent Orange was to deny cover to VC/NVA/ChiCom insurgents. There were plenty of  other HazMat materials that worried me more than dioxin.

One other thing, consider that policy and practicality are synonymous with entitlement and expediency particularly when used by Washington politicians. John Kerry is the poster boy for that sort of dialogue.