It only took 40 years. And yes, Washington still disputes Hanoi’s claim that up to 4 million Vietnamese suffered contact with the defoliant, which was dumped en masse in a U.S. air campaign to scorch away the dense jungle cover under which guerilla fighters hid. But the AP reports that the U.S. is finally set to start cleaning up the mess.Not to give short shrift to the unconscionable, U.S.-led carpet bombing of Cambodia in 1970, of course. But to really size up the horrific, lingering sting of the Vietnam conflict you have to consider the equally long-lasting and nightmarish fallout from America’s wanton fire-hosing of Agent Orange. The numbers are staggering: Between 1962 and 1971 the U.S. military sprayed some 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and a galaxy of other herbicides on nearly a quarter of former South Vietnam. The defoliant ate through about 5 million acres – a tract comparable in size to Massachusetts – of forest. An additional half-million acres of crops were decimated.Read the rest over at Motherboard.