The federal government isn't fully owning up to its responsibilities for the victims of Agent Orange, a herbicide sprayed on Vietnamese jungles and any humans who might have been in or near them.

In classified documents, Agent Orange has been linked by medical experts to dozens of forms of cancer and other diseases - but your government is willing to pay for treating only a few of them. That's not good enough for Dick Phenneger, a self-professed bulldog who wants "the truth to be known and our government to do what's right."

So determined is Phenneger, a retired military and commercial pilot living in Post Falls, that he created a nonprofit called Veterans Services Transparency.

Phenneger's most pressing project is a survey that was outlined in a front-page Press story Monday. We'll touch on that in a moment. The broader issue is how many thousands of our most deserving citizens are not getting the support they need. As our ongoing coverage will explain, Phenneger's theory is this: If the government took full responsibility for the devastating effects of Agent Orange on humans, it would be admitting to using chemical weapons during the Vietnam War and it would incur a financial liability far beyond what it is willing to accept.

Phenneger has been gathering data and interviewing victims of Agent Orange poisoning for several years now. As his research and networking have expanded, he's become increasingly aware of and disturbed by a similarly devastating phenomenon: The effects of depleted uranium on our veterans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Phenneger is attempting to get as many Vietnam vets as possible to participate in a survey that he hopes will lead to the Department of Veterans Affairs expanding the list of diseases it will treat because of dioxin poisoning from Agent Orange. He's doing so as many of these victims and their families suffer without receiving the support they earned decades ago.

Through the newspaper and meetings with area veterans groups, Phenneger has reached out to survey participants. We're asking friends and family of North Idaho veterans of the Vietnam War to get involved, as well, encouraging or even helping them fill out the survey. This is an important process even for those who never got sick or don't think they were anywhere near Agent Orange. If not for themselves, we hope they'll do it for their military brethren. By participating in the survey, they'll be helping others who might long ago have given up the fight for their health rights.