US rejects cluster bomb ban

[malaise]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6390957.stm

<snip>
Forty-six nations, including the UK, have pledged to work towards a new treaty banning cluster bombs.

At the end of a two-day conference in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, the countries signed a declaration committing themselves to a ban.

They aim to prohibit by 2008 the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.

The US has rejected any ban, saying the weapons have a place in its arsenal.
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:puke: :puke:

[RC]

1. Anything that indiscriminately kills people is good.

Land mine are good too. Killing the kids is just part of the deal. Not our fault they chose to live in a war zone. Somebody's gotta set them off so the war profiters can make more to replace them.
Yea, USofA!:sarcasm:

[Jeanette in FL]

2. "the weapons have a place in its arsenal"

That has to be one of the sickest statements I have read this morning.

[malaise]

3. Sick is an understatement

How ironic that they do this in the name of their god. Evil is now good. Then we wonder why the children are so violent.

[Solo_in_MD]

6. Actually they do...limited role, but at times they are the best and only fit, like land mines

I have no problem with their use in those situation.

[madokie]

9. for us to use cluster bombs on the people who done nothing to us to begin with

is just wrong as wrong can be. :shrug:

[Solo_in_MD]

11. As I stated, there are time and places that they are the right choice, what are the details of the

incident you think was wrong? Tactical details, not politcal arm waving.

[bigtree]

10. one problem is with the unexploded 'bomblets' they leave in these populated areas

the U.S. insists on using them in.

[Solo_in_MD]

12. That complaint has mostly been leveled at the IDF in Lebanon

Don't recall recent ones against the US for that, but the coffee has not kicked in this AM yet.

Sub munitions are the right weapon against artillery sites, SAMs, and massed soft formations. Many nations have them, including all of NATO, the members of the former Warsaw pact, and China.

[bigtree]

13. Iraq too, I'm afraid

Cluster bombs kill in Iraq, even after shooting ends

By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY


Shahad Thaer Mustafa, 5, stands in front of her Baghdad home where her uncle was killed by a cluster bomblet.

BAGHDAD — The little canisters dropped onto the city, white ribbons trailing behind. They clattered into streets, landed in lemon trees, rattled around on roofs, settled onto lawns.

When Jassim al-Qaisi saw the canisters the size of D batteries falling on his neighborhood just before 7 a.m. April 7, he laughed and asked himself: "Now what are the Americans throwing on our heads?" (Interactive graphic: How a cluster bomb works and more)

The strange objects were fired by U.S. artillery outside Baghdad as U.S. forces approached the Iraqi capital. In the span of a few minutes, they would kill four civilians in the al-Dora neighborhood of southern Baghdad and send al-Qaisi's teenage son to the hospital with metal fragments in his foot.

The deadly objects were cluster bomblets, small explosives packed by the dozens or hundreds into bombs, rockets or artillery shells known as cluster weapons. When these weapons were fired on Baghdad on April 7, many of the bomblets failed to explode on impact. They were picked up or stumbled on by their victims.

The four who died in the al-Dora neighborhood that day lived a few blocks from al-Qaisi's house. Rashid Majid, 58, who was nearsighted, stepped on an unexploded bomblet around the corner from his home. The explosion ripped his legs off. As he lay bleeding in the street, another bomblet exploded a few yards away, instantly killing three young men, including two of Majid's sons — Arkan, 33, and Ghasan, 28. "My sons! My sons!" Majid called out. He died a few hours later.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-12-10-cluster-bomb-cover_x.htm

[bigtree]

14. Iraq's Children of the Bomblet

by Kareem Fahim
March 23rd, 2004 12:45 PM


In the months after the Iraq war, the unexploded bomblets sat idly in parks, sandlots, school yards, and fields, waiting for kids.

Nihad Jewad, like thousands of Baghdad's children, wandered out to play soccer in late April, after the fighting had stopped. His older brother wasn't sure whether Nihad picked up the device or fell on it. By the time he reached the Saudi-run field hospital, his left hand blown off along with the thumb on his right one, most of his life had flowed out of the blasted femoral artery in his leg.

As the doctors attempted to revive him, an American soldier guarding the clinic approached a photographer. "It's terrible about those land mines," he said, just like that. The comment struck the photographer as sarcastic. Or disingenuous, at least, since the boy clearly hadn't stepped on a mine. The clinic couldn't issue death certificates, nor did it supply coffins, so the Jewads would have to go to another hospital. Later that afternoon, Nihad's family buried him at the cemetery in Abu Ghreib.

The bomblets look like fun to kids. Shiny, tossable pieces of metal, they resemble a large D battery or a small hand grenade. Attached to the bottom are long, white ribbons, rather like streamers a child might fasten to the handlebars of a bike. Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimates that coalition forces left 2 million of these little bombs all over Iraq, killing or injuring perhaps a thousand civilians. Cluster munitions, the group reports, caused more harm to noncombatants than any other weapon during the war.

While the U.S. Air Force has scaled back its use of cluster bombs, the army still favors the munitions, which can pierce armor and kill soldiers simultaneously over a wide area. M26 shells are usually fired, up to 12 at a time, from a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) on the ground, and can travel up to 20 miles. Each shell contains 644 M-77 munitions. On average, anywhere from 5 to 16 percent of the bomblets are duds that don't detonate, leaving perhaps 100 deadly devices lying around from every shell fired. The high number of deaths and injuries from the shells are predictable when they are fired into populated neighborhoods, as they often were in Iraq.

HRW and a number of other groups got together last year to fight for a moratorium on the use of cluster munitions and other weapons that leave what they call "explosive remnants of war." The idea is to stop using the weapons until they can be made safer. The group, called the Cluster Munition Coalition, has said that because of the weapons' inaccuracy, wide dispersal patterns, and "the long-term danger they pose after conflict due to the high number of landmine-like submunitions duds," cluster munitions, like land mines, deserve international attention and regulation. Human rights workers say that the U.S. Army also has an interest in improving the effectiveness of cluster munitions, if only to prevent unexploded bomblets from slowing up or stalling troop movements.

Steve Goose of HRW said there is little chance of a ban on the weapons, which are stockpiled by at least 57 countries worldwide, so groups like his instead press for improvements in the technology. Complaints about cluster munitions have noticeably changed behaviors in the air force, he said. The service tested "brilliant" (think better than "smart") cluster bombs in Iraq, which boast lower dud rates and greater accuracy. The protests have also led to a recent international protocol calling for countries to do a better job cleaning up their unexploded leftovers and to assist the victims of these weapons.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0412,fahim,52047,1.html

[bigtree]

15. "the explosives fell "like grapes" from the sky"

Iraq: Civilians under fire

Amnesty International (AI) is deeply concerned about the mounting toll of civilian casualties in Iraq and the reported use of cluster bombs by US forces in heavily populated areas. Despite repeated assurances from US and UK authorities that they would do everything possible to protect the Iraqi people, since 20 March hundreds of civilians have reportedly been killed. Some have been victims of cluster bombs; some have died in attacks in disputed circumstances. AI urges all the warring parties to make the safety of Iraqi civilians a top priority.

In particular, AI calls for:
· an immediate moratorium on the use of cluster bombs by US/UK forces and on other inherently indiscriminate weapons;
· an immediate end to unlawful tactics by Iraqi forces that endanger civilians;
· prompt and impartial investigations into civilian deaths, and the use of the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to investigate incidents of alleged serious violations of international humanitarian law.

Cluster bombs and other indiscriminate weapons

The scenes at al-Hilla’s hospital on 1 April showed that something terrible had happened. The bodies of the men, women and children - both dead and alive - brought to the hospital were punctured with shards of shrapnel from cluster bombs. Videotape of the victims was judged by Reuters and Associated Press editors as being too awful to show on television. Independent newspaper journalists reported that the pictures showed babies cut in half and children with their limbs blown off. Two lorry-loads of bodies, including women in flowered dresses, were seen outside the hospital.

Injured survivors told reporters how the explosives fell "like grapes" from the sky, and how bomblets bounced through the windows and doors of their homes before exploding. A doctor at al-Hilla’s hospital said that almost all the patients were victims of cluster bombs.

Many of the cluster bombs reportedly dropped from the air by US forces on a civilian area of al-Hilla were of the type BLU97 A. Each canister contains 202 small bomblets the size of a soft drink can. These cluster bombs scatter and spray over a large area about the size of two football fields. At least 5 per cent of the bomblets do not explode on impact, turning them into de facto anti-personnel mines as they continue to pose a threat to people, including civilians, who come into contact with them.

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde140712003

[Time for change]

4. But I thought Bush hated weapons of mass destruction

:sarcasm:

These people have no sense of shame whatsoever!

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. What a surprise. We are a nation of monsters, sometimes.

[Solo_in_MD]

7. Early reports said the Brits were against the ban

as were the US, China, Russia, and some others.

[bigtree]

8. they are enamored with collateral killing

Two Iraqi children killed in Baghdad clash

Feb 24, 2007 — BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two Iraqi children were killed and another was wounded in a firefight between American soldiers and gunmen in southern Baghdad on Friday, the U.S. military said.

The children were found on the scene where the insurgents had holed up in a bunker and a shipping container on the eastern bank of the Tigris River during a gunbattle with U.S. forces on the opposite side, the military said.

Earlier on Friday, the U.S. military said it was investigating whether civilians, including two children, were killed during another fierce gunbattle in the western town of Ramadi on Wednesday that ended with U.S. air strikes destroying several buildings.

In the Baghdad incident, Reuters photographer Carlos Barria had been embedded with a separate U.S.-Iraqi patrol that came across the three boys at the scene after hearing gunfire for 15 minutes and two explosions. The patrol found one dead boy and two others, who were wounded and hiding in a concrete ditch.

In a statement seen on Saturday, the U.S. military said one of the wounded children had later died in hospital. All the boys looked no older than 12, Barria had reported.

Asked how the children were hurt, a U.S. military spokesman said: "We are looking into the circumstances of what caused the incident."

He said it was unclear if the children had been hurt from gunfire or shrapnel from any explosion.


http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2901056

[spanone]

16. Yea, and we like to pretend we're the good guys.