The U.S. is leading an effort to water down an international ban on cluster bombs, weapons that are widely considered to be inherently indiscriminate.
The Convention on Cluster Munitions prohibits cluster munitions, requires the destruction of stockpiles within eight years, and has been signed by 111 countries, while the U.S. has steadfastly refused to sign it. In a proposal that meant to neuter the convention, Washington now is pushing to permit the use of cluster bombs as long as they were manufactured after 1980 and had a failure rate of less than one per cent.
The Convention began to take effect in June 2010, just after a U.S.cluster bomb killed 35 women and children in Yemen, with the Pentagon stubbornly refusing to admit to the wrongdoing despite damning evidence compiled by Amnesty International, which was later corroborated by classified diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.
Cluster bombs are highly imprecise weapons that work by dispersing hundreds of smaller submunitions, often referred to as bomblets or grenades. Often, the bomblets do not initially explode, only to explode later with civilians about.
Cluster bombs were used in the initial phases of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the Obama administration is currently leading the cause to keep them legal.
(photo via clusterbombs.us)
If they want to change the wording of the ban, they should change it to make the use of cluster bombs a crime against humanity and a war crime.
Any war is a crime against humanity and big business.
Stopping private war profits must be priority – since it causes via their media influence a brainwashed nation and corrupt war making governments.
O = W.
Have we no dignity left? I´m beginning to wonder if we ever really had any.
No, Never had any….. Fron smallpox blankets to Abu Gharab….. Just a well dressed criminal kleptocracy willing to kill other peoples children to make money…………
Search for "spanish NATO fighter pilots admit bombing of civilian" in order to get an impression of what is going on behind the curtains in a war. In this case the attacking of Yugoslavia based on false claims by democrat Clintion and his General Wesley Clark
I'm wondering who exactly the 'US' is in the title "US Moves to Overturn ban on cluster bomb".
Which department and which individuals?
They certainly used cluster bombs against the christian Serbs who were being attacked by NATO on behalf of the fundamentalist terror and organ trading group the KLA – created, funded and sponsored by the CIA and MI6.
They randomly attacked the shoppers at NIS market in Serbia, killing many and injuring grossly many more.
Indiscriminate murder by drone is too slow and too costly for the masses and clearly something else must be used to terrify people in to submission.
Hence the drive to bring back the cluster bomb. Up close and personal mass slaughter and disablement – not just a few at a time per drone.
Time for sanctions against the US and Britain as well as the head of the troika of bloodshed or greater Israel as it is in reality, Israel itself.
Rogue states and worse than the Nazis.
The depravity, murder, and suffering caused by the fascist amerikan empire grows worse ! The sooner the empire crumbles the better !
The US, Britain and Israel an Axis of Evil? It looks that way. The evidence of moral depravity appears overwhelming but the majority decent people in these countries and their allies seem unaware or unconcerned.
The phrase the 'banality of evil' comes to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_evil
And also the quote "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" see: http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote.html
I'm not sure what sanctions can be imposed against the troika, in any case that is their tool, but there is a need for all of us to conscientise ourselves our families and friends so that we remove the moral sanction from our leadership and eventually remove that leadership.
Cluster bombs are evil. They are particularly evil when used in civilian areas.
“Obama administration is currently leading the cause to keep them legal.”
I see, the Convention on Cluster Munitions is ruled by nations, who are all ruled by the richest of their rich, who are such gods as to set the outer limits of what constitutes inhuman slaughter during an act of war.
A better way, cluster bombs to be used only on the high value targets most high, the mansions of god rich most high.
RULES FOR SOME, & NONE FOR OTHERS
They're banned for everybody except for the US and Israel, of course.
MIGHTY 5%
The corporate rich and their superiors, the elite rich nobility that we know and love as High Society, they who hand pick most politicians and all military generals, surely they are not about to give up the slightest ability to rain down death and destruction upon all who dare “destabilize” their return on investments.
So, its a Revolution or eat the degradation of it and wallow in the stench of it. And a most doable rebellion it is, for never do more then 5% of men ever get involved in politics except to use some lunch time to vote.
Just look at the Egyptian Revolution, with 1% of Egypt being 7 million and never did a protest of theirs exceed 2 million.
The cluster bomb is a terrorist weapon of torture and used to intimidate and break the will to resist of a civilan population. With the impending war against Iran the USrael warmongers are not likely to abandon its use. Its use should be declared a crime against humanity by the UN and under the Genava Convention and the perpetrators of these crimes be brought to justice before the Initernationa Criminal Court of Justice.
MAN — TEN TOES ANIMAL
The moral high ground of conducting a good war, especially now a good War On Terror, a gentlemen’s war that is won by men of high honor and valor — in the history of a mammal animal called man — has there ever been such a thing?
CRIME PREVENTION or WAR PREVENTION — MORAL LAW
Good civil and criminal laws can minimize acts of harm, but to stay out of harm’s way, surely this requires getting at the root cause of misery — and our desire to use a pretense of good to hide an intent to enrich ourselves upon someone else’s misery.
State sponsored lotteries for example: As we have no moral law preventing the voting majority, the 51% highest income earners, from enriching themselves upon the misery of the lower half, we have a situation where most all of the taxes collected by legalized gambling are paid by the lower half of society. The lower half being the ones most addicted to the illusion that “All men are created equal” to the rich and have an “unalienable right” to be rich.
ONLY WAY TO GO — TAKE CARE
gsealey, says, “The US, Britain and Israel… majority are decent people in these countries…”
To the reverse I say, all three ruled by the 51% most wealth, that’s what I always say.
So, who is right and how do be bring down our Empire? For we have but two options:
(1) If our voting majority includes the rich, poor and middle-class, if they are decent but ignorant, then friendly persuasion and passive resistance, one day strikes that never hurt corporate profits, this is the only way to go.
(2) But if our voting majority is the 51% most wealthy, then they are indecent and owning all of media strive to lock us in ignorance. Then hostile and most active resistance, strikes unending nationwide, is the only way to go.
Why do they hate us?
LOVE US — HATE OUR ACTIONS
Druthers, says,
“Why do they hate us?”
They do not hated us, they hate our actions. So, take care, for corporate mainstream media is trying to prepare us for war, by making us hate them, by making us suffer the illusion that they hate us.
"Since then, the true dimensions of the problem have become even clearer: 770 cluster-bomb sites have now been identified. And the current U.N. estimate is that Israel dropped between 2 million and 3 million bomblets on Lebanon, of which up to a million have yet to explode.
About 40% of the bomblets dropped by Israel (many of which were American-made {{IN MASSACHUSETTS}}) did not explode in the air or on impact with the ground. They now detonate when someone disturbs them — a soldier, a farmer, a shepherd, a child attracted by the lure of a shiny metal object.
""What we did was insane and monstrous," one Israeli commander admitted to the newspaper Haaretz. "We covered entire towns in cluster bombs."
We, the USA, supplied and paid for these weapons against the Lebanese….