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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (91361)	4/9/2003 12:48:16 AM
From: Neeka	Respond to of 281500

I did a quick google search and came up with this. Although I don't know much about the tactical reasons for using cluster bombs, they appear to be extremely deadly, and could potentially pose a problem to civilians years after a war has ended. M Cluster bombs 'just like a minefield' By MICHAEL COLLINS April 3, 2003 Coalition forces are under attack from human rights groups for pounding Iraq with deadly but unpredictable cluster bombs that often fail to explode on impact and can harm unsuspecting civilians for years. "These things are deployed in an instant, and it often takes decades to clear them out," said Alistair Hodgett of Amnesty International. Amnesty International and other human rights groups say videotaped footage from reporters with U.S. troops shows that coalition forces are using artillery projectiles and rockets containing a large number of cluster munitions. Cluster bombs are believed to have been used Tuesday in an attack on the small town of Hilla, where 33 civilians, including children, reportedly were killed and as many as 300 were wounded, Hodgett said. The U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, says it is investigating whether cluster bombs were used in Hilla, about an hour south of Baghdad. But military leaders acknowledged dropping a new type of cluster bomb on Iraqi tanks that can zero in on its target and then self-destruct if it misses. British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon acknowledged to Parliament on Thursday that cluster bombs have been used in Iraq, but only when necessary to protect British troops, he said. Also Thursday, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahaf accused U.S.-led forces of dropping cluster bombs on the Al Dura district on the outskirts of Baghdad, killing 14 Iraqis and injuring another 66. There was no independent verification of the Iraqi claims. Many military experts defend the use of cluster bombs, which can be dropped from aircraft or fired from the ground. The munitions are equipped with thousands of "bomblets" that can scatter over an area the size of two football fields, enabling troops to inflict widespread damage to the enemy. "You can take out an entire military unit with cluster bombs," said Jack Spencer, senior defense analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "If you have a unit of (enemy) personnel and vehicles, and if the most efficient way of eliminating or neutralizing that target is a cluster bomb, then that seems appropriate to me to use them." Critics, however, point out that many cluster bombs are "duds" that fail to detonate upon impact and pose long-term dangers for peacekeepers and civilians. The Department of Defense acknowledged in a report to Congress in February 2000 that cluster bombs have a failure rate of 16 percent. Dud weapons are extremely dangerous, said Steve Goose, a weapons researcher for Human Rights Watch. "If you pick them up, if you stand on them, if you kick them or throw a rock at them, they are likely to explode," he said. "It's highly likely that the explosive duds from these weapons will be killing and injuring civilians for years to come." During the first Persian Gulf War, coalition forces dropped 61,000 cluster munitions, which in turn released 20 million "bomblets" on Iraq and Kuwait. At least 80 U.S. casualties during the war were attributed to cluster munition duds, and more than 4,000 civilians were injured by the weapons after the war, according to Human Rights Watch. Over a decade after the war ended, about 200 hazardous cluster munition duds are still found and destroyed each month in Kuwait, Goose said. Spencer said human rights groups may be overstating the danger. "It's not as if the United States drops cluster bombs in the middle of Baghdad," he said. "They drop them on military targets, and they are very effective." Hodgett, however, insisted that the danger is real. "It's just like a minefield," he said. (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, knoxnews.com