perhaps a cluster bomb should be dropped at bush's feet.

oh that's right. we call it his policies.

"The US defence department also agreed to reduce its inventory of devices that do not meet this standard from June next year.

Note they don't say exactly how they'll 'reduce its inventory'. Most likely by dropping them all in places where kids can pick up the unexploded bombs.

One of the ways the US is going to reduce its inventory is to transfer the cluster bombs to other countries (see article).

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5haTLOCrj-hNmVmOsqCas31UuyEYwD91PDI8O1

If Iran is attacked, unfortunately, that may reduce the inventory also.

...and the 1% duds? Out of the million or so clusterbombs that the Jews dropped on Lebanese civilians in 2006 that would mean ten thousand maimed and murdered children...
Heckovajob! Make the children suffer.
What about the Bush/Gates WMDs like Raytheon's 'bunker buster' bomb that targeted families hiding in their Qana bomb shelter?
No more Marrage Feasts for those (Cana) civilians, no more 'First Miracle', no more Catholic Mass.
Heckovajob! No more grapeless vino.

Another lunatic idea brought to you by festering intelligence within the DOD. It's time to close up shop, transfer the afflicted work force to some sort of green industry, far away from fascism. "Make weapons safer" is perversion from the Death Industry, a macabre attempt to bolster profit at any cost. Brings to mind the 'Neutron' bomb, and other famous "more humane" methods. Hitler's showers were organized and effective too, right at the point that they were used.

as usual, the rest of the world against us. If we spent half the time working for peaceful issue as we do for military solutions, perhaps we would increase our national security far better than being the bully on the block.

The US's response to banning cluster bombs is to wait ten years?

They live in opposite world, in an Orwellian, PR wonderland.

Sad thing is that people will believe, after MSM tells them, that banning cluster bombs in ten years is doing something positive, that it puts us "in" the 111 other countries' favor.

Whould someone like to explain to me how they could say that these wepons cause less collateral damage than other wepons. What do they think we are, a bunch of idiots? All they do is cause collateral damage. It's not like they can aim these wepons at specific targets. and no matter how much testing they do they can't guarantee that all or 90% of the bombletts will explode on impact.

Bane Richter 12:04 pm - I agree - "transfer the afflicted work force to some sort of green industry" This should be a loud and clear message.

Civilians are always the losers in any conflict often just by being in the way but these devices are custom designed to continue inflicting civilian casualties long after hostilities have ended.
One of the problems is that political leaders are not tested for psychological defects and so the sociopaths and psychopaths are able to claw their way to the top. If early testing was able to weed out these misfits, particularly those that fit the clinical definition of a psychopath, then society would not be plagued by the damage caused by their ego and lack of empathy and remorse.

Anything for easy money via weapons profits. The very sight of cluster bombs being dropped by American or other countries' planes is reprehensible and sickening. Innocent people, including children, lose their limbs and their lives from these evil objects. Who thinks of inventing these ugly weapons to kill the unsuspecting victims??

chemical weapons:
act by affecting body enzyme systems
inexpensive
affect small areas for a short time
usually self disperse so no clean up needed
agriculture unaffected by usual weapons (except agent orange)
can be delivered by artillery
mainly targets civilians; is indiscriminate
protective gear available
has never intimidated the opposing military

cluster weapons:
act by release of chemical energy
inexpensive
affect larger areas for a long time
no self dispersal; expensive and tedious clean up needed
agriculture made difficult
can be delivered by artillery
indiscriminate; mainly targets children and civilians
often buried; no protective gear available
has never intimidated the military

This story enrages me. How can a country with any humanity left in it, produce such horror. And honestly, the rest of "the west" are no better, or they would be battering down the doors of the White House to insist on change.
I wonder how many innocent bystanders will have to suffer or die over the next eight years!

In a moral country no one would dare work to construct a cluster bomb. The people doing this are clusterbums. They should be individually named and exposed including a photo so people would know who the monsters are living among us.

If the military uses them, those who use them should be exposed as well.

It's time to identify the monsters doing this kind of work.

Any thoughts?

I would have thought bombs were OFfensive weapons -- I mean, you would hardly bomb your own country if you were DEfending it would you? Or maybe you would -- but then you wouldn't want to leave unexploded bomblets lying round in your own country, would you? On the other hand, seeing all the other crap the military leaves lying around, perhaps you would.

But really, whilst in no way thinking anyone should be bombed, if you are going to drop a bomb on someone, surely it is most effective when it EXPLODES. Unless of course you are hoping for a direct hit on someone with a lump of metal -- but we have progressed from there. Having a bomb that may explode any time up to years later is really not of much use, particularly since they are indiscriminate and might actually kill your own people.

I suspsect that these bombs are made by a company that has a no-contest contract, and there is no quality control.

The trend of the 20th century continues.
War is no longer waged against armies.
It is waged against the people that support the armies.

And the US continues to set the trend.

>>And that's why the thugs in Iraq still resist us, because they can't stand the thought of free societies. They understand what freedom means. See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction. GW Bush

America is the monster it claims to fight. GW bush admits he is a thug and can not stand the concept of a free society.

>>physicscitizen - War is no longer waged against armies.
It is waged against the people that support the armies.<<

When has it ever been different? War is always about eliminating the support for the opposite military and after that is achieved, then crushing the enemy forces. There has never been chivalry towards the opposing populations.

Oh yes, Goose2, it most certainly has been different throughout most of history.

World War II was the first time in history that the civilian populations suffered more casualties as a direct result of war than the soldier.

The primary reason was, and continues to be, the ability to project military power deep into enemy territory and then to use weapons of ferocious indiscriminate destructive power.

There is now no place on the globe that is ever far enough away from a war machine that it cannot be attacked.

This was not true until the intercontinental ballistic missile and the super-long-range bomber which did not exist before the 1950's.

Before that point you had to get your soldier to within about 25 miles of the 'target' and then before the US civil war you had to get within about 1 mile.

Before the English civil war the figure of merit was measured in the hundreds of yards (the effective range of a trebuchet or catapult) and by the time you got your army there the other side's army was likely able to figure out where you were and be there to oppose you.

But ever since WWII the figures are something like 90% of all casualties of war are noncombatant civilians. Prior to that war the figure was more like 10%, even in WWI. An army just couldn't move fast enough and destroy quickly enough to stop civilians from getting out of the way.

"another squandered opportunity for US leadership"

God spare us from that foul affliction. It isn't so called ameriKan leadership that the world needs -quite the contrary-. We want the world cured of all variants of ameriKan Lebensraum delusions, exceptionalism etc.

USer land is exceptional only in that it has taken a continent and trashed it and every other part of the planet that it has coveted in record breaking time. Please no more ameriKan euphemisms such as "leadership"!

Gringo go home and bring your Satanic arsenal with you.

"It's time to identify the monsters doing this kind of work.

Any thoughts?" - Doom and Gloom

I agree with Thich Nhat Hanh that it's the behavior, behavior, behavior that should be addressed for the most peaceful results. Getting rid of the bombs without a change in behavior leaves you still with our perverse forms of sadism.

And the monsters carrying out the behavior are ourselves as Enablers and the person sitting at the Thanksgiving day table, if not the breakfast table, as well as the person(s) at work or in the gym. If you look close you'll see the opportunities for confronting malicious deviant warrior-hood popping up all day long.

Think about the time and energy used to provoke a "wait for 10 years" statement, and what it may have accomplished confronting the poster boys for this abhorant behavior through the process of impeachment. Get rid of the cluster bomb and you get the fire bomb, get rid of the fire bomb and you get the Gatlin gun - get rid of the behavior and the trigger is never pulled nor barrel pointed.

It may be that the designers, manufacturers, and users of cluster bombs strive to engineer bomblets with 100% dispersal and detonation rates.

But I don't think the users are too disappointed with the status quo. As appalling and reprehensible as it may seem to warm-blooded humans, the cold calculations of warmongers must consider the horrors of creating random minefields a plus in terrorizing the bombed population.

Give the Hun a spot of bother, eh? A bit of mischief, what! Hate to think of a poor little innocent chap picking up the thing and being blown to bits, or a farmer running a plow over one and losing his legs for the trouble-- but tell you what, it'll give the Bosch a thing or two to think about!

They say luck is the residue of design, eh? So perhaps the proliferation of unexploded bomblets is simply a bit of good luck! Got to look on the positive side of things, you know.

Our leaders are sadistic psychos that make Jeffrey Daumer look like a nice guy. There is nothing more to say about this.