Michael Lucas
Editor
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Michael Lucas |
When will the United Nations Organization have the guts and dedication to fulfill its noble task and charge the US Government with genocide of untold magnitude and untold suffering to future generation of mankind in countries where it had dropped thousands upon thousands of cluster bombs?
US has used cluster bombs on innocent civilians for scores of years in many parts of the world in its quest for the New World Order, since, according to Bush: "God is with us, he is not neutral!"
Cluster bombs and the cluster bomblets that they contain are dropped from US bombers and these bomblets are designed to maim innocent civilian population. These cluster bombs sometimes do not explode on impact and they can lie around for years, playing havoc with the civilian population, long after the hostilities are over.
Bushes and trees and soft soil can minimize the initial contact and thus most duds are left behind. The height from which the cluster bombs are dropped, combined with the timer, which releases the bomblets from the bomb will influence the dud rate.
Below is just a quick summary of where US imperialism has ;\left this legacy of death.
Laos
Laos was subjected by US war criminals to the most intense bombardment ever between 1964-1975, when USA dropped six to seven million bombs, with one million of these being cluster bombs. The resulting bomblets, from a dud rate is estimated as high as 30% in some places and caused over 40% of all deaths from these cluster bomblets. Individual bomblets dropped by USA contain 200-600 pellets, ball bearings or nails, which main or kill up to 200 meters radius.
1991 Gulf War
US imperialists dropped over Iraq and Kuwait 13 million cluster bomblets from the air and over 11 million sub-munitions from ground based rocket launchers…this left over 2.4 million dud sub-munitions.
The Human Rights Watch reported that by February 1993, the unexploded bomblets have killed 2,500 people and maimed thousands of others. Over 60% of the victims were children under the age of 15. Even in year 2002, the clearance teams were still finding and destroying over 200 "duds" sub-munitions each month.
Kosovo and Serbia
Human Rights Watch in the war against Serbia (Yugoslavia), between 9- and 150 civilians were killed by cluster bombs in any given district bombed, which represented overall 18-30% of all civilian population. It was reported by experts that cluster bombs were responsible for five times as many victims under the age of 14 than anti-personnel land mines which US imperialists also dropped in their thousands during these wars. Unexploded cluster bombs were 6-10 times more deadly than other unexploded ordnance.
Afghanistan
Between October 2001 and March 2002, the US dropped approximately 1,228 cluster bombs on Afghanistan, which contained 148, 056 bomblets and each bomblet is capable of killing or maiming a person. The Human Rights Watch reported that between October 2001 and November 2002 at least 127 civilians had been killed, plus scores of injured by cluster bomblets. Over 69% of all those killed were children under the age of 18.
The 2003 Gulf War
The US Administration and the Pentagon had admitted that at least 1,500 cluster bombs were dropped in the Operation Iraq but they refuse to divulge as to as to how many artillery shells and rocket-launched sub-munitions were used there. These sub-munitions, according to the Human Rights Watch on the spot, charged that they were used exclusively on the innocent civilian population of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The British forces also admitted that they too had used over 11,800 cluster bombs in Iraq.
The above is just a sanitized version of the barbarous crimes committed by US Imperialism all over the world, in the name of "Democracy, God, Freedom, Civil Rights, etc. etc.!"
A news item in the Los Angeles Times of October 16, 2003 reported an item that is very scary and brings to mind the fanaticism of "The Crusaders" on the Middle Ages.
Us Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has appointed to his inner Cabinet a Christian extremist, a Lt. General of the US Army, a Baptist preacher who goes around the USA and officially preaches the following:
* Why do they hate us? The answer to that is that we are a Christian nation, because we are a nation of believers."
* Our Islamic enemy can only be defeated if we come against these heathens in the name of Jesus."
* I Am a warrior in the Kingdom of God."
* He has praised George Bush as "a man who prays in the Oval Office. George Bush was not elected by the majority of the voters in the United States, he was appointed by God."
* I take my orders from God"
* Satan in Iraq wants to destroy our nation and we are in a spiritual war."
The extraordinary "spinning" machine of George Bush’s White House is whipping all the media and thereby the public, religion into line, to support U.S. imperialist policies in the world! Why is the UN falling for these lies?
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