US attempting to disable cluster bomb ban

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=57076§ionid=3510203

US disabling cluster bomb ban
Sat, 24 May 2008 01:56:31

1997 Nobel Peace Prize winnern, Jody Williams
US is trying to bully its allies into weakening a treaty banning cluster bombs, Jody Williams, a Nobel Peace Prize winner says.

Representatives of more than 100 nations are working on an agreement against the use of cluster munitions, although the United States, China and Russia are not participating. Opponents say cluster bombs are unreliable and indiscriminate.

The United States said on Wednesday the treaty could jeopardize its participation in joint peacekeeping and disaster relief operations by "criminalizing" military operations between countries that signed the ban and those that did not.

Jody Williams, who won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize together with her International Campaign to Ban Landmines, said genuine peacekeeping operations backed by the United Nations would not be affected by a global ban on cluster bombs.

"I hate to see countries like Canada for example, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, who were leaders in the movement to ban landmines, doing the dirty work of the U.S," she said.

"They are trying to create a loophole big enough to fly a U.S. attack helicopter loaded with cluster munitions through it," she told Reuters by telephone after attending a protest outside the US embassy in Dublin.

Cluster bombs and landmines are particularly terrifying weapons that wreak havoc on communities trying to recover from war. They are fatal impediments to reconstruction and rehabilitation of agricultural land; they destroy valuable livestock; they disable otherwise productive members of society; they maim or kill children trying to salvage them for scrap metal. Over 150 nations have signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. In the autumn of 2006, there was a chance to take a step in the right direction: Senate Amendment No. 4882, an amendment to a Pentagon appropriations bill that would have banned the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas. Amendment No. 4882 was an easy one to vote against: Who'd want to risk accusation of "tying the hands of the Pentagon" during a never-ending, global War on Terror? As is so often the case, there was no political cost to doing the wrong thing. And there was no political reward for doing the right thing.

But Senator Obama did the right thing.
Senator Obama of Illinois voted IN FAVOR of the ban.
Senator Clinton of New York voted AGAINST the ban.
Analysts say Clinton did not want to risk appearing "soft on terror," as it would have harmed her electability. Amendment Rejected.

http://www.stopclustermunitions.org /

thank you

This thread is absolutely amazing, though a typically Bushean assault on decency and sanity. I've been following this issue for some time and it just gets worse and more heartbreaking. Sounds like the R&D they funded three years ago is paying off. A quick review:

On August 3, 2005, Human Rights Watch announced that the Bush administration "appears poised to resume the production of anti-personnel mines" for the first time since 1997. It said "the Pentagon has requested a total of $1.3 billion" for new types of land mines. And boy, are they doing some creative stuff in the land mine R&D biz...

My personal favorites are the "green parrots,” green plastic anti-personnel mines designed to look like toys -- and attract children. The Russians dropped these diabolical weapons over Afghanistan back in the '70s and '80s. If the explosives didn't kill curious kids, they would mutilate them -- blowing off fingers, burning faces, blinding, deafening -- leaving these children with permanent disabilities.

The rationale was that dismembered kids can't hold weapons properly as adults, so they eliminated a few thousand threats while they were still too young to fight.

As an Italian doc who treats these kids said on Amy Goodman's show back in 2005:

"...green parrots are small anti-personnel mines. They look more or less like a butterfly, and they have been scattered by the thousands over the Afghan villages during the Soviet occupation. And obviously, no adults or military personnel will pick up these objects. These mines are meant to create an army of mutilated children, and in this respect I consider them as a form of terrorism toward the civilian populations. We have in Afghanistan a lot of children who lost their hands or who lost their eyes because of these land mines, so it has been a big, big tragedy, and it is a big tragedy for the Afghan people."

Because there's never anything too horrendous for sociopaths to inflict on the rest of humanity, the Bushies liked these things enough to requisition a few zillion of their very own.

Finally, these lines from a 2005 article put out by Inter Press:

It has also been the stated objective of the U.S. government that it would someday join the 145 countries party to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which bans the use, production, exporting, and stockpiling of antipersonnel land mines.

However, the Bush administration made an about-face in U.S. antipersonnel land mine policy in February 2004, when it abandoned any pretense of joining the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Convention.

”The United States will not join the Ottawa Convention because its terms would have required us to give up a needed military capability,” the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs said in a statement in February 2004, summing up the administration's new policy.

”Landmines still have a valid and essential role protecting United States forces in military operations... No other weapon currently exists that provides all the capabilities provided by landmines.”


USA! USA! USA! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!


Yup. The most hated and feared terrorist state in the world. Now where's my damn made-in-China-by-slaves flag lapel pin dripping with toxic lead paint?


And these fuckers aren't impeached, removed, indicted, tried, convicted and on the scaffold because...?


wp

is a real warmongering "piece of work." HRC and "Holy Joe" Lieberman should join the GOP. :thumbsdown:

the woman is not a peace maker

You don't cure an addict by giving him more drugs!

Cluster bombs should be totally banned.

www.clusterbombs.org