Welcome: this way for cluster bombs

[Wwagsthedog]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,10674,1039088,00.html

Cluster weapons were on show yesterday at the opening of Europe's largest arms fair in London Docklands despite an appeal from the organisers to hide them away.
The controversial weapons, which pose a potential threat to civilians because they contain many bomblets which can fail to explode in the initial attack, were on offer at the stand of an Israeli arms company, Israel Military Industries Ltd.

The firm said it could provide new types of cluster weapons, now described as "cargo ammunition". One is called Bomblet M85, which, IMI's catalogue says, has been tested successfully in England.

The company has manufactured tens of millions of the bomblets for Nato, central and eastern European, and Asian countries.

Another IMI weapon on display, the Anti-Personnel, Anti Materiel Cartridge, or APAM, with assorted ammunition designed to hit armour and bunkers as well as soldiers in the open, is described as providing a "real breakthrough in anti-personnel warfare".

IMI's catalogue recognises that "hazardous duds normally constitute a very serious problem for users of cargo ammunition". These duds, it admits, are "in essence mines".

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Do cluster bombs violate The Geneva Conventions on Warfare? See for yourself.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3463.htm

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2. Dangers were foreseeable and avoidable

Human Right Watch wrote on 18 March: Cluster Munitions a Foreseeable Hazard in Iraq. "The use of cluster munitions in Iraq will result in grave dangers to civilians and friendly combatants. Based on experiences in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Yugoslavia/Kosovo in 1999, and Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, these dangers are both foreseeable and preventable."
HRW has written multiple studies about the dramatic harms caused by the use of cluster bombs during the previous US-wars of Irak, Kosovo and Afghanistan. At least eighty U.S. casualties during the 1991 Gulf War were attributed to cluster munition duds. More than 4,000 civilians were killed or injured by cluster munition duds after the end of the war. (http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/arms/cluster031803.htm )


3. Geneva Convention

"Persons taking no active part in the hostilities ... shall in all circumstances be treated humanely." Those are the opening words of the Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, signed at Geneva, 12 August 1949.
Although cluster bombs are not explicitly forbidden by the Geneva Law, the rules of war
prohibit the use of inherently indiscriminate weapons or weapons that are incapable of
being used in a manner that complies with the obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants. Those who use them in civilian areas therefore open themselves to charges of war crimes.

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[Brucey]

1. War profiteering

is big business and the mainstay of chimp and his friends. Got to get that guy out of there! How many ways can US violate the Geneva convention?