In all the brouhaha about Penn State, this story was posted earlier on DU without a single response. It is VERY important. Apparently the Pentagon and US arms manufacturers/campaign donors have influenced Obama on this issue.
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Campaigners say US-led proposals to overturn global ban give a 'green light' to use the weapons
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/uk-bac..."Britain is backing a US-led plan to torpedo the global ban on cluster bombs, in what MPs and arms campaigners fear is an attempt to legitimise the use of weapons that are widely deemed to be inherently indiscriminate.
In recent years, the UK has played a leading role in trying to rid the world of cluster bombs. It is one of 111 countries that have signed up to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, is on target to destroy its own stockpile, and has ordered the US military to remove any submunitions it holds on British soil.
But The Independent has learnt that the UK Government is supporting a Washington-led proposal that would permit the use of cluster bombs as long as they were manufactured after 1980 and had a failure rate of less than one per cent. Arms campaigners say the 1980 cut-off point is arbitrary, and that many modern cluster bombs have far higher failure rates on the field of battle than manufacturers claim.
...The world's major cluster bomb manufacturers – which include the US, Israel, Russia, China, South Korea, India and Pakistan – have all refused to sign up to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. They plan to push through a less restrictive treaty in Geneva next week..."
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and from Salon
www.salon.com/2011/11/12/u_s_takes_the_lead_on_behalf_of_cluster_bombs/
Slightly more than two months after he was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama secretly ordered a cruise missile attack on Yemen, using cluster bombs, which killed 44 innocent civilians, including 14 women and 21 children, as well as 14 people alleged to be “militants.” It goes without saying that — unless you want Rick Perry to win in 2012 — this act should in no way be seen as marring Obama’s presidency or his character: what’s a couple dozen children blown up as a part of a covert, undeclared air war? If anything, as numerous Democrats have ecstatically celebrated, such acts show how Tough and Strong the Democrats are: after all, ponder the massive amounts of nobility and courage it takes to sit in the Oval Office and order this type of aggression on defenseless tribal regions in Yemen. As R.W. Appel put it on the front page of The New York Times back in 1989 when glorifying George H.W. Bush’s equally courageous invasion of Panama: “most American leaders since World War II have felt a need to demonstrate their willingness to shed blood” and doing so has become “a Presidential initiation rite.”
But one aspect of the December, 2009, attack that perhaps did merit some more critical scrutiny was the use of cluster bombs, weapons which “scatter hundreds of bomblets over a large area but with limited accuracy and high failure rates.” The inevitability of “duds” — “unexploded ordnance” — poses a great risk to civilians, often well after the conflict has ended, since — like land mines — they often detonate when stumbled into by children and other innocents long after they disperse. According to the Cluster Munitions Coalition, cluster bombs “caused more civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapon system.” As Wired pointed out, while the U.S. used these weapons in both Iraq and Afghanistan, “neither the Taliban nor Saddam used cluster bombs against U.S. troops.” And here is how the Council on Foreign Relations describes the impact these weapons had in the 2006 Israeli bombing campaign in Lebanon: They left dozens dead or maimed on both sides of the conflict. The reason . . . is because the “fighting in southern Lebanon was often in villages and towns where people were living.” Israel dropped up to four million submunitions on Lebanese soil, one million of which remain unexploded “duds,” according to the UN Mine Action Coordination Center. Throughout the thirty-four-day conflict, the United States resupplied Israel’s arsenal of cluster bombs, which prompted an investigation by the State Department to examine if Israel had violated secret agreements it signed with the United States governing their use. Hezbollah, meanwhile, fired thousands of cluster munitions—a Chinese-made Type 81 122mm rocket—into northern Israel, a number of which targeted civilian populations, according to human rights groups.
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables-cluster-bombs-britain
Given how indiscriminate and civilian-threatening these weapons are, more than 100 countries have signed a treaty banning their production and use and compelling compensation to their victims. Needless to say, the U.S. has categorically refused to join the Convention, along with the other biggest stockpilers of these weapons, such as Russia, Israel and China. The Obama administration’s refusal to join the Convention has caused tension and controversy even with its most subservient allies, such as Britian, a signatory to the treaty. The British Parliament had insisted that the U.S. rid itself of all cluster munitions at American bases on British soil, but a WikiLeaks cable revealed that “British and American officials colluded in a plan to hoodwink parliament” through “the use of a loophole to manoeuvre around the ban and allow the US to keep the munitions on British territory.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/uk-bac...But now the Obama administration is moving far beyond a mere refusal to join the convention banning these munitions. According to The Independent, the U.S. is playing the leading role “to torpedo the global ban on cluster bombs” through a “proposal that would permit the use of cluster bombs as long as they were manufactured after 1980 and had a failure rate of less than one per cent.” The paper also reports that despite Britain’s long-time role in supporting the ban, its conservative government is now backing the Obama administration’s efforts to codify their use. The Pentagon claims that newer cluster bombs can be used more safely, but activists have documented that “many modern cluster bombs have far higher failure rates on the field of battle than manufacturers claim.”
www.salon.com/2011/11/12/u_s_takes_the_lead_on_behalf_o...
So it isn’t only massively increased, secret drone attacks in numerous Muslim countries around the world that will be an enduring foreign policy legacy of the Obama presidency. Nor will it be merely the death knell of the War Powers Resolution from his prosecution of the war in Libya even in the face of a Congressional vote against its authorization, nor the continuation and — in some cases expansion — of the most controversial Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies. We will also be ensured of living in a world where the use of cluster bombs continues unabated.
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