Cluster Munitions Treaty Leaves US Behind

[Quantum Windbag]

Yep lose and push it to the absurd.
Quantum windbag is very fitting.

I have no sympathy for those who advocate actions that take the lives of innocent children.
Just wastes of skin who need to be assigned cluster munitions clean up duties.

That is just sad.

Are innocent children better off if they are blown apart by bad guys than good guys? The difference between the good guys and the bad guys is the good guys try not to blow innocent children up, the bad guys strap bombs to them so that they can blow up other children.

Keep your false morals to yourself.

Umm the point of being the good guys is that you are SUPPOSED to be better than the bad guys.
Not false morals. I have lived the full horrors or war. napalm burned children, children shredded by land mines, etc
Human beings should be better than that, especially Americans.

Should we ban all weapons because they potentially harm children? Where will that get us? All it will do is place us in the position where the bad guys have all the guns, and the good guys are overrun. Is that going to make the children safer?

The basic difference between a modern liberal/progressive and a modern conservative is that conservatives realize that humans are essentially evil. When you get a bunch of them together and give them power they want to secure their power by oppression. Liberals think that if we are just nice enough, and respect them as individuals, they will see the error of their ways and accept us as human beings.

Horseshit. Even the most casual review of history tells us that that has never worked.

I would rather have the weapons, and use them when necessary, than trust others not to use them because they are evil. Weapons are not evil, people are.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

It's just ridiculous, the fear and insecurity of these people. I mean, they think you're just insane for being mildly concerned with littering a wide area with little round metal balls that EXPLODE when you touch them and can lay around for decades. Most of these places are so ridiculously poor they actually send out kids to pick up metal scarps to melt them for nickels and dimes. The mentality seems to be that unless EVERYBODY there dies they cannot be safe. I mean it's like George Carlin says, "We left a few women and children alive in Vietnam and just haven't felt good about ourselves since."

You know, if your armed soldiers and their armed soldiers want to go shoot at each other, by all means. The problem with cluster munitions is that they are far more likely to end up blowing to pieces a 10 year old shepherd boy or a pregnant woman clearing a field, 5, 10 years after hostilities have even ended. And for what? Really for what? "TO KEEP AMERICA SAFE FROM THE GOATHERDERS"

Bullshit.

I do not know the numbers, but I do know that most of the bomblets in cluster bombs actually explode when intended, and that duds are the extreme exception to the rule. If most of the bombs failed to go off over the intended target they would be useless, and no one, least of all the US Military, would use them. That tells me they are far more likely to clear the field than they are to blow up decades later and kill some little girl playing with her dolls.

Just because you buy into the fear mongering, and obviously lack cognitive function, that does not mean everyone else does.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

we have to fight wars at times, almost never due to our starting them?

At times?

When was the last time we didn't have troops in a combat zone somewhere?

We don't start them? So VietNam invaded us to prevent us from breaking away from our colonial masters? Oh, wait, it was us denying them the right to do as we did and throw off the chains of colonial exploitation and govern themselves as they wished.

Not the mention the banana republics and the military occupation and annexation of Hawaii.

But it's different when we do it, right? 'The American flag has not been planted in foreign soil to acquire more territory but for humanity's sake'

2001

How many terrorist attacks have we had to deal with since then?

 

[JBeukema]

2001 how many Iraqi wives' and children's lives have we destroyed because Saddam made daddy look bad?

 

[Epsilon Delta]

It's just ridiculous, the fear and insecurity of these people. I mean, they think you're just insane for being mildly concerned with littering a wide area with little round metal balls that EXPLODE when you touch them and can lay around for decades. Most of these places are so ridiculously poor they actually send out kids to pick up metal scarps to melt them for nickels and dimes. The mentality seems to be that unless EVERYBODY there dies they cannot be safe. I mean it's like George Carlin says, "We left a few women and children alive in Vietnam and just haven't felt good about ourselves since."

You know, if your armed soldiers and their armed soldiers want to go shoot at each other, by all means. The problem with cluster munitions is that they are far more likely to end up blowing to pieces a 10 year old shepherd boy or a pregnant woman clearing a field, 5, 10 years after hostilities have even ended. And for what? Really for what? "TO KEEP AMERICA SAFE FROM THE GOATHERDERS"

Bullshit.

I do not know the numbers, but I do know that most of the bomblets in cluster bombs actually explode when intended, and that duds are the extreme exception to the rule. If most of the bombs failed to go off over the intended target they would be useless, and no one, least of all the US Military, would use them. That tells me they are far more likely to clear the field than they are to blow up decades later and kill some little girl playing with her dolls.

Just because you buy into the fear mongering, and obviously lack cognitive function, that does not mean everyone else does.

That's rich! You're the one wetting your bed at night thinking about the terrorists, but somehow I'M the one who buys into the fearmongering.

You just pointed out THE main thing about cluster bombs that separates them from regular bombs. Let me put it this way:

If you toss 100 bombs at your targets and 99% explode, what you're left with is one big fat bomb sitting in a field; but with cluster munitions, each of those 100 bombs contains 1,000 minibombs. Even if 99% explode, you leave ONE THOUSAND explosive shiny balls in a field. In other words, sure that most bombs go off, but it's the mere volume that sets it apart. And the actual numbers are of course much higher.

You can rationalize it anyway you want. Unlike others, I don't believe most regular Americans, like yourself, are evil. But it's a rationalization issue. "Well, I mean, if the military is using it, it just can't be that bad, can it?" Wrong.

The four cluster munitions of concern and their reported failure rates include:

MLRS with M26 warhead: 16 percent dud rate for the M77 submunition.1 Some lots were reported to have dud rates as high as 23 percent, based on testing done to accept newly produced batches.2 [...] The U.S. stockpile of MLRS rockets contains over 309 million submunitions.3 This could equate to more than 49.4 million explosive duds.

155mm DPICM M483A1 & M864 artillery projectiles: 14 percent dud rate for the M42 and M46 DPICM submunitions.4 [...] The U.S. stockpile of 155mm projectiles contains over 434 million submunitions.5 This could equate to more than 60.7 million hazardous duds.

Rockeye CBU-99/CBU-100: [...] One U.S. company reported clearing 95,799 M118 Rockeye submunitions in their sector of Kuwait, which constituted 18% of the total area cleared.7 In 2002, 451 Rockeye submunitions were detected and destroyed by mine clearance and explosive ordnance disposal teams in Kuwait.8 [...]

Combined Effects Munition CBU-87: dud rates of at least 5 to 7 percent for the BLU-97 submunition in operations in Yugoslavia/Kosovo and Afghanistan.9 [...] each bomb dropped would result in fourteen explosive dud submunitions over an area about the size of a U.S. football field. The U.S. used a total of 10,035 CBU-87s, with more than 2 million submunitions, during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

[...]

During combat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.S. forces experienced the danger of casualties caused by their own weapons as well as impediments to mobility when operating in areas contaminated by hazardous duds produced by U.S. cluster munitions.20 Numerous references to this are found in official U.S. military documents. One report states, �Battlefield experience has demonstrated that weapon systems containing submunitions present the greatest potential for creating UXO, since a significant percentage of these submunitions may not detonate reliably.�21 The U.S. Armed Services recorded 177 �explosion casualties� in the conflict, constituting 13 percent of the total U.S. military casualties.22 At least eighty of the U.S. casualties were attributed to cluster munition duds.

Cluster Munitions a Foreseeable Hazard in Iraq (Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper, March 18, 2003) (Feel free to refer to their sources at the bottom of the page).

 

[Epsilon Delta]

2001

How many terrorist attacks have we had to deal with since then?

Are you somehow suggesting that you have not had a terrorist attack because you use cluster munitions?

 

[uscitizen]

I thought the terrorists had not attacked again because of the growth rate of Google. Makes about as much sense to me.
esp since Iraq was not involved in the US terrorist attack in the first place.