The New York Times and Human Rights Watch have revealed that the Gaddafi Regime is using cluster bombs indiscriminately in Misrata, weapons that over one hundred nations signed a treaty against in December, 2008. Unfortunately, this did not include countries like Russia, China, the United States, Israel and Libya.

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In January, 2004 Paul Rockwell wrote in Common Dreams about cluster bomb use in Iraq by American-led Coalition Forces:

The formal war in Iraq has ended, and most of the big guns have fallen silent. Yet the death toll continues to rise, not merely because of the brutality of occupation and the resistance, but because of one of the most heinous, unpredictable weapons of modern war-the cluster bomb.

All over Iraq, unexploded cluster bombs, originally dropped by U.S. troops in populated areas, are still killing and maiming civilians, farm animals, wildlife-any living thing that touches them by accident.

Under Article 85 of the Geneva Conventions, it is a war crime to launch "an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population in the knowledge that such an attack will cause an excessive loss of life or injury to civilians." Under the Hague Conventions, Article 22 and 23, "The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited," and "It is especially forbidden to kill treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army."

A cluster bomb is a 14-foot weapon that weighs about 1,000 pounds. When it explodes it sprays hundreds of smaller bomblets over an area the size of two or three football fields. The bomblets are bright yellow and look like beer cans. And because they look like playthings, thousands of children have been killed by dormant bomblets in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq. Each bomblet sprays flying shards of metal that can tear through a quarter inch of steel.

The failure rate, the unexploded rate, is very high, often around 15 to 20 percent. When bomblets fail to detonate on the first round, they become land mines that explode on simple touch at any time. (SEE FULL ARTICLE HERE)

Cluster bombs are horrible, horrible weapons, no doubt about it. They should be eliminated from all weapons stockpiles everywhere. In fact in 2008, most of the world actually signed a treaty banning cluster bombs. NOT the Bush Administration though, in one of its very last nihilistic acts of defiance before turning over the reins to the Obama Administration, as Daniel Allen noted in this article:

BUSH ADMIN STANDS UP TO DEFEND CLUSTER BOMBS

by Daniel Allen

Cluster Bomb Ban Passed Over U.S. Objections

Well over half the world's governments agreed last week to "consign cluster munitions to the trash bin of history," in the words of the Cluster Munition Coalition, the civil society collective that delivered the treaty. Meeting in Dublin, Ireland, representatives of 110 governments completed negotiations on a new international treaty that bans the production, use, and export of all existing cluster munitions and commits them to destroy their stockpiles within eight years.

The U.S. government did not attend the negotiations, instead arm-twisting its allies to weaken the treaty. In the end, though, all other major NATO countries joined with the majority in agreeing to get rid of these weapons, which are designed to kill or maim every living thing in an area as large as two football fields. The vast majority of victims of cluster bombs have been civilians.

Stephen Mull, Acting Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs, held a press briefing in the midst of the negotiations to explain why the U.S. government was not at the table. His explanations were creative. "If the convention passes in its current form, any U.S. military ship would be technically not able to get involved in a peacekeeping operation, in providing disaster relief or humanitarian assistance as we're doing right now in the aftermath of the earthquake in China and the typhoon in Burma, and not to mention everything that we did in Southeast Asia after the tsunami in December of 2004. And that's because most U.S. military units have in their inventory these kinds of weapons."

A reporter astutely asked Mull why it wasn't possible to "just take the munitions off your ships?" Mull responded: "Well, we -- the number one priority of any country's military is to defend its country. And if our military planners are determined that these are necessary to protect American interests, we -- it's not something that we're going to unilaterally get rid of." (SEE FULL ARTICLE HERE)

Sound like bullsh*t? That's because it is. The American military can do fine without them. It's just that a vicious strain of sadism had always run through the Bush Administration from the beginning and now to the end.

Birds of a Feather?

Ironically, it turns out that one of the world figures who lobbied the Bush Administration after 9/11 to be accepted into the "War on Terror" fold as part of his strategy to get out from under sanctions, - I am referring to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, 42-year strongman of Libya - shares even more things in common with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld than we thought. His regime also, it has been shown, has an affection for cluster bombs, as revealed by this article excerpt today, April 15, 2011, on MSNBC.com:

MISURATA, Libya -- Military forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who have surrounded this city and vowed to crush its anti-Qaddafi rebellion, have been firing into residential neighborhoods with heavy weapons, including cluster bombs that have been banned by much of the world and ground-to-ground rockets, according to the accounts of witnesses and survivors and physical evidence on the ground.

Such "indiscriminate" weapons, which strike large areas with a dense succession of high-explosive munitions, by their nature cannot be fired precisely, and when fired into populated areas place civilians at grave risk.

The use of such weapons could add urgency to the arguments by Britain and France that NATO needs to step up air attacks on the Qaddafi forces, to better fulfill the United Nations mandate to protect civilians. And it could place pressure on the United States, which pulled back air power from the war when it ceded control of the campaign to NATO earlier this month.........

The cluster munitions were visible in use late Thursday night, in the form of what appeared to be 120-millimeter mortar rounds that burst in the air over the city, scattering high-explosive bomblets below.

Remnants of expended shells, examined and photographed by The New York Times

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, show the rounds to be MAT-120 cargo mortar projectiles, each of which carries and distributes 21 smaller submunitions designed both to kill people and penetrate light armor.

Components from the 120-millimeter rounds, according to their markings, were manufactured in Spain in 2007 -- one year before Spain signed the international Convention on Cluster Munitions and pledged to destroy its stocks. Libya is not a signatory to the convention, and neither is the United States, which used the weapons in Iraq, Afghanistan and, in 2010, Yemen. The Spanish Defense Ministry

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had no immediate comment.

Human Rights Watch, the New York based advocacy group, verified the use of the cluster munitions as well, and swiftly called on the Qaddafi government to stop using them.

"It's unconscionable that Libya is using these indiscriminate weapons, especially in civilian populated areas," said Steve Goose, director of the organization's arms division. "Cluster munitions are inaccurate and unreliable weapons that by their very nature pose unacceptable dangers to civilians." (SEE FULL ARTICLE HERE)

Eyewitness video report on the use of cluster bombs in Misrata:


Here is an interview with the spokesman for the Human Rights Watch team that actually went into Misrata to investigate and even witness the use of cluster bombs:


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It has been a brutal week for Misrata at the hands of Gaddafi forces, yesterday and today especially, with scores of rockets and shells raining down on the city, not to mention heavy tank-fire within the city. And now we know that the ordnance includes cluster bombs, a threat not only today to civilians as they explode in their neighborhoods, but tomorrow as those that didn't explode lay about as de facto landmines:

Authors Bio:
I am a student of history, religion, exoteric and esoteric, the Humanities in general and a tempered advocate for the ultimate manifestation of peace, justice and the unity of humankind through self-realization and mutual respect, although I am not a pacifist, nor do I believe in peace at any price, which is no peace at all but only delays inevitable conflict. There are times when the world must act. Planetary consciousness is evolving, but there are many retrograde forces that would drag us back down.

I have also written one book, a combination of poetry, photography and essays entitled "Post Katrina Blues", my reflections on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans two years after Katrina struck. Go to the store at http://sanfranciscobaypress.com/ to purchase. And I also have a blog called Plutonian Mac.