Treaty seeks to ban cluster bombs within 8 years

File under: Are these assholes really trying? Do they actually care? Or are they just going through the fucking motions?

Diplomats from more than 100 nations agreed on a treaty Wednesday to ban current types of cluster bombs and require the destruction of stockpiles within eight years.

However, the talks did not involve the biggest makers and users of cluster bombs: the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. And the pact leaves the door open for new types that could pick targets more precisely and contain self-destruct technology. [emphasis mine]

Cluster munitions, fired by artillery or dropped from aircraft, scatter dozens or hundreds of "bomblets" across an area as big as two football fields to attack concentrations of troops and vehicles. Critics of the weapon complain that bomblets often fail to detonate on impact and instead explode when civilians later stumble on them.

A couple things come to mind.

Why eight years? Six months is adequate to stop using cluster bombs and destroy stockpiles. Fuck, one month would work.

Why does the US always fall on the wrong side of each of these agreements? Or does it matter? Non proliferation agreement &ndash India?

Oh fucking great. We've got Australia, Liechtenstein, Chad, Switzerland (all assumed) signing on but not the U S, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan.

What's the fucking point? Just asking.

Why doesn't the agreement include current and future types of such munitions? Ya know countries will come up with the next new thing.

Why allow cluster bombs with fewer than 10 such bomblets? Is that an attempt to kill only a limited number of civilians later?

Sometimes these agreements make me goddamn sick.

Click on the headline and read the other outrageous provisions.

Note: Headline links to source.

Sneh: Cluster bomb use was a mistake

It sure as hell was a mistake and was inexcusable.

Israel made a mistake when it used cluster bombs during the Second Lebanon War, deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh told the BBC in a documentary on last summer's war in Lebanon set to be broadcast on the Radio 4 network in the United Kingdom on Tuesday and internationally on the BBC world service and Web site later this week.

Sneh became the first Israeli government representative to apologize for using cluster bombs, according to a transcript of the documentary obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post.

"It was a mistake, it was a mistake," Sneh told interviewers Edward Stourton and Mark Savage. When they asked whether he regretted the use of cluster bombs because of the damage to Israel's image or because they "kill a lot of people," Sneh responded: "No, people are still losing their lives from time to time and we don't like it. But it was... it was a mistake."

Those seem like some pretty clear quotations, don't ya think? And he is quoted as using the word "mistake" three times.

But, of course he didn't say that at all, right?

When asked about the transcript, Sneh said he "was misunderstood by the reporters." He said he could not comment further because the use of cluster bombs was still being investigated by the IDF. But his spokesman said Sneh did not think the use of cluster bombs during the war was a mistake.

"He thinks they were used in specific instances when it was necessary," the spokesman said.

Of course they did lie about using cluster bombs at all.

Israel initially denied using cluster bombs during the war, but later confirmed the findings of a US State Department investigation submitted to Congress on January 29 that alleged that they were used.

I'm gonna tie Bush to this. His actions since in office have made lying perfectly acceptable. I'm not just talking normal political spin here, but out and out lying right to the publics' faces.

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