Common Sense for the Twenty-First Century

Cluster Bombing

73 Cluster Bombing November 19, 2002 All the pieces are now in place in Iraq. The cluster bombs are ready to drop on civilians. Children are especially attracted to cluster bombs. I am speaking of CBU-87. It is seven feet, six inches long. It weighs 950 pounds and it contains 200 bomblets. The bomblets are called BLU-97. They are 6.7 inches long and they weigh 3.3 pounds each. They each have 10 ounces of Cyclotol Zirconium and on detonation each bomblet fractures into about 300 steel fragments, covering an area the size of a football field. Cluster bombs have been used in Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Sudan, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Chechnya, the Falkands, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. Aside from the indescriminate murder caused by these bombs, about ten percent of them do not detonate. The bright yellow unexploded bombs make an attractive toys for children to play with and to lose their lives. Also the unexploded yellow bomblets are often confused with similar colored food packages as were dropped from U.S. planes in Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch reported that U.S. planes dropped 1,150 cluster bombs on 188 locations in Afghanistan. Just think of how civilization has deteriorated from the days of the Aztecs and the Mayas. They did not kill in battle, they just used a few captives for human sacrifice. Just think how civilization has deteriorated from the days of cannibalism. Cannibal cultures only used what they could eat. We have deteriorated to the point where the killing machines exist simply to kill. Oh, the glory of modern warfare! And friends, just think of our motivation for blowing the heads off of Iraqi children. The motivation is to have higher prices for gasoline in the United States. Why do we say that? Well, it is quite simple. If we purchased oil from the nationalized system in Iraq it would be far cheaper than purchasing it from corporations which will be granted the ownership of Iraqi oil after our annihilation of their people and their culture. 74 Currently gasoline is five cents a gallon in Iraq. Water is twenty-five cents a gallon. That’s right. The effect of spending our treasury and our finest young people to die in Iraq will simply be higher prices for gasoline in the United States. So when the body bags start coming home remember that our children died for higher oil prices. Part of the terror of this unnecessary and immoral war is the inability of the world’s richest nation to offer health care, a living wage or housing to its working people. Congratulations are due to the historic preemptive peace movement that is now blossoming throughout the world. It is a source of joy to us to observe that millions of intelligent and peace loving people are simply not willing to conduct mass murder in Iraq to obtain a net increase in the price of fuel at home. ...