Biden Agrees to Send Cluster Bombs to Ukraine
Biden is sending Ukraine cluster bombs, a horrific weapon banned in most countries.
What is a cluster bomb?
A cluster bomb is a large capsule that contains many tiny bomblets that are spread out over a very large area, killing indiscriminately.
123 countries have signed a convention banning cluster munitions.
94% of cluster bomb casualties are civilians, 40% are children.
Cluster bombs were used by the United States in Vietnam and Iraq. They are notorious for killing and maiming kids. How many children in Iraq have lost their arms and legs because of cluster bombs? Too many to count.
Cluster bombs have a high dud rate compared to conventional payloads. A dud is something that fails to go off or detonate.
Many of these tiny bomblets land in random places, only to be found later by unsuspecting civilians, sometimes decades later, who lose their lives and limbs.
To this day, millions of undetonated bombs are spread out around Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos.
According to the HALO trust "Around 20,000 people—40 per cent of them children—have been killed or injured by cluster bombs or other unexploded items in Laos since the [Vietnam] war ended."
The United States claims it doesn't use cluster munitions (officially). However, US and UK companies still exported cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen. Obama ended up restricting their export— but only after he made hundreds of billions of dollars for weapons manufacturers.
Biden is sending two of the most horrific weapons ever used by the US in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq: depleted uranium and cluster munitions.
To this day civilians there are suffering, and this will be no different in Ukraine, unfortunately.
I wish it weren't true, but decades from now, people in Ukraine will get cancer or lose their arms, legs or even their lives because the US and UK sent them cluster bombs and depleted uranium. If you care about Ukraine, you would never poison their country with these weapons.
It is a statistical, quantifiable fact that cluster bombs and depleted uranium hurt civilians more than anyone.
No. 10 and the White House know this and choose to send them anyway just so their friends, the arms manufacturers, can profit from the war in Ukraine.
Richard Medhurst