posted October 15, 2006 07:44 PM              

Interesting.

posted October 20, 2006 11:25 PM              

Pretty interesting of the President of Israel (and a married man of five children)

posted October 22, 2006 08:56 PM              

and speaking also of the cluster bombs dropped......i wouldnt call this stuff off topic, its just a different form of rape......

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US may ban sale of cluster bombs to Israel
By Patrick Cockburn in Nabatiyeh, south Lebanon
Published: 20 September 2006

The discovery of hundreds of US-made cluster bombs among the tens of thousands of unexploded munitions carpeting the south of Lebanon, has led to calls on Washington to impose a moratorium on sales of the weapons to Israel.

Bomb disposal experts are working around the clock to clear the lethal leftovers after Israel fired 1.2 million bomblets in the last three days of the war. The pods containing the 650 bomblets, which burst apart at a pre-determined height, have a failure rate of up to 30 per cent, leaving clear evidence of their American origin.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1621755.ece

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The Current U.S. Cluster Munition Stockpile

Congress, as part of the FY 2005 DoD appropriations process, mandated a report on the U.S. cluster munition inventory (the above-mentioned DoD Report to Congress). The amendment requesting the report, initiated by Congresswoman Betty McCollum and submitted by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, “directs the Secretary of Defense ‘to provide a report that addresses how the Department of Defense (DoD) is improving the dud rate of cluster munitions to meet existing DoD policies.’”8

The report, dated October 2004, addresses three areas:

# the types and quantities of cluster munitions in existing stockpiles,

# “efforts to ensure the development of cluster munitions that meet the 1% dud rate policy,” and

# a description of the cluster munition inventory until the inventory meets the policy.9

While the report recognizes the need for more reliable submunitions as required by the Cohen policy, it also stresses the United States’s continued commitment to old cluster submunitions with high failure rates.

The report details a stockpile of 5.5 million cluster munitions containing about 728.5 million submunitions.10 This figure, however, does not appear to be a full accounting of cluster munitions available to U.S. forces. In particular, the tally does not include cluster munitions that are part of the War Reserve Stocks for Allies (WRSA).11 Human Rights Watch has previously reported that the U.S. inventory, including WRSA, totaled about one billion submunitions.12

Cluster munitions are particularly ubiquitous in the stores of U.S. ground forces. According to the DoD report, the Army has about 638.3 million cluster submunitions (88 percent of the total inventory) and the Marine Corps has about 53.3 million (7 percent). The report states, “Cannon and rocket artillery cluster munitions comprise over 80% of Army fire support capability,”13 and they “comprise the bulk of the Marine Corps artillery munitions.”14 The Air Force stockpiles about 22.2 million air-delivered cluster bombs (3 percent of the cluster inventory) and the Navy about 14.7 million (2 percent).

Of the 728 million submunitions, only 30,990 have self-destruct devices (.00004 percent).15 The DoD report cites failure rates of 2 percent to 6 percent for most of the submunitions, based on lot acceptance testing and stockpile reliability testing. Previous DoD documents have indicated much higher failure rates for the most common submunitions.16 Organizations involved in UXO clearance in various countries also cite higher failure rates.

Both ground and air forces stockpile large numbers of outdated cluster munitions that have caused significant harm to civilians in recent conflicts. The Army and Marine Corps have 155mm artillery projectiles (M483/M483A1 and M864) containing about 402 million Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition (DPICM) submunitions. The new DoD report cites a failure rate of 3 percent, while a July 2000 Army study cited 14 percent.17 Similarly, the Army has M26 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MRLS) containing about 282 million submunitions; the new DoD report cites a failure rate of 5 percent, while an earlier study cited 16 to 23 percent.18 These weapons killed or wounded hundreds of civilians in Iraq in 2003.

The Air Force still has CBU-87 cluster bombs containing more than 20 million submunitions; the DoD report cites a failure rate of 4 to 6 percent, while U.N. clearance operations in Kosovo found a 7 percent failure rate. The yellow BLU-97 submunitions in these cluster bombs caused hundreds of civilian casualties during and after conflict in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

The Navy retains MK-20 Rockeye cluster bombs with about 14.5 million submunitions; the DoD report cites a surprisingly low 2 percent failure rate. These cluster bombs were developed in the 1950s and were used in great numbers in the Vietnam War and in the 1991 Gulf War and were reported to have high failure rates; clearance agencies in Kuwait encountered a very large number of hazardous dud Rockeye submunitions.19

Even using the report’s very conservative dud rates, however, the current submunition inventory, if employed, would leave behind more than 27 million hazardous duds (see Table 2). The report says that legacy munitions “will remain in the department’s inventory until used or until they reach their extended life and are demilitarized.”20 Thus, while the DoD will destroy some submunitions because they have expired, it has no plans to destroy cluster munitions because of their high failure rates and inaccuracy. According to the report, a total of 480 million of the old, unreliable submunitions will still be in the inventory in FY 2011.21

The report also reflects an unwillingness to replace cluster munitions with unitary weapons. It describes the cluster munitions as “vital” and “versatile,” particularly for attacks on time-sensitive area targets. “Restricting U.S. Forces to firing only unitary munitions would severely hinder our capabilities . . . and would limit the number of available munitions options for the operational commander.”22 It specifically states that unitary models are “not intended as a replacement for” MLRS or ATACMS cluster munitions.23 Such statements ignore the lessons of Iraq where field commanders and Judge Advocate Generals (legal advisers) called for a unitary alternative to reduce the risk to U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. In that conflict, ground forces used long-range MLRS rockets, which only carry submunitions, largely because Iraqi artillery outranged U.S. artillery. In such cases, a unitary warhead would have served the same purpose without the civilian harm that is all but inevitable when one uses an area effect weapon that produces dozens of duds.

posted October 23, 2006 04:14 PM            

You and others here get down with the idea that Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations, have always been terrorist organizations, have attacked inside the sovereign borders of Israel repeatedly, have used indiscriminate bombing specifically against Israeli civilians with no military objective whatsoever. Just for starters.

Further, both Hezbollah and Hamas are proxy terrorist organizations of Iran and Syria..both of which are terrorist supporting nations devoted to the destruction of the sovereign nation of Israel...and have not been shy about saying so.

Now, were I an Israeli, I would advocate total war against the Palestinians who have chosen a terrorist organization for their government...knowing full well the position of Hamas is to destroy the nation of Israel.

Syria would be bombed, Assad would be killed and their entire military arsenal would be destroyed.

Hezbollah would be attacked and there would be no end of that war until their leaders were dead wherever in the world they hid out...along with the vast majority of their terrorist members.

Nor would there ever be a so called Palestinian State...the establishment of a state of terrorists on the borders of Israel..a nation they have vowed to destroy.

Now you and all your terrorist supporting friends can stuff it. Both Hamas and Hezbollah have repeatedly committed acts of war...in it's true sense and meaning against Israel.

Israel does not and has not made war on civilians. Targets Israel hit had a military objective..such as rockets being fired into Israel from or near buildings and homes across an international border. If this was happening to the United States, there would be real war. I expect Israel to defend themselves and if that means a war Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas are clamoring for, then so be it and you get what you get.

Were I an Israeli, I would have advocated that there would have been no, absolutely no return of land captured in several wars Israels neighbors started against Israel. Israel however returned the Sinai desert area to Egypt, returned most of the land captured from Syria..save the Golan Heights from which Syria attacked them and returned also the land captured from Jordan.

Enough, if Israel ever made real war against any of them...instead of retaliatory strikes for unprovoked attacks, there wouldn't be much, if anything left standing.