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LANDMINES FROM THE SKY
Contributed by
Steeleyes
on
Saturday, 13th March 2004 @ 09:25:05 AM in AEST
Topic:
political
|
As early as Vietnam
They rained down
Landmines from the sky
Inviting little children
Come play with me
And die
In Nam they were called
the pellet bomb
Exploding dart fragments
Screaming through the air
Nguyen Thi An
was fifteen years old
First she heard the sirens
Then the engines
Then the explosion
She ran from her home
She found her
Mother, father and brother
bathed in blood
Her sister, Binh
was covered in metal pieces
The darts were inside
They were of a special plastic
designed to avoid x-rays
and so harder to find
They moved in her body for days
before she died
Next came the Rockeyes
Tested in Laos
Dispersed to 160 bomblets
Half touched down
and lay in wait
When stepped on or moved
they exploded
to maim or kill
To this day
Perhaps 20,000 a year
die from these in Laos
Laos was not even at war with America
In Afghanistan the technology
had come even further
And an estimated 70,000 bomblets
litter that land
O/
I saw twenty dead children
on the streets of Kuduz.
(Zumeray, a refugee witness)
At Qala-i-Jhangi
American bombers
Cluster bombed Taliban prisoners
Survivors were oiled and set alight
Up to 4,000 died that day
And in Iraq
the story is much the same
New technologies of death
To win dollars for this game
O/
The object picked up by the two children was a bomblet from an unexploded cluster bomb. It went off in the front yard, leaving a neat six-inch hole in the concrete floor.
Tiny fragments of shrapnel flew upwards into Halas legs and into Alis face. At least one of them is still lodged deep in his cheek. Their father clutches the screaming boy, weeping silently.
They thought it was a kind of ball, said Halas aunt, weeping. They only wanted to play.
O/
Cluster bombs lie
They are land mines from the sky
An invitation to any child
Come play with me...
And die.
O/
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.
Regarding the use of cluster bombs, among other war crimes, such as the use of depleted uranium, 'the wanton destruction of cities and towns,' collective reprisals against civilians in Operation Hammer, the U.S. media is still silent.
Years ago in the midst of France's brutal war in Algeria, the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre admonished the French intelligentsia:
'It is not right, my fellow-countrymen, you who know very well all the crimes committed in our name. It's not at all right that you do not breathe a word about them to anyone, not even to your own soul, for fear of having to stand in judgment of yourself. I am willing to believe that at the beginning you did not realize what was happening; later, you doubted whether such things could be true; but now you know, and still you hold your tongues.'
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0126-04.htm
Cluster Bombs: War Crimes of the Bush Administration
Copyright ©
Steeleyes
... [
2004-03-13 09:25:05]
(Date/Time posted on
site)
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Re: LANDMINES FROM THE SKY
(User Rating: 1 )
by Former_Member on
Saturday, 13th March 2004 @ 01:40:36 PM AEST
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| Compelling read, steel. |
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Re: LANDMINES FROM THE SKY
(User Rating: 1 )
by vahtang on
Monday, 5th October 2009 @ 07:29:43 AM AEST
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| Spam Comment Removed |
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