Thread: Cluster bombs

Originally Posted by surasak

Well, the problem is that a nation-state who is a signatory of the Geneva Convention cannot simply discard it when they attack terrorists in another state....the civilians and non-combatants don't lose their rights simply because non-signatories are being attacked.

Agreed. And I don't excuse the use of cluster bombs - I am waiting for Israel's excuse for doing that. Anyone got any links?

But I think in the early stages of the war, they did try to minimise Lebanese civilian casualties. It's a great shame they seem to have gone a bit "gung-ho" at the end.

I think they could have not bombed bridges, roads, and buildings in Beirut for starters. Bombing the power stations and causing all that oil to spill certainly was a war crime as well. Dropping bombs on fleeing civilians isn't cool either under the excuse that they were terrorists.

Fat chance anyone in the international community is actually going to hold anyone responsible on either side.

Fat chance anyone in the international community is actually going to hold anyone responsible on either side.

If they did that, then they would have to go and look into Afghanistan and Iraq.

Which would be embarassing considering that the U.S. pulled out of several treaties before the invasions.

You know why most of the 'enemy combatants' are in Gitmo? Because it's not sovereign U.S. territory, thus, the courts really don't have any jurisdiction there (despite the recent ruling). Bush can simply ignore it.

Israel is a terrorist rogue state.

Originally Posted by RDN

Yes, they're just a bunch of well-armed terrorists with guns and rockets who have managed to capture the hearts and minds of the uneducated masses by very clever media manipulation.

Are you being sarcastic ?

Originally Posted by Milkman

Israel is a terrorist rogue state.

whose leaders (military and civilian) deserve to brought before a criminal court in the hague.

The US should cut the aid it sends to many other countries and double the aid we send to Israel.

Leaders of terrorist organizations like Hezbollocks should be hanged by the neck until dead.

You know SK what happens when one person gives alot of power to another person??

Do you know what will happen to America one day for supporting the Jewish State??

Clue:Iam not talking about Muslims here.

Originally Posted by Mhz

Do you know what will happen to America one day for supporting the Jewish State??

God will grant us "Favored Nation" status ?

Hey man ... if you want to post where everybody thinks the same way then go back to ajarn.

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

Hey man ... if you want to post where everybody thinks the same way then go back to ajarn.

Never been to ajarn (for obvious reasons), but if you look above, RDN, Surasak BillyZ and MrsSquirrel actually had an educated and respectful debate without resorting to namecalling, profanities, insults or ezcessive quoting from external sources. Up to a few posts ago, I thought to myself - "hey - this is a great thread, and a great debate - we are finally starting to behave like adults".

I should have known it wouldn't last.....

Originally Posted by Whiteshiva

I should have known it wouldn't last.....

This IS Teak Door after all...

Originally Posted by Whiteshiva

I should have known it wouldn't last.....

Depends on which side of the fence you're on I guess. Some people are much better with subtle forms of insults.

Originally Posted by Whiteshiva

but if you look above, RDN, Surasak BillyZ and MrsSquirrel actually had an educated and respectful debate without resorting to namecalling, profanities, insults or ezcessive quoting from external sources.

Strange that isn't it?

I suppose that's the difference between having intelligent, original thoughts and being a Bush supporter.

Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

Originally Posted by Whiteshiva

but if you look above, RDN, Surasak BillyZ and MrsSquirrel actually had an educated and respectful debate without resorting to namecalling, profanities, insults or ezcessive quoting from external sources.

Strange that isn't it?

I suppose that's the difference between having intelligent, original thoughts and being a Bush supporter.

I was too polite to write that , but it does seem that while the anti-Bush crowd (of which I consider myself a supporter) do have a few nutcases polluting the debate from time to time, the Pro-Bush mafia seem to almost exclusively consist of people only able to produce one-liners, quotes and insults.

SK is the only exception, he is occasionally making some very good points, but unfortunately not, in my opinion, consistently enough.

I would rather see more thorough discussion and less posting-and-running like some do. For example, I made a link to the U.S. government's own terrorism report for 2005 with a small questionaire at the end and apparently not a single Bush supporter bothered to read it. Yet they made comments on the topic.

Well, here we are:

One million cluster bombs used in Lebanon, and, phosphorous shells were used as well. They got desparate in the final week of the mess, didn't they?

IDF commander: We fired more than a million cluster bombs in Lebanon - Haaretz - Israel News

Even with all that firepower they still couldn't break Hezbollah.

I'm actually really glad to see this has carried on fairly well.

It reminds me some what of a snowball fight when the snow is melting and those bad boys used to fill their balls with grit and throw them in your eye.

See what the fokers did .....

JERUSALEM, Sept 13: Israel’s army dropped more than 1.2 million cluster bombs into Lebanon during the month-long conflict, the liberal Haaretz newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing an Israeli army officer.

The unnamed officer described his unit’s use of the controversial bomblets during Israel’s 34-day offensive against Hezbollah as ‘crazy and monstrous’.

“We covered entire villages with cluster bombs,” the newspaper quoted the commander as saying.

The 1.2 million cluster bombs cited by the commander only included those bomblets dropped by a Multiple Launch Rocket System. Additional cluster bombs were fired from 155mm mortars or dropped from the air, he said.

Other soldiers cited in the article said the army fired phosphorous shells to start fires in Lebanon.

The Red Cross says international law prohibits the use of phosphorous against humans.

Human rights organisations have long advocated a ban on cluster bombs because of their disproportionate and indiscriminate nature and because their high dud rate creates vast minefields.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli army denied the army had violated international law.

“All the weapons and munitions used by the army are legal under international law and their use conforms with international standards,” she said.

In the first 15 days after the Aug 14 ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war, 52 Lebanese civilians were killed by unexploded cluster bombs, according to the United Nations.

United Nations chief Kofi Annan has condemned Israel’s use of cluster bombs and the world body estimates that as much as 40 per cent of the apple-sized bomblets fired into Lebanon failed to explode on impact.

The UN has found that Israel dropped 90 per cent of all the cluster bombs it used in Lebanon in the three days immediately preceding the ceasefire.

Mr Annan has criticised Israel for failing to provide UN peacekeepers working to clear away unexploded ordnance with adequately detailed maps of where Israel dropped the cluster bombs.

Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Israel’s cluster bomb use in Lebanon had ‘been taken to a new level’, during a visit to southern Lebanon immediately after the war.

“I’ve never been anywhere where I saw these numbers of duds lying around,” Garlasco, a former Pentagon analyst, said last month.—AFP

Now this is what we call Israelie restraint and this is how the Jewish state defends herself!

What about those tens of thousand or perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent people who'll suffer cos of this shit.

Interesting discovery I made yesterday:

In 1999 in the United Kingdom PM Tony Blair was charged by an internal commission with violating the Ottowa Convention because of the use of cluster bombs in Kosovo ...

Information is courtesy of Noam Chomsky in his book "9-11"

^maybe he did, but does it make it right?

No it doesn't it. But it sure shows that my British friends shouldn't be throwing stones when they live in a glass house.

People seem to want to ignore the fact that Blair has had his country at war nearly the entire time he has been in office ... before Bush became President.

I'm simply making my case that Blair is not a lapdog for Bush as claimed by Marmite and Milkman... that's nonsense.

The liberals had nothing to say about the atrocities commited by Blair and Clinton in Kosovo ... nothing to say about this new thing called "Military Humanism" that called/calls for escalating atrocities to stop ethnic cleansing.

And not only in Kosovo but in Turkey as well.

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

The liberals had nothing to say about the atrocities commited by Blair and Clinton in Kosovo

What atrocities ? They did the right thing. It was Europe problem actually but the stupid Euro Defense ministers wouldn't agree on anything.