"US used cluster bombs..." article and editorial from U.S. socialist press

[John Smith <johncsmith@DELETETHISbtinternet.com>]

U.S. used cluster bombs in assault against Iraq


Weapons used in February attack ‘will kill for years to come’


(lead article from March 12, 2001 issue of the Militant, a socialist newsweekly
published in New York, obtained from <www.themilitant.com>) 

 BY BRIAN WILLIAMS  

U.S. warplanes fired 28 cluster bombs—each equipped with 145 anti-armor and
anti-personnel incendiary bomblets—as part of Washington’s February 16 assault
against Iraq. Dropped on the outskirts of Baghdad, the country’s capital
city, most of the bombs missed their target, despite the Pentagon’s earlier
claims of pinpoint hits by the satellite-guided weapons.

These facts have only come to light in the on-line edition of the Washington
Post , in a February 26 article by William Arkin, a former Army intelligence
analyst and consultant. The print edition of the paper did not carry the
article, and the use of cluster bombs has been covered up in the big-business
media.

The Bush administration also dispatched Secretary of State Colin Powell to
the Mideast, with the purpose of explaining to regimes in the region U.S.
government decisions to adjust the sanctions against Iraq—modifications made
with the goal of more effectively sealing the borders and controlling the
flow of goods and people in and out of the country.

Arkin explains the cluster bombs are antipersonnel weapons and have “no real
aimpoint.” As with cluster bombs used by Washington in its assault against
the Iraqi people a decade ago, those dropped February 16 will “kill and wound
innocent civilians for years to come,” he writes.

Washington’s choice of cluster bombs highlights the character of the 10-year
aggression as a brutal assault on the people of Iraq. From the sanctions
imposed in 1990, to the six-week bombardment and invasion, to the massacre
of workers and farmers retreating from Kuwait on the road to Basra, to the
burial in trenches of surrendering Iraqi troops, U.S. imperialism has sought
to break the Iraqi people and strip them of their national sovereignty.

Arkin explains that the weapon used in the bombing, “still unnoticed by the
American media, is likely to prove controversial.” The bomb is called the
Joint Stand-off Weapon (JSOW) and “was first used in combat in Iraq on January
25, 1999, when Marine Corps F-18 Hornets fired three weapons at an air defense
site,” he reports. The 1,000-pound, 14-foot-long weapon—each costing at least
$250,000--disperses the bomblets over an area that is approximately 100 feet
long and 200 feet wide. Twenty-eight of these JSOWs were fired by U.S. warplanes
in the February 16 attack, along with guided missiles and laser-guided bombs.
The Pentagon now admits that 26 of the 28 JSOWs missed their “aimpoint.”

These bombs, which Pentagon spokes-people describe as “precision-guided weapons,”
can be launched from a range of 40 nautical miles and at altitudes of 20,000
feet. They then spray the bomblets from 400 feet above the ground. Six bombs
fall in every 1,000 square feet.

The Post article further states, “The JSOW uses a gasbag to propel the sub-munitions
outward from the sides. Once ejected, the bomblets, each the size of a soda
can, simply fall freely at the mercy of local winds. A few almost always
land outside of the center point of the football field size main concentration.
On average 5 percent do not detonate. These unexploded bomblets then become
highly volatile on the ground.”  

Kills for years to come

Washington used a similar type of cluster bomb during its assault on Iraq
during the 1990-91 Gulf War. Iraqi civilians continue to be killed and seriously
injured by these unexploded bomblets that detonate upon contact. A February
20 Agence France Press (AFP) report described the wounding of a shepherd
near Nasiriyah in southern Iraq by one of these bomblets. Five days earlier,
Reuters reported that two boys in western Iraq, also tending sheep, were
injured when another cluster bomblet exploded. AFP also reported February
9 that a child was killed and six others were wounded by similar submunitions
near Basra.

“Recently, U.S. Air Force engineers in Kuwait found an entire unexploded
CBU-87 [cluster bomb] at an airbase that had been attacked during the Gulf
War,” Arkin writes. “The weapon had apparently malfunctioned and ripped open
upon impact, burying bomblets up to six feet deep in the vicinity. To destroy
them in place, a series of 10-foot high barriers had to be built inside a
700-foot wide safety cordon.”

After initially presenting a glowing assessment of its February 16 bombardment
of Iraq, Pentagon officials admitted several days later that most of the
bombs dropped by the U.S. warplanes missed their target by an average of
more than 100 yards. The Pentagon claimed they were aiming at 25 components
of Iraqi radar stations, but confirm damage to only eight of these targets.

“Although the mission was to ‘degrade’ rather than destroy Iraqi air defense,
all it degraded was our air force technology’s reputation for accuracy,”
complained New York Times columnist William Safire in a February 26 op-ed
piece.

U.S. warplanes continue to bomb sites in Iraq. Six days after the bombing
near Baghdad, U.S. missiles were launched against targets in the northern
“no-fly” zone.  

Reinforcing sanctions

U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell insisted in a February 12 CNN interview
that Washington’s decade-long policy of economic sanctions and ongoing military
attacks by U.S. warplanes patrolling “no-fly” zones over Iraqi air space
is really a humanitarian one. “What we have to do is make sure we continue
to tell the world that we are not after the Iraqi people,” he cynically stated.

Powell conducted a six-nation tour of the Mideast February 24-27, with stops
in Egypt, Israel, the occupied territories, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
and Syria. He discussed with leaders of the Arab regimes proposals for revamping
and reinvigorating Washington’s sanctions policy against Iraq. A headline
in the Financial Times read, “U.S. toughens line on Iraq oil sanctions violations.”

A February 25 article in the New York Times pointed to recent fraying of
the sanctions, noting that at least “a dozen countries have broken the air
embargo by flying planes belonging to their national carriers into Baghdad,
and three, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, have begun scheduled flights.” Several
days before Powell’s visit to Egypt, Cairo and Baghdad authorities also signed
an accord to boost transportation links.

Washington is seeking to undercut criticism of the devastating impact of
the sanctions on the Iraqi people, at the same time as it moves to tighten
its grip on oil and the country’s other major imports and exports. The Washington
Post reported Powell’s view that new U.S. proposals “strengthen the core
sanctions by raising the idea that countries that violate them will face
real penalties.”

“Right now the consequences have less currency because things are in, I must
say, a state of disarray,” said the secretary of state.

In exchange for agreement on these more effective sanctions, Washington says
it would be willing to discuss revamping the list of products that the United
Nations prohibits or restricts for sale to Iraq. Currently about 1,600 contracts
worth an estimated $3 billion are on hold because of objections, many from
the U.S. government.

Powell won support from several governments for the plan. Syrian president
Bashir Assad agreed to place Iraqi funds generated from the sale of oil being
sent through a recently reopened oil pipeline in Syria under UN control,
denying Baghdad any benefit from the oil exports.

In Kuwait City Powell was joined by former president George Bush and Norman
Schwartzkopf, the U.S. commander in the Gulf War, and former British prime
minister Margaret Thatcher, for official ceremonies marking the end of that
brutal offensive 10 years ago.

In Cairo, Powell also spoke with Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov. Moscow
is concerned about recent statements by top Bush officials that represent
a step-up in threats against Russia. In mid-February, U.S. defense secretary
Donald Rumsfeld said that Russia was “part of the problem.” Recently, Condoleezza
Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, said Russia was “a threat for the
west in general and our European allies in particular.”

Meanwhile, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service issued a report at the
end of February claiming that the Iraqi regime may have the capacity to launch
nuclear weapons in the Mideast region within three years. The secret police
agency also charged that Baghdad may be able to hit Europe with missiles
within five years.

The Wall Street Journal reported February 26 that “Israeli weapons experts
responded with some skepticism” to this report. “It has very much to do with
American internal politics,” stated Yiftah Shapir, a weapons expert at Tel
Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. He instead argues
that Iraq would need another decade to produce nuclear weapons.


**********************************************


U.S. war against Iraqi people

(editorial from March 12, 2001 issue of the Militant, a socialist newsweekly published in New York)


Washington’s recent cluster bombing of Iraq on the outskirts of Baghdad is
a continuation of the brutal character of the U.S. rulers’ 10-year assault
against the Iraqi people. This policy has included the killing of as many
as 150,000 human beings in the Gulf War in 1991 through a six-week bombardment
and one-hundred-hour invasion of the country; sanctions imposed by Washington
under the auspices of the United Nations since 1990; and the imposition of
“no-fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq patrolled by U.S. warplanes
that regularly bomb the country. In fact, over the past two years these bombing
attacks have killed an average of one Iraqi civilian about every other day.
Washington has made it clear that there will be no letup in these attacks.

The 28 cluster bombs, each weighing 1,000 pounds put the lie to Secretary
of State Colin Powell’s claim that Washington is “not after the Iraqi people.”
Cluster bombs are designed to kill and maim people. Despite Washington’s
claims about the pinpoint accuracy of their “precision-guided” weapons, these
cluster bombs have no aimpoint, except to disperse thousands of highly explosive
bomblets over a wide area. And those that don’t explode become imbedded in
the ground, ready to go off as Iraqi workers, farmers, or children travel
through the area.

Washington has been dropping the Joint Stand-off Weapon—the Pentagon’s latest
brand of cluster bombs—on Iraq since January 1999, under the Democratic Clinton
administration and now by Republican George Bush.

The ongoing bombing drive against Iraq and the Pentagon’s use of such weapons
against the Iraqi people show the true face of imperialism. Yet the capitalist
media has been virtually silent about the use of the weapons. A story that
finally did appear in the Washington Post’s web site never did made it into
its print edition.

In his recent visit to the Mideast region, Powell succeeded in winning some
support from Arab leaders for the Bush administration’s plan to ease some
aspects of the overall sanctions, while tightening up those deemed most damaging
to the country. Washington’s aim is to reinvigorate a policy that in recent
months has been cracking at the edges. Its goal is to more effectively seal
the borders around Iraq, and tighten its grip on oil and the country’s other
major imports and exports.

Another indication of the Bush administration’s intentions to further step
up its assault upon Iraq is reflected in his nomination of Paul Wolfowitz
to be deputy defense secretary. Wolfowitz is an advocate of Washington arming
the Iraqi opposition groups. In the spring of 1999 he wrote in Foreign Affairs
magazine that “the United States should be prepared to commit ground forces
to protect a sanctuary in southern Iraq where the opposition could safely
mobilize.” The big-business media did take notice of Wolfowitz’s views when
Bush announced his nomination for the high-level Pentagon post.

Working people can respond to these stepped-up threats by defending Iraq’s
sovereignty and demanding: Hands off Iraq! Halt the bombing! End the sanctions
and the “no-fly” zones.


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