Special Report From Dennie Williams

News & Commentary

The Politics Of Cluster Bombs

By THOMAS D. WILLIAMS
Special To The Cool Justice Report
www.cooljustice.blogspot.com
Sept. 30, 2006

EDITOR’S NOTE: This column is available for reprint courtesy of The Cool Justice Report, http://cooljustice.blogspot.com

There are a number of alarming news stories recently about the Israeli use of cluster bombs in Lebanon as well as the accidental deaths of two Lebanese soldiers and the critical wounding of a third who were trying to defuse the bomblets sprayed over a wide area. The little bomblets have reportedly injured Lebanese civilians as well.

The news reports say the United States has been supplying Israel with cluster bombs for three decades. The United Nations reports an average of 30 duds a day are being discovered on the ground in Lebanon, and endangering civilians. News reports said the US State Department has opened an investigation into whether Israel’s use of US-made cluster bombs in Lebanon violated pacts Israel had made with the U.S.

As a long time investigative reporter for The Hartford Courant, since retired, I wrote several stories 13 years ago about the deadly hazards of these munitions to soldiers and Iraqi civilians alike during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The articles were followed by a U.S. General Accountability inquiry and by Connecticut Republican U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays’ call for a congressional inquiry into future Army plans for U.S. use of the bomblets, also known as "metal rain."

At that time, U.S. Army weapons experts were admittedly aware that the rocket system, carrying the bomblets, was faulty. Their own tests before the war showed that the rocket-launched bomblets had a dud rate as high as 23 percent, far higher than the 3 percent to 5 percent rate that the Army deems acceptable, the GAO’s conclusions said.

Because National Guard troops were not properly trained in handling the bomblets or even knowing their dangers, more Connecticut troops were injured or killed by them than by any other explosive munition. They picked them up as souvenirs, kicked or stepped on them.

An undisclosed number of Iraqi civilians were also maimed or killed.

After the war, bomb specialists from the U.S. and allied forces spent several million dollars carefully picking up the dud bomblets to keep soldiers and civilians out of harm’s way.

Pentagon officials should have been very aware of these hazards. They had a special unit in Florida, which was called upon many times to pick up bomblets from the recent widows of military veterans who collected them as souvenirs.

Even more shocking about the story was the fact that many of the munitions were faultily manufactured in various U.S. plants, and the Pentagon decided to use them anyway even after threatening legal action against at least one manufacturer. In 1988, the Department of Defense found the quality of those munitions from its most modern plant in Mississippi to be so deficient that 50 percent to 60 percent of the plant's bomblets had to be destroyed in subsequent years.

A fellow reporter I have known for a long time, George Krimsky, formerly with the Associated Press now with the Waterbury Republican, told me that he too had experiences with writing about cluster bombs.

Here is what he said:

In 1978, when Israel first invaded Lebanon, I was AP's Middle East news editor, based in Beirut.

Lebanese civilians were reporting cluster bombings in the south (from airplanes then), but Israel emphatically denied it. So, I went down there with a photographer, and we found hundreds of the nasty little buggers in farmyards, fields, all over the place.

After my story ran, with photos, Israel recanted, admitting they had used them. Congress raised such a fuss, the bombings stopped, at least for the moment.

As a memento of the time, I have half a cluster bomb here at home, which I use as an ashtray.

Thomas D. "Dennie" Williams covered courts and was an investigative reporter for The Hartford Courant, retiring recently after 38 years on the job.