 |
Saudis
Using US-Supplied |
By
Stephen Lendman |
| America has a long sordid history of waging direct and proxy wars of
aggression, freely using banned terror weapons. War on Yemen was planned and orchestrated in Washington, using Riyadh and its rogue allies to do its dirty work. Another nation is being systematically ravaged and destroyed, its entire population at risk from violence, starvation, untreated illnesses and diseases along with overall deprivation - the world community largely dismissive of appalling human suffering. Cluster bombs are illegal terror weapons - their use, transfer and stockpiling banned under the 2010 Convention on Cluster Munitions. As of October 2015, 118 states signed the treaty - 98 ratified it, including most European nations, pledging “never under any circumstances” to develop, produce, acquire, stockpile, retain, transfer or use these weapons. America and Israel use them freely. Pentagon commanders outrageously call them humane weapons, saying “(b)lanket elimination (is) unacceptable due not only to negative military consequences but also due to potential negative consequences for civilians.” They’re brightly colored. Young children are at risk, mistaking them for toys. Picking them up risks serious injury or death. Large amounts of unexploded ordnance remains dangerous longterm. Riyadh is indiscriminately using US-supplied cluster munitions in Yemen, targeting residential communities. A new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report accused Saudi-led forces of “airdropping cluster bombs on residential neighborhoods in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, early on January 6, 2016.” It called reckless and indiscriminate of these banned weapons “a war crime.” HRW’s Steve Goose said their “repeated use” in densely populated residential areas indicates a deliberate “intent to harm civilians.” “These outrageous attacks show that (Saudi-led tactics ignore) sparing civilians from war’s horrors.” Photographic evidence shows “unmistakable remnants of cluster munitions, including unexploded submunitions, spherical fragmentation liners from submunitions that broke apart on impact, and parts of the bomb that carried the payload.” “Human Rights Watch identified the munitions as from US-made BLU-63 antipersonnel/anti-materiel submunitions and components of a CBU-58 cluster bomb. Markings on the bomb remnants indicate that it was manufactured in 1978 at the Milan Army Ammunition Plant in the state of Tennessee in the United States.” In 2015, HRW documented three types of cluster munitions used in Yemen. Amnesty International identified a fourth type. A fifth type is also being used - weapons Riyadh and its rogue partners get from Washington. HRW co-founded and chairs the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), an initiative to eliminate their use. Washington bears full responsibility for ongoing slaughter in Yemen, supplying Riyadh with cluster and other terror weapons - deliberately used against defenseless civilians, inflicting horrific casualties and human suffering. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs. |
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