Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
CNN
May 29, 2008
The Situation Room (CNN), 5:00 PM
WOLF BLITZER: More than 100 countries are agreeing to ban them but not the United States. Why is the U.S. isolated when it comes to the issue of cluster bombs? Let's go live to our senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre.
Jamie, what's behind the U.S. reluctance right now to go ahead with this international ban?
JAMIE MCINTYRE: Wolf, the Pentagon says it's sympathetic to the humanitarian concerns but the bottom line is they believe that cluster bombs save American lives by killing more of its enemies.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MCINTYRE: U.S. military argues when it comes to taking out a concentration of enemy troops or disabling air defense radars or crippling a line of aircraft on a runway there's nothing that gets the job done better than a cluster bomb. Instead of one big bomb the cluster bomb unit contains dozens or even hundreds of bomblets. Each the size of a grenade.
Tiny parachutes scatter the mini bombs and when they all go off they send shards of shrapnel over an area the size of a football field. The problem is, they don't always all go off. In the past the dud rate, that is the number of bomblets that fail to explode on impact, has been anywhere between three and 16 percent, posing a grave hazard to anyone, especially children, who finds them later.
IVAN OELRICH, FED. OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: We just can't tolerate that. It ruins the purpose for which we're -- we are using military force in the first place, typically, is that we want to defeat a military but not to harm the civilians.
MCINTYRE: While even America's closest ally Britain is among the 111 countries signing on to the new cluster bomb ban hammered out in Dublin, the U.S. is clinging to the controversial munitions citing military necessity. The Pentagon's answer is not to outlaw cluster bombs but to improve them.
The newest American cluster bombs supposedly have a 99 percent detonation rate. The federation of American scientists supports a global ban but says if the U.S. doesn't it can always make the unexploded bomblets even safer.
OELRICH: For example, make the sub munitions out of material that once it's exposed to air, could rapidly deteriorate.
MCINTYRE: The U.S. is calling for better cluster bombs along with stricter international agreements on how they can be used to minimize the threat to innocence. (END OF VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE: The U.S. also argues that in talking about the threat from unexploded munitions 95 percent of the injuries happen from other kinds of unexploded munitions, not cluster bombs. Still, the U.S. is increasingly isolated, it's now in the company of Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan, as the countries that aren't taking part in that treaty to ban cluster bombs -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Jamie, thank you.
May 29, 2008
The Situation Room (CNN), 5:00 PM
WOLF BLITZER: More than 100 countries are agreeing to ban them but not the United States. Why is the U.S. isolated when it comes to the issue of cluster bombs? Let's go live to our senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre.
Jamie, what's behind the U.S. reluctance right now to go ahead with this international ban?
JAMIE MCINTYRE: Wolf, the Pentagon says it's sympathetic to the humanitarian concerns but the bottom line is they believe that cluster bombs save American lives by killing more of its enemies.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MCINTYRE: U.S. military argues when it comes to taking out a concentration of enemy troops or disabling air defense radars or crippling a line of aircraft on a runway there's nothing that gets the job done better than a cluster bomb. Instead of one big bomb the cluster bomb unit contains dozens or even hundreds of bomblets. Each the size of a grenade.
Tiny parachutes scatter the mini bombs and when they all go off they send shards of shrapnel over an area the size of a football field. The problem is, they don't always all go off. In the past the dud rate, that is the number of bomblets that fail to explode on impact, has been anywhere between three and 16 percent, posing a grave hazard to anyone, especially children, who finds them later.
IVAN OELRICH, FED. OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: We just can't tolerate that. It ruins the purpose for which we're -- we are using military force in the first place, typically, is that we want to defeat a military but not to harm the civilians.
MCINTYRE: While even America's closest ally Britain is among the 111 countries signing on to the new cluster bomb ban hammered out in Dublin, the U.S. is clinging to the controversial munitions citing military necessity. The Pentagon's answer is not to outlaw cluster bombs but to improve them.
The newest American cluster bombs supposedly have a 99 percent detonation rate. The federation of American scientists supports a global ban but says if the U.S. doesn't it can always make the unexploded bomblets even safer.
OELRICH: For example, make the sub munitions out of material that once it's exposed to air, could rapidly deteriorate.
MCINTYRE: The U.S. is calling for better cluster bombs along with stricter international agreements on how they can be used to minimize the threat to innocence. (END OF VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE: The U.S. also argues that in talking about the threat from unexploded munitions 95 percent of the injuries happen from other kinds of unexploded munitions, not cluster bombs. Still, the U.S. is increasingly isolated, it's now in the company of Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan, as the countries that aren't taking part in that treaty to ban cluster bombs -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Jamie, thank you.