The Weapons of American Terrorism: Cluster Bombs

http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/ClusterBombs.html

Cluster bombs are one of the most savage and inhumane weapons in the arsenal of the United States Corporate Mafia Government and military. These instruments of bloody terror are used for the gruesome slaughter of both military and civilian people around the world.

Each cluster bomb is composed of 200 to 700 bomblets. When each bomblet explodes it fragments into about 300 pieces of jagged steel - sending out virtual blizzards of deadly shrapnel.

People are decapitated, arms, legs, hands and feet are severed from their bodies - anyone and anything alive in the immediate vicinity is shredded into a bloody mess.

Picture yourself, your girlfriend or boyfriend, your wife or husband, and your children reduced to dismembered body parts by the United States military, and you'll have a clue as to what unfortunate people around the world have experienced since the Vietnam Genocide.

Cluster bombs were used by American/NATO forces to brutally murder civilian people all over Yugoslavia in 1999 and Afghanistan in 2001. American/British forces have used cluster bombs against the civilian people of Iraq from 1991 to the present day. Millions of cluster bombs were dropped on the civilian people of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the viciously racist genocide known as "the Vietnam War."

Once released from a U.S. Air Force or Navy jet, cluster bombs fall for a pre-set amount of time or distance before their dispensers open, spreading the bomblets widely so they can effectively slaughter people over a wide area.

During the bombing of Yugoslavia, American/NATO pilots routinely flew at high altitudes to avoid anti-aircraft fire as they dropped their cluster bombs. This made the bombing thoroughly indiscriminate, guaranteeing that there would be zero accuracy in hitting specific "military" targets.

This revealed very clearly that the NATO bombing was in fact a terror campaign against the entire civilian population, rather than a genuine military campaign.

With the opening of a 1,000-pound cluster bomb a couple of hundred bomblets shoot out in all directions. Each one has a little parachute that looks like an inverted umbrella. The chutes slow down the descent of the bomblets and disperse them so they'll hit as many "soft targets" as possible.

"Soft targets" is military-speak for human bodies. The U.S. military - and the corporations that make these murderous weapons - routinely uses such sterile euphemisms in an attempt to hide the fact that they are in the business of brutally murdering human beings.

Cluster bombs as landmines

Each cluster bomblet is activated by an internal fuze, and is set to explode above ground, on impact, or to be time-delayed - that is, they can be made into time bombs or mines.

In addition, the rate at which cluster bombs fail to explode at the intended time is 5 to 30 percent.

The use of cluster bombs, therefore, is the equivalent of creating uncharted mine fields.

The smaller bombs are designed to explode near the time of impact. But since 5% to 30% fail to explode at the time set for them, unexploded bombs litter every target area, silent and nondescript.

Until picked up by an unfortunate child or accidentally kicked by a passerby.

Unexploded bombs may rest on top of the soil in clear view. Cluster bombs may also hide themselves if they land in weeds, soft soil, sand, mud or water. Alternatively, bombs on top of the ground may become buried by soil erosion or growing plants.

In this way they become hidden killers, blending into their surroundings like land mines. And over time cluster bombs become more unstable - they explode more easily.

Used by the United States military since the Vietnam Genocide, cluster bombs are among the most indiscriminate weapons in their arsenal. These bombs not only cause physical suffering and loss - they also severely hinder agricultural and economic development of the land, many years into the future. Villagers are terrified to work on land they know is littered with unexploded cluster bombs.

This is what the United States Air Force and Navy have done to the people and land of Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq - and Yugoslavia.

Every year hundreds of people in these lands - including many children - are murdered and maimed for life by American cluster bombs that have become land mines.

This is why the U.S. Corporate Mafia Government refuses to sign a treaty for the elimination of land mines. It knows that if it signed such a treaty it would be pressured to end its use of cluster bombs.

Varieties of American-made Cluster Bombs

CBU-52B

The bomblets in the CBU-52 are softball-sized and are intended primarily to shred and dismember human bodies. The dispenser holds 220 of the bomblets and can be used against both people and light-skinned vehicles.

CBU-58A/B

This cluster bomb is also used to butcher human bodies and destroy light skinned military or civilian vehicles. The dispenser holds 650 baseball-sized bomblets to be dispersed indiscriminately over a wide area.

MK-20 Rockeye

The Rockeye is a clamshell-shaped dispenser holding 247 dart-shaped bomblets. These bomblets free fall and can cover a 3,300 square yard area, detonating on impact. The dart-shaped warhead charge in the bomblet is intended for use against armor and people.

CBU-59B Rockeye II

A newer version of the MK-20 Rockeye cluster bomb, the CBU 59 is used against both modern armor and human bodies. Rockeye II and the older Rockeye I are dart shaped bomblets with a small fuze in the pointed end of each bomblet. The CBU-59 dispenser holds about 700 bomblets.

CBU-71/B

The CBU-71/B is very similar to the CBU-58, carrying 650 baseball-sized bomblets. The CBU-71 bomblets have what the U.S. war criminals call "a random delay fuzing option."

Translation from military-speak:

These cluster bombs are used as land mines, set to explode at a variety of times after hitting the ground, to terrorize a local population.

CBU-72 Fuel-Air Explosive

This cluster bomb is different from all the others. It's an extremely destructive incendiary bomb, rather than a shrapnel bomb.

The U.S. military like to emphasize that it's used to "detonate minefields" and to "destroy aircraft parked in the open." What they would rather not discuss too publicly is that it's also used to burn the occupants alive in armored vehicles, and to burn alive and suffocate people who are taking shelter in bunkers.

The bomb is made up of three separate bomblets dispensing an aerosol fuel cloud across the target area. As the fuel cloud descends to the ground it is ignited by an embedded detonator to produce what U.S. war criminals call "an impressive explosion."

The rapidly expanding wave front due to overpressure flattens all objects and burns all people alive within close proximity of the epicenter of the aerosol fuel cloud. It also produces "debilitating damage" well beyond the flattened area.

Translation from military-speak:

Civilian people are horribly burned to death and their bodies crushed over a very wide area.

CBU-87 CEM Combined Effects Munition

According to the "Jane's Air-Launched Weapons" directory, the U.S.-made CBU-87 "combined effects munition" is a "free-fall cluster bomb" composed of 202 "multi-purpose bomblets." Each bomblet is capable of penetrating up to 177 mm (seven inches) of armor and has fire-starting capabilities as well.

The CEM dispenses the 202 bomblets over an area of 800 feet by 400 feet. U.S. war criminals call it "an area denial cluster weapon."

Translation from military-speak: the bomblets create an 800 x 400 ft. uncharted mine field.

This cluster bomb is intended to destroy both lightly armored vehicles and human beings.

The CBU-87 was used extensively to slaughter Iraqi civilian men, women and children during the Desert Storm terror campaign.

CBU-89

The "GATOR" family of scatterable mines is another favorite body-butchering weapon used by the cowardly mass-murderers who like to think of themselves as "fighter aircrews." The dispenser holds 72 anti-armor mines and 22 anti-personnel mines. These mines arm immediately upon impact.

The GATOR has two integrated "kill mechanisms": a magnetic influence fuze to sense armor, and deployed trip wires that explode the bomb when adults, children or your pet dog walks on or disturbs them.

Another feature of the GATOR is the "random delay function" detonating over several days for "highly effective area denial and harassment operations."

Translation from military-speak:

These evil weapons are highly effective for the murder and long-term terrorization of human beings. Any human beings it pleases the U.S. Corporate Mafia Government to use them against. Such as Iraqi children, Vietnamese children, Laotian children, Cambodian children, Albanian children and Yugoslavian children.

CBU-97 Sensor Fuzed Weapon

This "cosmic cluster munition" combines 10 bomblets with 4 "skeet type" warheads in a single dispenser, providing 40 weapons total. After release, a fuze causes the dispenser to disperse the 10 bomblets, each stabilized by a parachute.

At a preset altitude a rocket fires, propelling the bomblet in an upward vector. As the bomblet climbs, it is spun to disperse the 4 internal skeet warheads randomly by centrifugal force.

An infrared sensor in each warhead searches for a motorized vehicle or living being, and upon discovery detonates over it, firing a "kinetic fragment." The fragment drives itself through the lightly armored top of the vehicle - or the head of the unfortunate person.

If no isolated victim is found, the sensor detonates the warhead above ground to spray the battlefield - or the village market square - with a myriad of lethal fragments.

This brutal American weapon of mass-destruction is very effective against armor and human bodies, covering a 4,800 square yard area.

CBU-97/B Sensor Fuzed Weapon

The CBU-97/B cluster bomb, created by Alliant Techsystems of Hopkins, Minnesota, was used in the American/NATO terror campaign of 1999 to butcher civilian people all over Yugoslavia.

For example, this is probably the model that slaughtered the old men and women doing their shopping on the market street in the southern Serbian town of Nis.

This cluster bomb destroys armored vehicles like tanks, and can spray a "battlefield" (read: market square) with metal fragments, making it lethal against people and other "soft" targets. Like horses, cows, sheep and family pets.

According to Jane's Defense Weekly, which predicted its use in early April 1999 (by which time it had already been used), each sensor fuzed weapon (SFW) carries forty SKEET warheads that use infrared sensors to home in on armored vehicles and people.

Each warhead is a copper-plated, 1 kg Explosively-Formed Projectile that spins at 1,600 rpm. The SFW can be dropped from 200 to 20,000 feet from B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers, as well as from A-10 Warthog ground attack aircraft and F-15 and F-16 fighters. The SFW can cover an area the size of about 12 football fields (or 6 hectares).

A B-1B bomber can carry 30 SFWs, or 1200 individual cluster bombs, with the potential to butcher every living being in an area equal to 360 football fields.

Five B-1B Lancer bombers were deployed on April 1, 1999, at RAF Fairford, England, and used to murder and terrorize the civilian men, women and children of Yugoslavia.

The A-10 Warthog and F-16 can be fitted with four SFWs. At the beginning of April, only the B-1B had been "certified" for using the SFW, which suggests that any other aircraft using the weapon was conducting experiments in the so-called "combat" situations.

British cluster bomb - the RBL755

The British, America's favorite partners in war crime, have their own version of the cluster bomb. They too used it to butcher civilian men, women and children all over Iraq and Yugoslavia. The UK arms company Hunting Engineering of Ampthill, Bedford, manufactures the British cluster bomb.

Each RBL 755 weighs 600 lb and breaks up in the air releasing 147 bomblets, each of which explodes into approximately 2000 metal fragments. About the size of a soft-drink can, parachutes slow the bomblets' fall, and each has the explosive power to destroy a tank - if by some miracle it hits a tank in the right place.

That's a big "IF" indeed - considering the safe-for-the-pilot altitude from which the bombs are dropped. Such high-altitude delivery guarantees there will be essentially zero accuracy. That means lots of dead civilian people, including children.

The 'R' BL755 uses a different fuze from the original low-level delivery variant allowing it to be dropped from a high enough altitude - above 10,000 ft (3,305 m) - where there is little or no threat from hand-held, infrared-guided, surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery.

Related sites

http://www.clearlandmines.com/
http://www.clearlandmines.com/donation.htmCluster Munitions: The Bombs That Keep On Killing
http://www.icbl.org/lm/2000/report/LMWeb-60.php3

Kosovo: "A Wasteland Called Peace"
http://www.icbl.org/resources/raejune99.html

A report by The UK Campaign for a Transparent & Accountable Arms Trade on the illegal and immoral American/NATO use of cluster bombs.

Laos War Legacy
http://www.mcc.org/clusterbomb/laos_legacy/index.html

The Mennonite Central Committee report on the genocidal use of cluster bombs by the United States Air Force against the people of Laos during the Vietnam War.

Legacy of the Secret War
http://www.mcc.org/clusterbomb/secret_war/index.html

"The Continuing Problem of Unexploded Ordnance in Xieng Khouang Province, Laos, and the Response of the Mennonite Central Committee and the American Friends Service Committee, 1972-1994."

NATO cluster bombs kill 100 Albanians in Kosovo: Where is the outrage?
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/koso-m15.shtml

Cluster Munitions: America's DUMB Bombs
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/index.html

Part of the valuable Federation of American Scientists (FAS) website, this section gives comprehensive descriptions of individual cluster bomb models. The individual listings contain photos and diagrams of the bombs as well as photos of the aircraft that deliver them. Has photos of cluster bombs exploding over tanks and other battlefield targets.

No photos of decapitated children in residential Yugoslavian neighborhoods, though. The Pentagon doesn't want you to know about that particular use for cluster bombs. No, you just be sure you obediently pay your taxes so the Pentagon can buy these weapons, and keep your own head stuck firmly in the sand.

One photo series shows a fuel-air bomb exploding over a two-story, house-like structure on a desert test range.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/fae.htm
(Such a target trains U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots to get used to the idea of murdering civilians in residential houses. The U.S. military turns men and women into inhuman murderers, butchering people on command. Then it tells these fools they're "heros," when in fact they're nothing but trained rats.)

Now picture you and your loved ones underneath that fireball. Then you'll have a clue as to what the people of Yugoslavia experienced for 79 days and nights in 1999. And what the people of Southeast Asia experienced for 14 YEARS, courtesy of Uncle Sham.

To see the type of cluster bomb commonly used by heroic American/NATO pilots to butcher children, women and men, young and old, all over Yugoslavia and Iraq, see:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/cbu-97.htm

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