Tax dollars at work

Minor update on our Cluster Bomb ClusterFuck Thread:

At the Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva last month, Bush administration officials said that the threat to civilians from cluster munitions is “episodic” and “manageable within current response mechanisms” - presumably unless you’re a [not a joyous link] child attracted by the bomblets. They said it “only” took two years to clear the high-risk affected areas in Kosovo after 1999, but also admitted that eight years later, unexploded bomblets remain. They cited 10 countries threatened by cluster bombs - Afghanistan, Albania, Cambodia, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon, Montenegro, Serbia, and Vietnam - as well as Kosovo, leaving out another 20 countries so affected.

Separately, the US State Department has said that Israel may have illegally used US-made cluster bombs in Lebanon, but welcomes that it will take “only” a year and a half to largely clean up the remnant. CSMonitor

No One Ever Wins.