Whats your guys view on this?

[]LoL[Harm]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0919-03.htm

[Figtoria]

I think it's horrendous - a cluster fuck, if you'll pardon the pun.

The UN should make them go pick up all their toys and take them home when they finish playing.

[Rooster]

They need their money back from whomever they bought their bombs from -- unexploded ordinance sucks

The bomb makers should go clean it up. :)

[Bedpost]

that's a pretty pathetic percentage for bombs to work. only 60% - 70% of the bombs they tried to used went off? not to mention 350,000 bombs that didn't go off?
That means that they are saying isreal fired off over 1.1 million bombs in 34 days????

which means they fired off on average 32352 bombs a day. that seems awfully high.

Maybe I just don't understand how many bombs can be fired a day? Just seems like a lot for that scale of war. I would have thought that would be an amount for WWII or something.

[Post]

I believe a cluster bomb can have up to 2k bomblets or so. That's only 16 or 17 bombs a day.

Edit: which is still a lot, but not unbelievable.

[Bedpost]

Well that's saying that they are all cluster bombs. that's correct that cluster bombs can have a ton of ordinance in them. but still that seems awfully high.

[]LoL[Harm]

What's your guys take on the timing of the bombings, how they mostly launched these cluster bombs into residential areas pretty close to the end of the "war".

[Morety]

While labelled as residential areas, these may have been areas that were heavily defended (at the time) by the Hezbola. I doubt the Israeli's expected that some 40% of their ordnance wouldn't explode.

If they were dropped as a strike against armed enemies, that's one thing. If they were dropped while knowing the area was going to be residential again, and knowing that the munitions would remain live (unexploded), that's another thing.

The timing and the intent of the bombing can not be known by the sourced news report.

[Figtoria]

Morety is way smarter than his avatar looks.

[Bedpost]

that's the whole problem with this thing. Everyone knows that if Isreal wanted to that they could wipe Lebanon off the map in a matter of a couple days. So I don't think that they were trying to hurt any actual civilians. The problem is that when the hezbollah do things like plant 30 women and children ontop of a weapons depot and when they bomb it not knowing those people are there.

I really don't think that Isreal is trying to hurt civilians, but unfortunately they have had way to many things not explode now.

[Post]

That's why cluster bombs have so much scrutiny (and probably banned in this scenario): ALL cluster bombs manufactured have a certain dud rate. So dropping them in a civilian area = nondetonated bombs laying around where kids are. That may not be their efforts, but it sure isn't something they're trying to avoid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_bombs#Threats_to_civilians

Cluster bombs are great when you're trying to take out stuff in an open battlefield, but in a civilian populated area, it equals huge collatoral damage no matter what the Hezbollah are doing.

[]LoL[Harm]

Yeah what Post said. Whether or not they were launching at actual targets is not what I'm getting at. I'm getting at that the fighting was nearing it's end, yet they launch a shitton of cluster bombs into areas that after the fighting ceases will be populated by average joe civvies, not Hezbollah guerillas. From my perspective it's something that Isreal should not only foot the bill for, but should also have to supply the personnel to clean up their mess.

[Morety]

LoL[Harm']...it's something that Isreal should not only foot the bill for, but should also have to supply the personnel to clean up their mess.

Agreed 100% regardless of intent.

[Bedpost]

that is true cluster bombs always have a rate of non detonation, but it's not supposed to be 30% - 40% either. still if it really is predominately a residential area, then that's pretty bad. Not sure what their deal was there

[Post]

With an optimized drop of only 1% dud rate, that's 20 bomblets per bomb. How many are dropped on a run? Even 10 bombs dropped in a civilian area equates to 200 bomblets laying around.

[Solomente]

The bombs were made in the U.S. The U.S. gives Israel billions of dollars a year in aid which in part is used to turn around and purchase weapons from the U.S. Israel is also given grants of weapons and military materials also amounting to billions a year. If you live in the U.S.A. and pay taxes, you helped pay for those bombs. Consider yourself a stockholder.

As far as the timing and the intent, the claims are irrelevant. All you need is a statistician - not a politician - to tell you that 1.2 million bomblets (a figure provided by the IDF) will leave a considerable number of unexploded ordnance laying around. Even 1% of that is still 12,000 bomblets and any military expert will tell you those things don't have a 99% success rate. And I'm sorry but it's a complete fantasy to pretend that anyone didn't know these are residential areas. That's why hundreds of thousands of people (I've heard as high as a million from U.S. news sources) were displaced during the fighting. They were DISPLACED from the area because normally they LIVE there.

[]LoL[Harm]

Last I recall the Israeli army uses cluster bombs made from both the US and those made in their own country. I believe ours has the higher dud rate of the two, and that both were used during the shellings.

[]LoL[Harm]

More information:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0920-08.htm

[Noleader]

Live ordinances left in the field are a sad but common side affect of war. We are just as guilty of doing the same in other countries as most of the other active countries in the world.

[]LoL[Harm]

Yes but we don't use ordinance from 1974.

[Noleader]

We also outspend the rest of the world in military spending. Some nations can't afford to just decommission old weapons as we can. War has one objective: Kill them or beat them so bad they give up. Cleanup is always a second thought when the battle is raging.

[Post]

"War has one objective..."

No. That may be the primary objective, but everything isn't ignored for the sake of it.

[Solomente]

Now flip this around and imagine those Katyusha rockets fired into Israel had been cluster bombs and had left thousands of unexploded bomblets in Israel. Wonder if the reaction to that would be so blasé

[Noleader]

"War has one objective..."

No. That may be the primary objective, but everything isn't ignored for the sake of it.

War has one objective... Now as for morals or rules we may follow; well they are not objectives just pratices we follow. As with everything we can not force nor expect the same from everyone else.

Now flip this around and imagine those Katyusha rockets fired into Israel had been cluster bombs and had left thousands of unexploded bomblets in Israel. Wonder if the reaction to that would be so blasé

Would get the same response from me.

[PoxTheSmall]

War has one objective... Now as for morals or rules we may follow; well they are not objectives just pratices we follow. As with everything we can not force nor expect the same from everyone else.

Unless the Geneva convention rules are broken, correct? I mean, if they were guilty of war crimes as defined within internationally accepted guide-lines, would that bring on a different reaction?

Also, during this war, Israel bombed a UN post (seemingly deliberately) and at least in the news, we haven't heard much about that. If Hezbolla had bombed a UN post under the same context, the international community would've condemned them for being terrorists (even more-so), etc...

[Post]

"War has one objective..."

If that were true, then anything short of it would be failure, and there would have been no compromises with any wars. Hell, do you really think the Iraq war only had one objective?

"Now as for morals or rules we may follow; well they are not objectives just pratices we follow. As with everything we can not force nor expect the same from everyone else."

Those practices are because we have other objectives, such as still being at peace with our allies and still being listened to throughout the world. And no, we cannot force them, but we can influence them.

[Noleader]

"War has one objective..."

If that were true, then anything short of it would be failure, and there would have been no compromises with any wars. Hell, do you really think the Iraq war only had one objective?

Anything short is a failure. What is one item we always sought when we went to war with any nation: Unconditional Surrender. Why do you think no one talks about the Korean War as a victory. As for the War in Iraq, well I think that is why we are in the pinch we are now. We went there with there with no clear single objective...

If you are on the track team you do not go into the match with the hopes of running the second fastest. You go with the objective and intent to take the gold. Anything short of gold is a loss.

"Now as for morals or rules we may follow; well they are not objectives just pratices we follow. As with everything we can not force nor expect the same from everyone else."

Those practices are because we have other objectives, such as still being at peace with our allies and still being listened to throughout the world. And no, we cannot force them, but we can influence them.

So what you are saying is our objective in war should be scarified in order to protect the way other nations see us; even when we are not breaking any of the rules of war? Other nations, via influence, should be able to undermined our military objective for the sake of saving face with someone that disagrees with us?


I think what you are describing is objectives in peace, not war. We attempt to resolve all issues we have with other nations though diplomatic means. That step is to keep peace with our allies. We discuss our intent in the UN. That step is to keep peace with our allies. Once we are at war the only objective is to win without breaking the rules. Let us not forget we are the only nation in the world to EVER use nuclear weapons in war and those tend to leave a lot more then unexploded bomblets. Are you tring to tell me we will not do what it takes to win?

[PoxTheSmall]

War isn't a big chaotic mess, though. Battles are won via soldiers killing soldiers, not soldiers killing civilians. Its not about how many of them we kill, but in battles won and important locations captured and the opposing force yielding due to supperior might.

Its not about one side slaughtering civilians until the other side gives way. That's kind of a discriminating characteristic between terrorists and soldiers.

Also consider that Israel has the funding and the military sophistocation to use precision guided missles to bomb sites during that war, the use of bad-dated scatter bombs in civilian areas to hit targets is a little over the top. If they needed to hit a target, I'm absolutely convinced that they could've used much better grade of munition if they'd really only wanted to crush a target.

[Post]

"If you are on the track team you do not go into the match with the hopes of running the second fastest. You go with the objective and intent to take the gold. Anything short of gold is a loss."

You still have other objectives, though. You still don't want to win at the sacrifice of your health (drugs) or cheating. The end result of war or any goal, for that matter, is to come out on top and in the best shape possible. Yeah, winning's important, but what if they could win without having to use bomblets in civilian areas? What if we could win the war on terror without having to wiretap US citizens?

I mean, just about everything short of nukes in all of our wars and battles since WW2 (maybe not so much the Cold War since they had nukes as well), is in reality, a risk of not winning when compared to a nuke. A nuke dropped on the enemy is pretty much going to trump any (at least a lot) of the methods in battle we use today. If our sole objective is winning, why don't we jump straight to nukes instead of risking loss by these lesser methods just about every time?

Because our sole objective isn't winning the war.

[Solomente]

Don't you all know the kids on the other school's track team are terrorists - members of an axis of evil that cannot be reasoned with. Their only purpose in life is to inflict pain and suffering into the hearts of other track teams because they were born evil and they hate our blue uniforms.

[]LoL[Harm]

Yeah I'm with Post.

Noleader, War is not about winning, War is about forcing another nation to come to your terms, through the best possible means.

If it was just about winning, Nukes would rule the day.

[Noleader]

LoL[Harm;132825']If it was just about winning, Nukes would rule the day.

Not true. If we started out with nukes we would bring the world down on us. War is about winning... not getting your ass nuked by a different nation.

[Post]

Then we agree that it isn't only about winning the war at hand, but coming out on top overall? Furthermore, wouldn't consistently not giving a rat's ass about leaving bombs for kids to pick up in civilian areas have a possibility of eventually doing the same thing? How is that any different?