Stupid, stupid, stupid...
Didn't they learn in Afghanistan?

I just found out that the food packets that are being distributed in Iraq are the same type of yellow packages as were distributed by airdrop in Afghanistan... and which are about the same size and color as some of the cluster bomb "bomblets"... thank goodness they have now changed to blue packets for food, as they did in Afghanistan. BUT why didn't they think of this sooner?

The justification was that the food packets are not being airdropped... but imagine a hungry four-year-old kid who finds a yellow packet... he saw yellow packets with food inside... will he be able to differentiate? I don't think so. The need for food and water there will only grow over the next months... I pray for all the children...

I think it's called the "dipshit syndrom" when they do stuff like that.

Way back when... In my former life. One of my paths lead me to do the patriotic thing and join the Air Force. (I snuck by the group W bench un-noticed) Of course I took on one of the more hazardous jobs, HomerJ would settle for nothing less DOHHH, My USAF career test said I should be a munitions maintenance technician. They waved their magic wand and presto!
ANYWAY...
One of the munitions we learned about was these little bomblets. They are dropped from an aircraft in a shell containing hundreds of them and the bomblets are about the size of a hardball and are made of aluminum with ball-bearings embedded in it with a not so chewy center. The main shell splits open at a preset distance above the ground releasing the bomblets. As they fall they spin and that spinning would arm them. Some would detonate on impact, others on a delay after impact. If they fell into something soft they would not detonate until they had sufficient force, like being run over or hit with a baseball bat, at which time they would send ball-bearings in all directions.

They were not friendly devices. And in my day they were painted OD green, but the color does not matter much, because anytime between when they were dropped and a hundred years after, if you have something the size of a baseball and you have a kid with a stick looking for something to hit... need I go on?

Bombs and bullets do not discriminate, they just kill and maim, the only way to stop that is to stop using them to settle problems.
HomerJ (Former USAF "peace keeper?")

Thanks, HomerJ for explaining those bomblets better than I ever could...

Here's something else that's making me angry...
Depleted Uranium bullets

And we worry about THEIR weapons of mass destruction????

Oh man, that is bad. May God be with the children at this time...

I wonder, since he is so serious about war criminals being punished, will anyone go after Bush for using these illegal weapons? This is crazy, and yet another example of power run amok.

More about Depleted Uranium shells...

<A HREF="http://www.voice4change.org/stories/showstory.asp?file=030418~to.asp" TARGET=_blank>Scientists Urge DU Clean-Up To Protect Civilians
</A>

Bombs silent, but the children still suffer

A five-year-old boy blinded when he picked up a cluster bomb while he played with friends is just the latest victim as the agony goes on


Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
Friday April 18, 2003

The Guardian


Children lying on dirty vinyl mattresses, desperate mothers clutching whimpering infants, harassed doctors signing prescriptions that they barely have time to read - a week after the guns fell silent the scene at the Central Children's hospital in the Iraqi capital is still one of war-related chaos, relieved only by tireless improvisation by dedicated staff.

Ali Ismail Abbas, the boy who lost his parents and his arms in an American missile strike and became an international symbol of Iraqi civilians' suffering, was lucky to be flown to Kuwait this week.


For Iraq's other children the agony caused by war goes on. Doctors have not been able to keep count of the numbers injured in the war: after the failure of the city's telephone system no one was able to coordinate figures. Hospitals cannot contact each other except by sending messengers.


At least six children were wounded by cluster bombs this week and taken to the Kadhimiya hospital because it is nearest to where they live. Clutching his mother's hand as he lay on a mattress, Ali Mustafa's head is half hidden by a bandage. He is a "post-war" victim. The five-year-old was playing with his brother and two friends earlier this week when he picked up an odd round object. It was an unexploded cluster bomb, one of thousands that lie around Baghdad. It exploded in his hands, blinding him. His legs, scarred with shrapnel, will heal but Ali Mustafa's sight will never return.


"I have two wounded children, and two neighbours also have this tragedy," said Ghaleb Mustafa, Ali's father. Across the ward Adel Hamid was looking after his 10-year-old nephew who lay with a criss-cross set of large bandages on his stomach.


"I wish he could go abroad for treatment too," he said, having heard of Ali Ismail Abbas's good fortune.


"I'm from the same part of Baghdad, known as Harir city. It was exposed to massive bombardment by cluster bombs.


Four people died and 17 were injured at the time," said Issam Khuleif, the hospital's chief registrar.


Even if they escaped direct injury from bombing, thousands of Iraqi children are continuing to suffer from the chaos created by war. Fuel shortages and the lack of electricity make it hard for hospitals to cope, leaving patients without proper care.


Racing between two small cubicles, Abdul Hamid al-Sadoon, a doctor at the Central hospital, is surrounded by anxious parents. As the taxi system slowly revives in Baghdad now black market petrol is being sold from jerry-cans on street corners in the absence of electricity for the official pumps, parents who could not take their sick children out of the house during the war are hastening for help.


Few doctors' surgeries are open and the children's hospital is besieged. If the children were on medication before and their parents bring an old prescription, an orderly writes out a new one and stamps it. Five mothers with infants are pushing towards the vinyl mattress behind which Dr al- Sadoon sits. They put their babies down and he signs the form, often without time to check the child.


A nine-year-old boy with a brain tumour sits in a wheelchair to one side. "He needs chemotherapy," says the doctor. "How can we provide it now? We still have the basics in the store, but unless new supplies start being sent today we will run out in a few weeks.


"We need everything - gauze, cotton, gloves, silk for stitching, needles, x-ray film," he says. "Iraq will be Iraq. We will not accept the United States or Britain as occupiers, but because the conditions here are miserable I'm requesting the United Nations, the United States, the United Kingdom, or any country to help us."


The US failure so far to restore the electricity system which it damaged in the war has also kept Baghdad's oxygen factory shut. The children's hospital needs between six and 10 canisters a day, and the supplies in store have almost run out.


Baghdad has 33 hospitals for a population of five million but several are closed because of power shortages or because transport problems prevent staff getting to work. Many doctors are working at the hospitals nearest their homes.


Another doctor rushes in. A baby in the nearby ward has died. Dr al-Sadoon hastens to the bed where a distraught mother in a long black dress is sobbing.


"It's a pulmonary problem," he explains. "The parents live 50km from Baghdad. Before the war they could have gone 5km to a local children's clinic, but it's closed because of lack of electricity.


"So parents leave it to the final stage before they bring the child here, and often it's too late. This one could have been saved."