Weapons of mass destruction- The intent is to kill people
(Laura Flanders - WorkingForChange.com)
11.07.01
They have the destructive power of an atomic bomb, but they can barely make a dent in U.S. news coverage. I'm talking about the 15,000-pound bombs the United States is using against Afghanistan this week. The so-called Daisy Cutters, named BLU-82, are the world's biggest non-nuclear device.
In many places, the development received a 10-second mention on the evening news, five or six items down in the program lineup. Newscasters broadcast video footage of an enormous black dust cloud rising above an Afghan mountain range, accompanied by the assurances of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the "stepped up" assaults would hasten the collapse of the Taliban regime.
AP describes the Blu-82, nicknamed "Big Blue," as being "as large as a Volkswagen beetle, but heavier." Digging for the less charming details, one finds that the bomb got its other name, "Daisy Cutter," because of the shape of the crater it leaves—and that it has the ability to clear a 3-mile-long path. Dropped from huge transport aircraft, "Big Blue" releases a cloud of inflammable ammonium nitrate, aluminum dust, and polystyrene slurry which is then ignited by a detonator. The result is a firestorm that incinerates an area the size of five football fields, consumes oxygen, and creates a shock-wave and vacuum pressure that destroys the internal organs of anyone within range.
"As you would expect, they make a heck of a bang when they go off," General Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff told a press conference. "The intent is to kill people."
The United States has used at least two of these "Big Blues" so far. David Williams described one attack from northern Afghanistan, where he is reporting for the Daily Mail of London.
"The sound and impact was unmistakably different ... Each of the previous explosions--and there had been more than 100 -- had been similar in sight and sound," wrote Williams.
"The sound split the air. It was like a thunder clap directly overhead at the height of a ferocious storm. I could see the massive oily black cloud of the explosion as it rolled across the hillside, a mixture of thick smoke, chunks of earth and debris."
"Big Blue" was used in Vietnam, to create instant helicopter landing pads in jungle areas. It was employed in the Gulf War, to detonate minefields, and more controversially, to terrorize Iraqi troops. From the ground, the columns of dust and smoke that the bombs produce are indistinguishable from mushroom clouds. In Iraq, some British patrols reported thinking they were in a nuclear war. This reporter saw U.S. Gulf veterans cry as they recalled watching, from miles away, the deadly impact.
While George W. Bush lectures the world about Osama bin Laden's lust for nuclear weapons, U.S. forces are employing weapons that, while not banned by international treaty, come as close to nukes as one can get without smashing atoms.
The Daisy Cutter attacks come less than a week after the United States crippled Afghanistan's biggest hydroelectric complex. Afghan Education Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said seven U.S. raids last Wednesday and Thursday severely damaged the Kajaki hydroelectric complex in southern Helmand province, knocking out the power supplies of Kandahar and Lashkarga. The report was corroborated by refugees interviewed by Agence France Press (AFP, 11/01/01)
"So far water has not started gushing out of the dam but any further bombing will destroy (it)," Minister Muttaqi told DAWN, Pakistan's English language paper, last week. "It may cause widespread flooding, putting at risk the lives of thousands of people."
According to DAWN, Kajaki, 90 kilometers northwest of Kandahar, contains 2.7 billion cubic meters of water and irrigates land farmed by 75,000 families in a desert area.
In their search-ostensibly-for Osama Bin Laden and those who facilitated the criminal attack on the United States on September 11, wave after wave of U.S. bombers, including giant B-52s, are carpet bombing frontlines in northern Afghanistan. In another new development this week, U.S. forces are also using 5,000 pound GBU-28 "Deep Throat" bunker-busters, which burrow through as much as 20 feet of rock before exploding underground.
The Geneva Protocol is not unclear. You don't have to be in Afghanistan. You can read it on the Web.
Protocol 1, Article 51.2. states: "The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited."
Article 57: "Works or installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dikes and nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack, even where these objects are military objectives, if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population."
Article 51: "explicitly outlaws carpet or area bombing tactics: "Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects; and an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated."
Article 55: "Care shall be taken in warfare to protect the natural environment against widespread, long-term and severe damage."
The press talked for weeks about whether it was acceptable for U.S. forces to violate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Is it unreasonable to expect at least equal attention to the question of whether U.S. assaults are violating international law?
Journalist Laura Flanders is the host of Working Assets Radio and author of "Real Majority, Media Minority: The Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting." Her Spin Doctor Laura columns appear daily on WorkingForChange. You can contact her at laura@lauraflanders.com
"Daisy Cutter" bombs dropped on Afghan caves
By Kim Sengupta
07 November 2001
The United States has used the biggest conventional bomb in its armoury -- the 15,000lb (6,800kg) Daisy Cutter -- for the first time in the campaign.
The fuel-air explosive device, which detonates just above the ground and whose blast has been described as being like a nuclear weapon without the fallout, was used twice on Taliban and al-Qa'ida fortifications in the last few days.
Its use is a significant escalation of air strikes and follows the receipt of intelligence from the Russians on underground fortifications they built during their war in Afghanistan, which have been taken over by the Afghan regime, as well as caves used by the mujahedin. A Pentagon spokesman said: "We have better knowledge now of where these caves are and who or what is inside them."
The bombs are pushed out of the back of C-130 aircraft on pallets and detonate about three feet above the ground, covering a mile-wide area with a mushroom cloud of aluminium powder which burns at about 5,500C (10,000F).
Such is the pressure generated by the blast that underground tunnels and structures are crushed and people inside incinerated. The pattern of the explosion is said to resemble a daisy-shaped biscuit cutter.
The use of the bomb and its variations has always been controversial. It was first used by the United States in the last days of the Vietnam War and then in the Gulf War.
In response to worries about its destructive capabilities, raised in Parliament during the Gulf War, Alan Clark, who was the minister for defence procurement, said: "Fuel-air bombs were used by the United States only to clear minefields."
Last night, General Peter Pace, Deputy Chief of the US Defence Staff, described the bombs as extremely useful weapons for the Afghanistan conflict and said they might be used again.
One of the uses for the bombs would be to decontaminate soil which had been infected with anthrax. However, there is no suggestion that this was the reason for its deployment in the campaign in Afghanistan.
The US is also set to introduce the Global Hawk, the most advanced long-range unmanned reconnaisance aircraft, to the conflict.
The £30m plane can stay airborne for 36 hours and cruise at 65,000 feet, far above the range of anti-aircraft weapons. It provides photographs for officers back at base in the US.
The Hawks are expected to replace the Predators, which are cheaper, at £3.3m each, but slower and fly at a lower altitude. The Taliban claims to have shot down one of them. (The Independent)
Background Info from the last Gulf War:
America's Real Weapons of Mass Destruction
Some of the "weapons of mass destruction" used by the United States against Iraq in the Gulf War were:
BLU-82 bomb: a 10,000 to 15,000 pound fuel-air-explosive. It is a near nuclear explosive that covers an area about 1000 feet long with blast overpressures of 200 - 1000 psi. Humans can tolerate up to 40 psi. It has been used since the Vietnam War to blast out landing pads from the jungle. Those near ground zero are obliterated while those on the outskirts of the blast suffer numerous burns and internal injuries.
Napalm: literally, a firebomb made from gasoline, benzine, and polystyrene. It is a jelly-like substance that ignites quickly and burns anything in its path. It burns so fast, you can actually hear the oxygen being sucked out of the air. The U.S. used it against Iraqi troops as they used it against their opponents in Vietnam.
Cluster bombs: cluster bombs are bombs that contain many smaller bomblets designed to saturate a wide area. Each bomblet contains metal shrapnel designed for maximum human casualties and equipment damage. a typical cluster bomb would weigh 500 pounds and carry 247 bomblets. The U.S. and British military used these bombs on military and civilian targets.
Bouncing Betty: A type of cluster bomb that, when it hit the ground, it would bounce up to about waist level before exploding.
GBU-28: a 5000 pound super bomb, two of which was used to target Saddam Hussein specifically although it is, ostensibly, against U.S. policy to target the head of any state for assassination.
The U.S. Army took bulldozing to new heights when it mounted plows onto tanks and combat earth movers and pushed thousands of Iraqi soldiers, many of them alive, into miles of trenches in the sand and buried them.
Depleted Uranium: if you can imagine anything worse than the above, then DU has to be it. According to the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, the U.S. fired up to 6000 rounds of depleted uranium armored piercing rounds and, together with the British, as many as 50,000 rockets of the contaminant. The DU round, when fired, bursts into flame and nearly liquifies, penetrating heavy armor, incinerating humans and spreading radioactive contamination over a wide area. Long after the war, kids picking up these spent shells were contaminated and radioactive particles got into the ground water causing an unknown number of casualties over an extended period of time.
Wounded Afghan children plead: "Stop hurting us"
Sath, 11, was playing with friends outside his house when a bomb landed close by, severing his right leg below the knee
November 04, 2001, 01:46 PM
QUETTA, Pakistan (AFP)
- Eleven-year-old Sath Mohd had his leg blown off by a US bomb last week and he can't understand why. Lying on filthy sheets in Quetta's Sandeman Provincial Hospital, with flies landing on his bloodied stump, Sath pleaded with the United States to stop its bombardment of Afghanistan.
"Please stop hurting us. Why are you doing this?"
In Bed No.5 in the bare and crumbling hospital, Sath was still caked in dried blood and mud. The bandages over his ruined leg are as dirty as his clothes.
Sath was playing with around 12 other children outside his house near the southwestern Afghan city of Kandahar on Thursday morning when a bomb landed close by, severing his right leg below the knee and throwing his sister Parmina high into the air.
"We were playing and then the planes came over and started dropping bombs," Sath said. His memory then blanks out.
Sitting next him on a seperate hospital bed sister Parmina, 7, has her hands swathed in bandages and a dazed look on her face. "We were crying when the bombs fell. People ran to get my father who brought us to Pakistan. I didn't see any of the other children, I only saw my brother," she said.
Their sobbing father Taj Mohd, who carried his children from their Rozgan district home near Kandahar to Quetta on Friday, said his son's life had been ruined before it had started. "We cannot put into words how we feel about the people who did this," he said.
"We are with the Taliban and against America. The whole world should be saying to America: "Stop this war because our little children are being killed and injured."
Sath and Parmina's mother remains at their home looking after three other children. Another son was killed 15 years ago during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Sath, grimacing against the pain, said he didn't like Quetta and wanted to go back home, despite the unrelenting US attacks. "I want to go back to my home, to my friends. Afghanistan is my country," he said. Whether his friends are where he left them is unclear.
Neither Sath not Parmina could say what happened to the dozen or so other children who were playing with them when the bomb landed. "Many children were playing and were injured but I don't know where they went or what happened," said Taj. "We just don't know."
In a ward for women, eight-year-old Sadima Mohd is singing to herself, rocking backwards and forwards, clearly in shock.
She was trapped when her house was hit by a bomb in Kandahar last week. "It was in the daytime and I was with my mother in the house when a bomb fell and the house collapsed," she said.
Her grandfather Khair Mohd, who brought her to Quetta, said she was trapped under rubble which crushed her left leg.
With tears rolling down his cheeks, he told how their homes were destroyed. "When the planes come we don't see them, it's just when the bombs fall. It is terrible," he said. "On this day many walls of many houses fell. Many people were trapped and many people died and were injured. Most of them were children and young men."
He could not be more specific but added that nobody could understand why innocent people were being killed. "We are very worried because children and women are being hurt," he said.
"Please stop now. Stop the war. Why is America killing us, our children. We don't have any guns. We are poor. This is a poor, weak country. Why are you hurting us America?"
Commentary: An injustice to innocent Afghan civilians
Published Nov 6 2001
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the media that Osama bin Laden may have escaped Afghanistan and the United States might never catch or kill him.
If this is the case, then why bomb an already war-ravaged and defeated nation at all?
According to media reports, over 1,000 civilians have died in the continuous bombing raids on Afghanistan. The use of cluster bombs is wreaking havoc on the civilians as evident from the calls by The Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fund for the United States and Britain to stop using cluster bombs in Afghanistan.
The bombings have exacerbated an already dire situation for millions of starving Afghan civilians and could reach cataclysmic proportions if the much-needed massive influx of food aid is not revived. While the U.S. effort to airdrop food is a welcome measure, it is woefully inadequate to address the needs of millions of starving Afghans.
Explaining away the massive civilian casualties in such euphemistic terms as "collateral" damage will not clear us from the blame of bombing the civilians.
We should ask ourselves: Are the retaliatory strikes now terrifying and killing mostly innocent civilians a good response or are they a betrayal of the very core values we all share? To attack the seemingly intractable problem of terrorism at its roots, we must address the condition that produced it and not just its ugly branches or bitter fruit.
An innocent life in United States is equally important to an innocent life in Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world. We need to show to the world that we value human life and pursue the criminals who were responsible for the inhuman and evil attacks of Sept. 11 through channels of diplomacy or surgical strikes. Let our quest for justice not end up in injustice to thousands of innocent people who had nothing to do with the terrible crime against humanity.
-- Zafar Siddiqui, Fridley. ( Minneapolis Star Tribune)
Where are you?
Millions face death this winter in Afghanistan and we can prevent it
Geov Parrish
WorkingForChange
11.05.01
Does anybody understand what the United States is on the verge of doing?
Experienced, respected food aid organizations warn that even before the bombing of Afghanistan began on October 7, some 7,500,000 Afghans were--through a gut-wrenching combination of poverty, drought, war, dislocation, and repression--at risk of starving to death this winter. When the bombing began, almost all delivery of food from the outside world stopped. Now, roads and bridges are destroyed, millions more people are dislocated, and the snow is steadily approaching from higher elevations and from the north.
For weeks, aid organizations, along with voices from throughout the region, have been begging the United States to call off its bombing campaign, at least for long enough so that aid agencies can conduct the massive transfer of food into and throughout Afghanistan that is necessary to prevent death on a scale the world has not seen in a long, long time.
Seven and a half million people at risk of dying in a matter of months. That's three times the number of people Pol Pot took years to kill. Thirty-five times the number that died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, combined. If 5,000 died on September 11, we're talking the equivalent number of deaths to ten World Trade Centers, every day, for 150 days. Slow, painful deaths. Entirely avoidable deaths. Deaths whose sole cause is not the United States, but most of which can still be prevented--;except that the United States is refusing to allow them to be prevented.
It repulses me to say this, but I suspect a lot of Americans don't care. They'd rather see the United States "get" Osama bin Laden (though there's no actual evidence that we're any closer to that today than we were two months ago, and probably the task is harder as he becomes more popular and protected).
For some, an apocalypse of this scale is simply unimaginable to most of us: no food, in a country with no roads left, no vehicles, displaced people, lost relatives, where the winters are too cold to walk or ride a donkey even to an adjoining village where there might be food. It's a long way from driving to the nearest Safeway or drive-thru lane when you're hungry. But a lot of people in this country do not care that a staggering number of innocent people are on the verge of being condemned to death, or that most of the world will blame the United States, correctly.
We should care. If the object of this war was to thwart terrorism--to bring existing terrorists to justice, and to isolate them politically and culturally so that others won't throw in their lot--in less than a month, the United States has perpetrated one of the most abject failures in military history.
It still does not know where any of Al-Qaeda's leadership even is. It is on the verge of succeeding in its goal of creating a unified Afghanistan government--unfortunately, Afghans are uniting behind the Taliban, as warlord after warlord sets aside long-standing differences to stand shoulder to shoulder to fight the American invaders. Tens of thousands more young Muslim men are lining up to cross the borders into Afghanistan to join them. The ones that survive the experience will carry a lifetime of hate: living, breathing proof that within a month, America bombed a country but lost its war in spectacular fashion.
That's today. What will happen if millions of Afghans die this winter? How much future terrorism will the dunderheads of the Bush Administration have inspired then? If several million Islamic sisters and brothers starve to death, innocent civilians trapped between winter and the rage of America, how many of Islam's 1.2 billion adherents--or the five billion other people on earth--are going to take George Bush's proclamations about eradicating "terrorists" and "evildoers" to heart, and label him, and us, as the prime examples?
In less than two months, the United States government has gone from the moral high ground of being victimized by one of the most heinous crimes in world history, to being within a week or two of quite visibly committing a crime so much larger as to obliterate the world's memory of September 11.
Remarkably, almost nobody in the United States seems to have either noticed, understood, or cared. While even progressives wring their hands over the ambiguity of a war fought under the auspices of America's legitimate right to defend itself, a situation is unfolding in which there is absolutely no moral ambiguity at all, and for which many people will want to hold each of us as accountable as the world held post-war Germans. Where were you? What did you say? How could you allow this to happen? Or, a more likely reaction in the Islamic world: Why should millions of you not die as well? America will have set out to isolate one man, and instead killed millions and isolated itself. And much of the world will not rest until we are brought to our knees.
Seven and a half million people. The snowline is creeping down the mountainsides. The food is almost gone. The infrastructure is in shambles. There will be no "independent verification" of the body count. There wasn't in the Holocaust or Rwanda or Cambodia, either. The judgment of the world did not need one. The clock is ticking. Where were you?
Who Will Assume the Responsibility?
AI Index: ASA 11/026/2001
Publish date: 07/11/2001
"There were people like sheep, they were everywhere," an Afghan refugee describing the scene as he fled Kabul a week ago.
The bombing of Afghanistan is causing thousands of people to flee their homes. Some cross the border to Pakistan, others are internally displaced within Afghanistan. Amnesty International challenges the coalition behind the bombing to assume a larger responsibility for the refugees and internally displaced seeking refuge from the bombs.
"After having interviewed a number of refugees that have reached Pakistan recently, one thing has become very clear to me," says Carl Soderbergh, head of Amnesty International's delegation in Pakistan. "All those we are meeting tell us that they are fleeing Afghanistan because of the bombing campaign."
After analyzing the testimonies from Afghan refugees, it is clear that the overwhelming majority are saying they fled because of the bombing. This picture is strengthened by discussing the findings with NGOs and others who are also in close contact with refugees.
"The bombing campaign has exacerbated the problems that already existed," says Soderbergh. "People can't work and aid is hampered. Support structures are being disrupted, forcing women to take to the road on their own and placing them in an extremely vulnerable position. These are only some of the problems."
The vast majority of the over 100,000 refugees who have come to Pakistan since the beginning of the current crisis are depending on family and relatives for survival. A very few of those who have been able to cross the closed border into Pakistan find themselves in makeshift refugee camps lacking in almost everything. All of these people have one thing in common, they have no formal status, which renders them under a continuous threat of deportation.
"I have visited two of the camps where the new arrivals are gathered," Soderbergh continues. "One was only 200 metres from the border, putting the refugees in a high risk situation. The other camp provided very little shelter for the refugees, some of whom are using sticks and thin plastic sheets to build tents. With winter coming, these conditions are very worrying. Moreover, there is an impending humanitarian disaster for those internally displaced who can't make it across the border."
Amnesty International calls on the US, UK and other countries in the coalition to assume a much larger responsibility for the refugee problems caused by the bombing. The organization has also previously raised concerns about the Pakistani authorities closing the border with Afghanistan, and setting up camps for new arrivals in unsafe areas.
"As the bombing of Afghanistan continues it is time for the nations behind the bombing campaign to take a larger responsibility for the refugee flow they are creating. They must press for open borders, refugee status for those arriving, and proper refugee camps at a safe distance from the conflict area. But they must also share the burden the refugees are placing on Afghanistan's neighbours, " Soderbergh ends.
Source: Amnesty International, International Secretariat, 1 Easton Street, WC1X 8DJ, London, United Kingdom