Irony Is Dead
Or at the very least it’s gasping like a landed fish. Consider this morning’s headline:
Washington to investigate Israel’s use of cluster bombs in conflict
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 26 August 2006
The US government is investigating whether Israel has broken secret agreements with Washington with its use of cluster bombs in the Lebanon conflict.
Officials confirmed yesterday that the State Department had launched the inquiry into a possible violation by Israel of an undertaking to use the munitions against only organised armies and defined military targets. The Pentagon has also postponed a shipment of M-26 artillery shells, according to The New York Times.
[…]
And this from just 3 years ago:
Cluster bombs kill in Iraq, even after shooting ends
By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY
When Jassim al-Qaisi saw the canisters the size of D batteries falling on his neighborhood just before 7 a.m. April 7, he laughed and asked himself: “Now what are the Americans throwing on our heads?” (
The strange objects were fired by U.S. artillery outside Baghdad as U.S. forces approached the Iraqi capital. In the span of a few minutes, they would kill four civilians in the al-Dora neighborhood of southern Baghdad and send al-Qaisi’s teenage son to the hospital with metal fragments in his foot. The deadly objects were cluster bomblets, small explosives packed by the dozens or hundreds into bombs, rockets or artillery shells known as cluster weapons. When these weapons were fired on Baghdad on April 7, many of the bomblets failed to explode on impact. They were picked up or stumbled on by their victims.
The four who died in the al-Dora neighborhood that day lived a few blocks from al-Qaisi’s house. Rashid Majid, 58, who was nearsighted, stepped on an unexploded bomblet around the corner from his home. The explosion ripped his legs off. As he lay bleeding in the street, another bomblet exploded a few yards away, instantly killing three young men, including two of Majid’s sons ? Arkan, 33, and Ghasan, 28. “My sons! My sons!” Majid called out. He died a few hours later.
The deaths occurred because the world’s most modern military, one determined to minimize civilian casualties, went to war with stockpiles of weapons known to endanger civilians and its own soldiers. The weapons claimed victims in the initial explosions and continued to kill afterward, as Iraqis and U.S. forces accidentally detonated bomblets lying around like small land mines.
[…]
Silly Israel. The US has no ethical problems with cluster bombs per se. The IDF just didn’t drop them when and where they were told to. Now the WH thinks the announcement of an ‘investigation’ will soothe the outrage and shut the public up. But it won’t shut up, not when we see that the investigator is investigating a crime it regularly commits itself. You might as well as Tom DeLay to investigate Jack Abramoff.
Read More… USA, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, War, Bombing, Cluster bombs, Munitions, Human rights, Arms trade
