{"id":63420,"date":"2015-09-07T19:16:38","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T18:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=63420"},"modified":"2015-09-07T19:16:38","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T18:16:38","slug":"nyt-claims-u-s-abides-by-cluster-bomb-treaty-the-exact-opposite-of-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/09\/nyt-claims-u-s-abides-by-cluster-bomb-treaty-the-exact-opposite-of-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"NYT Claims U.S. Abides by Cluster Bomb Treaty: The Exact Opposite of Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Glenn<\/a>

Glenn Greenwald<\/p><\/div>\n

Sep. 3 2015 – <\/em>The New York Times<\/em> today has a truly bizarre article<\/a> regarding the U.S. and cluster bombs. The advocacy group\u00a0Cluster Munition Coalition<\/a>\u00a0just\u00a0issued its annual report finding that cluster bombs had been used in five countries this year: Syria, Libya, Yemen, Ukraine and Sudan. This is what The Paper of Record, in its report\u00a0by Rick Gladstone, said this morning about the international reaction to that report (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

The use of these weapons was criticized by all 117 countries that have joined the treaty, which took effect five years ago. Their use was also criticized by a number of others, including the United States, that have not yet joined the treaty but have <\/em>abided by its provisions.<\/p>\n

As Americans, we should feel proud that our government, though refusing to sign the cluster ban treaty, has nonetheless \u201cabided by its provisions\u201d \u2014 if not\u00a0for the fact that this claim is totally false. The U.S. has long been and remains one of the world\u2019s most aggressive suppliers of cluster munitions, and has used those banned weapons itself\u00a0in devastating ways.<\/p>\n

In December 2009 \u2014 just weeks after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize \u2014 President Obama ordered a cruise missile strike on al-Majala in southern Yemen. That strike<\/a> \u201ckilled 35 women and children.\u201d Among the munitions used in that strike were cluster bombs, including ones designed to scatter 166 \u201cbomblets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Mohammed Zaatari\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

Although the U.S. at first refused to confirm responsibility, a Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, visited the scene and found irrefutable proof that it was done by the U.S., a finding subsequently confirmed by Amnesty International<\/a>\u00a0as well as a cable released by WikiLeaks<\/a>.\u00a0As a result of\u00a0Shaye\u2019s\u00a0reporting of U.S. responsibility, President Obama demanded<\/a>\u00a0that the Yemeni journalist be imprisoned and the Yemeni puppet regime complied<\/a>; Amnesty\u2019s Philip Luther said at the time<\/a> that \u201cthere are strong indications that the charges against [Shaye] are trumped up and that he has been jailed solely for daring to speak out about U.S. collaboration in a cluster munitions attack which took place in Yemen.\u201d So not only did Obama use cluster bombs against Yemeni civilians, but he then forced the imprisonment\u00a0for years<\/em> of the Yemeni journalist who reported it.<\/p>\n

Five years later, Yemen is again being pummeled by cluster bombs. Human Rights Watch extensively documented<\/a>\u00a0last week that the \u201cSaudi Arabia-led coalition forces appear to have used cluster munition rockets in at least seven attacks in Yemen\u2019s northwestern Hajja governorate, killing and wounding dozens of civilians.\u201d You\u2019ll never guess where those cluster bombs came from: \u201cBased on examination of remnants, Human Rights Watch identified the weapons used in all seven attacks as United States-made, ground-launched M26 cluster munition rockets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"hrw-540x404<\/a><\/p>\n

As Iona Craig reported for\u00a0The Intercept<\/em> this week<\/a> from Yemen, \u201cThe American government has also supplied intelligence, in-flight refueling of fighter jets, and weapons [for the \u201cSaudi-led\u201d attack], including, according to rights organizations, banned U.S. cluster munitions.\u201d Indeed, citing the Human Rights Watch findings, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0itself reported in May<\/a> that \u201cthe Saudi-led military coalition fighting a rebel group in Yemen\u00a0has in the past few weeks used cluster munitions supplied by the United States.\u201d The same article noted:<\/p>\n

Both Saudi and American military forces have deployed cluster munitions in Yemen before the most recent conflict, according to human rights groups.\u00a0In 2009, Saudi warplanes dropped cluster bombs during attacks on the Houthis in Saada, their home province.<\/em><\/p>\n

The same year, United States naval forces fired one or more cruise missiles containing cluster munitions at a suspected Qaeda training camp in southern Yemen.<\/em><\/p>\n

Reporting from Yemen for Rolling Stone <\/em>in May, Matthieu Aikins described the ample evidence<\/a> that U.S.-supplied cluster bombs are being used indiscriminately against civilians. Last month,\u00a0Mother Jones<\/em>\u2019\u00a0Bryan Schatz wrote an excellent summary<\/a>\u00a0of all the ways the U.S. has been central to the horrific Saudi slaughter of Yemeni civilians, including the supplying of cluster munitions.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has long been supplying cluster bombs to the Saudis. In August 2013,\u00a0Foreign Policy<\/em>\u00a0noted<\/a> a Defense Department press release proudly\u00a0announcing\u00a0that \u201cthe U.S. military [is]\u00a0selling $640 million worth of American-made cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia,\u00a0despite the near-universal revulsion at such weapons.\u201d As the headline of a\u00a0superb May 2014 Vice<\/em>\u00a0article<\/a> succinctly put it: \u201cU.S. Cluster Bombs Keep Killing Civilians in Yemen\u201d; the on-the-scene reporters, Ben Anderson and Peter Salisbury, provided extensive video and first-hand witness evidence to prove the truth of that statement.<\/p>\n

The U.S. use and supply of cluster bombs is long and ugly. In 2006, Israel used American-made cluster munitions<\/a> to kill hundreds of civilians in Lebanon; Hezbollah reportedly fired them\u00a0into Northern Israel. The NYT<\/em>\u2019s Gladstone himself, in a 2014 article<\/a>, actually noted the massive Israeli\u00a0usage, though omitted\u00a0that the weapons came from the U.S.\u2019s re-supplying of the Israeli stockpile (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s military was widely criticized at home and abroad for its heavy cluster-bomb use in Lebanon, dropping around 1,800 of them, containing more than 1.2 million bomblets, particularly in the final days of the 34-day conflict with Hezbollah. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted a commander of the Israel Defense Forces as saying, \u201c<\/em>What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that article, designed to warn of the increasing usage of cluster bombs in Syria, Gladstone cryptically noted\u00a0that \u201conly three other countries have suffered cluster bomb casualties that exceed Syria\u2019s: Laos at 4,837, Vietnam at 2,080, and Iraq at 2,989.\u201d\u00a0Gladstone coyly doesn\u2019t say, but guess who dropped most of those?<\/p>\n

In 2011,\u00a0The Daily Beast<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0Lionel Beehner was shocked by Hillary Clinton\u2019s audacity in condemning Libyan leader\u00a0Muammar Gaddafi for using cluster bombs. He\u00a0noted that<\/a>\u00a0the U.S. is \u201cone of the world\u2019s largest manufacturers of cluster bombs\u201d; is \u201cone of the few states, along with Libya<\/a>, not to sign the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions\u201d; that \u201cAmerican manufacturers love cluster bombs\u201d; and that just \u201clast year, the U.S. Air Force reportedly spent billions of dollars<\/a> to purchase a batch of 4,600 cluster bombs from Textron, a New England-based arms manufacturer that also supplies munitions to Turkey, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2009 and 2010, the Obama administration promulgated guidelines ostensibly to make their usage safer, including banning their sale starting in 2018\u00a0<\/em>unless they have a dud rate of less than 1 percent (unexploded bombs pose massive risk to civilians, particularly children). But as Schatz detailed in a separate article in June<\/a>, \u201cActivists have reported<\/a> finding more duds than allowed under the one-percent failure rate rule.\u201d Ample evidence demonstrates<\/a>\u00a0these failures. Moreover, as Schatz reports:<\/p>\n

The recent HRW reports also call [Textron\u2019s] CBU-105\u2019s performance into question. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing in Yemen is that they\u2019re having trouble meeting this one percent criteria,\u201d says [HRW\u2019s Steve] Goose. \u201cWe have a photo with one of the canisters sitting on the ground with four skeets just sitting there. They never deployed.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

All of this makes the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u2019\u00a0cluster bomb\u00a0exoneration of the U.S. today nothing short of\u00a0inexcusable. Under the treaty<\/a> which The Paper of Record today claimed the U.S. honors, \u201cStates Parties may not stockpile cluster munitions, and must also destroy their existing stocks within eight years of joining.\u201d The very first article of the Treaty<\/a> states (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

Each State Party undertakes <\/em>never under any circumstances to: (a) Use cluster munitions; (b) Develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly, cluster munitions; (c) Assist, encourage or induce anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Convention.<\/em><\/p>\n

The U.S. does not occasionally violate one of those provisions. It continually violates all of them, systematically and as a matter of policy doing exactly that which the treaty expressly bans. For the\u00a0NYT\u00a0<\/em>to tell its readers that the U.S. \u2014 one of the leading cluster bomb states on the\u00a0planet \u2014 is actually one of the countries that \u201chave not yet joined the treaty but have abided by its provisions\u201d<\/em> is nationalistic propaganda of the most extreme kind.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Glenn Greenwald\u2709glenn.greenwald@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the NYT to tell its readers that the U.S. \u2014 one of the leading cluster bomb states on the planet \u2014 is actually one of the countries that \u201chave not yet joined the treaty but have abided by its provisions\u201d is nationalistic propaganda of the most extreme kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}