Issue Position: Defense - Cluster Bombs

Issue Position

Issue Position: Defense - Cluster Bombs

In 1999, Congressman Kucinich introduced an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill that would eliminate the purchase of cluster bombs. Although the amendment was withdrawn, the leadership on the Appropriations committee agreed to hold hearings to investigate the use of these munitions. These weapons, dropped either by aircraft or rocket launchers, break open in mid-air and disperse hundreds of bomblets that saturate an area with flying shards of steel.

Cluster bombs turn into landmines when some of the bomblets fail to explode right away. According to the General Accounting Office, the failure rate of cluster weapons is extremely high -between 5% to 30%. Thus these unexploded bombs wreak havoc and kill civilians long after a war is over. More than 1.2 million of these bombs failed to explode during the Gulf War and are now killing people, ten years after the end of that conflict. An estimated 4 million cluster bomblets are still lying in rice fields, villages and on roadsides in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The United States spent more than $4.8 billion dollars between 1995 and 1999 buying cluster bombs.

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