Clusters are terribly inaccurate and unreliable weapons which do not distinguish between military targets and civilians. They scatter thousands of “bomblets” over a vast area and hundreds fail to explode on impact, littering the landscape with landmine-like “duds”. The US maintains a stockpile of close to one billion submunitions and has used them in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iraq, Vietnam, and the former Yugoslavia. The suffering that continues in countries plagued by the lasting effects of cluster munitions underlines the urgent need to curb the misuse of these weapons. Cluster munitions used in the Vietnam War are still killing and injuring civilians decades later.
The Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2007, which has been introduced in the Senate by Senator Dianne Feinstein and in the House by Representative Jim McGovern would ban the use, sale, and transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than percent.1 Please urge your elected representatives to cosponsor The Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act of 2007 and support clear, sensible US policy on cluster munitions.
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