actually, anti-personnel landmines are banned by the OTTAWA treaty (or ottawa declaration, signed right here in our nation's capital, =P) in 1996... unfortunately america didn't sign, and is suspected of using them in iraq... amnesty international is monitoring their use constantly... check out www.amnesty.org and in all fairness, the UK didn't sign either and are suspected of using them too.

http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng...1256B66005B6D54 <-- an explaination of the ottawa treaty.

the treaty does not explicity ban cluster bombs, but if a bomb turns out to be a dud, then essentially it becomes a landmine.

indiscriminate weapons are banned by the genevea convention here:

"Under the Geneva Convention, Article 51 (4) Protocol I prohibits indiscriminate attacks, including:

"those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective" and "those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol".

Consequently, in each case, the attacks "are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.""

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Last edited by mr. poopyhead on Apr-06-2003 at 19:13

quote:

Originally posted by mr. poopyhead actually, anti-personnel landmines are banned by the OTTAWA treaty (or ottawa declaration, signed right here in our nation's capital, =P) in 1996... unfortunately america didn't sign, and is suspected of using them in iraq... amnesty international is monitoring their use constantly... check out www.amnesty.org and in all fairness, the UK didn't sign either and are suspected of using them too. http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng...1256B66005B6D54 <-- an explaination of the ottawa treaty. the treaty does not explicity ban cluster bombs, but if a bomb turns out to be a dud, then essentially it becomes a landmine. indiscriminate weapons are banned by the genevea convention here: "Under the Geneva Convention, Article 51 (4) Protocol I prohibits indiscriminate attacks, including: "those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective" and "those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol". Consequently, in each case, the attacks "are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.""

Actually Britain was a signatory. However, if you remember previous discussions, the reason why the US has not signed the Ottawa treaty is because the US currentely uses thousands of land mines in the DMZ of Korea in order to disuade the million man + army of the N. Koreans from invading South Korea. In that respect I think that it's a good decision and a good deterrant ... much like MAD was a good nuclear deterrant for avoiding a full out war between the Soviet Union and the United States.

And additionally cluster bombs are not indiscrimant in the sense that they are meant to target clusters of army vehicles in a given range. They are no different from regular bombs except their damage radius is larger. The same effect could probably be achieved with a 4000 pound bomb as opposed to a 500 pound bomb. However, these weapons are anti-armor as opposed to anti-personnel.

Well, the fact they're initially meant to be anti-armor weapons doesn't mean they're ineffective against civilians.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Well, the fact they're initially meant to be anti-armor weapons doesn't mean they're ineffective against civilians.

Well then you might as well ban bullets, artiller, mortars, and ALL bombs from the battlefield . Every bomb has a potential to be a dud. Shall we ban all bombs from warfare now? Anti-personnel mines are singled out because they are specifically designed to injure not kill many people. The reasoning behind that is that an injured soldier utilizes more resources than a dead one. The US is not using anti-personnel cluster bombs or mines, and we ARE being discriminant in our targets. Therefore we are not violating the geneva convenctions and in this case we are not even violating the ottawa treaty despite not having signed it.