Sputnik: It sounds an absolute horrific device. Why are cluster bombs then banned in over 100 countries? Could you elaborate a bit more on that?
Harvey Wasserman: They are indiscriminate killers, as you pick a target and drop a cluster bomb on it. In terms of the bomb itself you have no control of it. You know, it’s killed many, many, many innocent civilians. Some bombs do not explode right away, they can explode many years later and kill completely innocent people long after a war is over. It’s a sick, deranged weapon. As if all weapons weren’t deranged and this one is particularly so. The idea that the Pentagon now wants to hold on to it just proves that they don’t have any interest whatsoever in acting in any kind of human or even sane manner.
Sputnik: Obviously, you have a very strong feeling about this particular bomb. What kind of damage could this this bomb do in terms of its effect on civilians once it’s been dropped?
Harvey Wasserman: It’s a multiple bomb, so when it’s dropped the first bomb goes off, and all the other bombs blow out. And people are just ripped to shreds.
The initial attack, really, is to unfocus, there could be no dream of protecting civilians from this kind of weapon. And as I say, it can hang around for years. They cannot even meet a standard where all but one percent, in other words, 99 percent of the cluster bombs within the larger cluster bomb will go off. So these bombs can kill people 10, 20, 30 years down the road. That has nothing to do with any of the military operations. The wars themselves will be over. These are bombs that will kill children and other people unrelated to their initial function.
Sputnik: Do you think it has something to do with the US’ agenda of ‘reenergizing’ the defense industry?
Harvey Wasserman: It’s all about the empire.The US needs to prove to the rest of the world that it’s militarily superior to everybody else and they can do whatever they really want. In the White House things will be done just to prove they can do them and that they don’t have to listen to anybody else. And so this is the US imperial army thumbing its nose at the rest of the world.. They say: "We don’t care. Because we don’t have to". And of course, the military industry is enormous in this country. It runs a huge chunk of the government. Humanitarian concerns are no part of their repertoire.
Answering Sputnik’s question on the possibility of an "appropriate use of a cluster bomb", Wasserman said there could theoretically be one. "But the trouble is that they all have wide range impact that no one really can control," he added.
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