'Extreme Hypocrisy': US Using Kiev to Clean Inventory of Banned Cluster Bombs
© Sputnik / Mikitenko
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WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US manufactured cluster bombs are hard to sell because they have been banned in so many countries, hence the Pentagon is only too glad to unload them on Ukraine, former Pentagon analyst and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, Karen Kwiatkowski, told Sputnik.
"The Pentagon's interest seems to be in getting rid of stockpiled munitions, and these cluster bombs are honestly difficult to get rid of for profit as so many nations have banned them," Kwiatkowski said.
"From a US military industrial perspective, the consequence is the Pentagon and its contractors will get [to] clear old inventory… to design and sell more profitable new weapons that serve a similar military purpose - to terrorize populations and slow a military advance."
In terms of the progress of the conflict and prospects for peace, she added, the use of cluster bombs, like mines in general, can be a battlefield tactic that freezes off land area and transportation lines, and destroys the use of territory where they are emplaced or used.
"Cluster bomb usage and the mining of territory seems to be part of a latter stage of traditional land battle, a phase that facilitates the establishment of new borders, and an end of active fighting," Kwiatkowski said.
Ukraine, meanwhile, she added, had so far shown a dismal record of restraint and accountability in its use of all the other weapons systems supplied by the United States and its allies and there was no reason to suppose it would show any more responsibility or care in its use of cluster munitions.
Kwiatkowski also took aim at the double standards employed by Western media in how they spin the use of the munitions.
"In 2022, Western media repeatedly discussed how reported Russian use of cluster bombs on Ukrainian territory kill, maim and terrorize more often than not, civilian populations," Kwiatkowski recalled.
Moreover, she added, there is evidence of US cluster bomb damage done in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as every other place where these munitions have been used.
"This US decision and NATO's flaccid acceptance of it, contrary to the policies of many NATO member states, serves as the latest example of extreme hypocrisy, and it is being observed and understood for exactly that by all of Europe, as well as the rest of the world," Kwiatkowski concluded.
The Biden administration last week announced it was providing Ukraine with cluster munitions in a move widely criticized by human rights activists, and opposed by some US lawmakers.
On Monday, Congressman Matt Gaetz said he will co-sponsor a US defense budget amendment that would ban the United States from transferring cluster munitions to Ukraine or any other country.
