Many days they die or are maimed children, women or elderly people in Laos, Viet Nam and Cambodia by cluster bombs dropped from planes or by artillery 40 years ago. Cluster bombs are indiscriminate lethal weapons. By its size and shape they remember a torpedo or cylinder of oxygen, inside which there is abundant submunitions (in some models up to 600); small bombs that spread and burned, scattering shrapnel or exploit. The be thrown from planes or by artillery, cluster bombs explode in the air near the ground and its content is spread over an extensive area. Inside small bombs destroy everything within a wide radius by shrapnel, fire or shock wave. So lethal are the cluster bombs. But the biggest problem is causing indiscriminate damage for long time. Many submunitions do not erupt to be thrown or launched the bombs, cluster, and too often months or years they remain untapped, converted into lethal mines landmines that explode if a bad day in which someone (always a civilian) stumbles with them without the least warning, caution or prevention, because the conflict ended long ago.
The conflict ended, but parts of the cluster bombs are there. And they maim, kill. In may more than a hundred countries signed the prohibition of cluster bombs in Dublin, and today we can congratulate ourselves because that agreement has become treaty banning these bombs, to be ratified in Oslo by the States themselves. International law prohibits the use of military force against civilians, something that happens systematically with pumps bunch, reason by which ratified that they are illegal. Unfortunately, United States, Russia, China, Brazil, Israel, India and Pakistan have refused to sign the Treaty. A spokesman for the outgoing Bush Administration has declared that they are contrary to the Treaty, because the cluster bombs have demonstrated its military usefulness. Their elimination would risk the lives of our soldiers.