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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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almarst2003 - 01:27pm Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11080 of 11084)

Cluster bombs liberate Iraqi children - http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED04Ak07.html

AMMAN - The horror. The horror. And unlike Apocalypse Now, there are real, not fictional images to prove it. But they won't be seen in Western homes. The new heart of darkness has emerged in the turbulent history of Mesopotamia via the Hilla massacre. After uninterrupted, furious American bombing on Monday night and Tuesday morning, as of Wednesday night there were at least 61 dead Iraqi civilians and more than 450 seriously injured in the region of Hilla, 80 kilometers south of Baghdad. Most are children: 60 percent of Iraq's population of roughly 24 million are children.

Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Iraq, describes what happened in Hilla as "a horror, dozens of severed bodies and scattered limbs". Initially, Murtada Abbas, the director of Hilla hospital, was questioned about the bombing only by Iraqi journalists - and only Arab cameramen working for Reuters and Associated Press were allowed on site. What they filmed is horror itself - the first images shot by Western news agencies of what is also happening on the Iraqi frontlines: babies cut in half, amputated limbs, kids with their faces a web of deep cuts caused by American shellfire and cluster bombs. Nobody in the West will ever see these images because they were censored by editors in Baghdad: only a "soft" version made it to worldwide TV distribution.

According to the Arab cameramen, two trucks full of bodies - mostly children, and women in flowered dresses - were parked outside the Hilla hospital. Dr Nazem el-Adali, trained in Scotland, said almost all the dead and wounded were victims of cluster bombs dropped in the Hilla region and in the neighboring village of Mazarak. Abbas initially said that there were 33 dead and 310 wounded. Then the ICRC went on site with a team of four, and they said that there were "dozens of dead and 450 wounded". Contacted by satphone on Thursday, Huguenin-Benjamin confirmed there were at least 460 wounded, being treated in an ill-equipped 280-bed hospital.

Journalists taken to Hilla from Baghdad on an official tour on Wednesday talked of at least 61 dead. The Independent's Robert Fisk described the mortuary as "a butcher's shop of chopped-up corpses". The ICRC is adamant: all victims are "farmers, women and children". And Dr Hussein Ghazay, also from Hilla hospital, confirmed that "all the injuries were either from cluster bombing or from bomblets that exploded afterwards when people stepped on them or children picked them up by mistake".

Iraqi journalists on site and later an Agence France Presse (AFP) photographer say that they have seen debris equipped with small parachutes characteristic of cluster bombs - which release up to 200 bomblets. Mohamed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Information Minister, has not volunteered details yet on the Hilla massacre. US Central Command in Qatar only admits it has used "six cluster bombs in the center of Iraq" - and against a tank column: these would be the CBU 105, the so-called "intelligent" cluster bombs which compensate for wind. The Pentagon line remains that there are "no indications" that the US dropped cluster bombs in the Hilla region.

Widely used in Afghanistan, cluster bombs are vehemently denounced by human rights organizations: they compare their deadly effects to anti-personnel mines, which are outlawed by the Ottawa Convention (not signed, incidentally, by either the US or Iraq). Cluster bombs are far from being smart. Most of its bomblets hit the ground without exploding. The small yellow cylinders remain deadly weapons threatening civilians - especially children. Human Rights Watch, in vain, has tried to persuade the Pentagon not to use cluster bombs, stressing that "Iraqi civilians will pay the price with their lives". This is not the first incident of mass civilian deaths. The Independent newspa

almarst2003 - 01:32pm Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11081 of 11084)

280 'dismembered' by bombs - http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,6119,2-10-1460_1342460,00.html

Baghdad - The International Committee of the Red Cross described as "horrific" on Thursday the scene at a hospital south of Baghdad, where hundreds of Iraqi men, women and children "practically dismembered by explosions" were being treated.

Floran Westphal of the Red Cross said from Geneva, that their workers reported seeing the local 280-bed hospital completely full of casualties of bomb attacks.

A Red Cross doctor at the town of Hilla, 10km south of Baghdad, told CNN about 280 Iraqis had been wounded from bombing and fierce fighting in the previous 48 hours.

He said the hospital was "overwhelmed" by hundreds of casualties, adding that he was "shocked" by what he saw.

An ICRC team - including a doctor and a water engineer - visited Hilla to assess the medical and water situations and saw the carnage.

When the team reached Hilla Hospital, they saw vehicles with corpses of men, women and children arriving. Inside the hospital they saw at least 280 injured people.

The hospital and other medical facilities were having great difficulty facing the emergency, the ICRC said.

10 killed, 90 wounded in Baghdad

They immediately provided dressing materials for 100 patients, as well as intravenous fluid sets, body bags and blankets.

Additional assistance would be delivered as soon as possible, said the ICRC.

About 90 civilians were wounded and 10 killed overnight on Tuesday in the Baghdad area by coalition bombs, said Iraqi officials.

Information minister Mohammed Said al-Sahaf told reporters in a televised briefing from Baghdad on Wednesday that bombing raids over Niniveh left 12 wounded and one dead, while 12 were wounded and one killed in Anbar.

He said 58 civilians were wounded and one killed in Babylon and five others were wounded in Salah Eddin. - Sapa-DPA

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