What happened to Al-Jazeera.com?

[The Mad Monk]

Showing those pictures and videos, painful as they were, was a good thing for the American side. It shows our opponents as the evil monsters they are.

[Tolls]

I do have a question...since al-jazeera is not an Iraqi news organisation then how is them showing footage of captured/killed US soldiers, or that footage of the 2 UK dead for that matter, any different from, say, the BBC showing footage from any african conflict (for example) in which captured and killed soldiers are shown?

I am rather confused by all this...

[Daz]

Ahem. Just to remind everyone of the fact that showing imprisoned enemies is against the Geneva convention. So is using cluster bombs and bombing TV stations.

We are no better than the enemy.....

How sad...

[The Mad Monk]

Interesting. I knew about parading POWs, but where exactly were cluster bombs and targeting of communications outlawed?

[Daz]

I did some quick research here and found that cluster bombs are not actually banned, but there is some sort of worldwide moratorium on their use. This just prooves that you shouldnt believe all you hear on TV.

A TV broadcasting station is a civilian target, with civilians operating it. The military, as the forum experts will tell you, has no practical use of its infrastructure. The intention is to leave the population uninformed (unmisinformed that is... ) Might as well cut off the water supply...

BTW... the first footage of POWs ive seen in this war was on CNN showing the Iraqis being given water and stuff.

[Urban Ranger]

TMM,

WRT cluster bombs,

The umbrella group of 55 organisations says the Geneva Convention bans weapons that cause "superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering", and those not directed at a specific military target.

link

[Daz]

Thanks UR.
god bless the internet, eh?

[The Mad Monk]

Define 'unneccessary' and how it relates to a cluster bomb.

[The Mad Monk]

And if you think a television transmitter is only of civilian use, you really need to reconsider.

[The Mad Monk]

And I can't believe you find cutting off TV to be comparable to cutting off water.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Define 'unneccessary' and how it relates to a cluster bomb.

There is a fair chance that the bomblets from cluster bombs don't explode right away, but sit in the ground to kill and maim at a later time. Therefore, unnecessarily suffering.

[Daz]

The Problem with Cluster Bombs: They Kill Indiscriminately Today and Tomorrow

Cluster bombs kill indiscriminately in two ways. First, their wide-area nature and often poor targeting mechanisms nearly guarantee that unintended victims will die or be injured when the weapons function as designed. Secondly, submunitions continue to kill long after the battle is over because of their failure to explode on contact or as designed. Dud rates are often in the 10-15% range, but may range as high as 30%. While the term dud suggests deactivation, in reality many of the duds are armed but failed to function on initial impact. These submunitions may explode at the slightest touch, and are highly lethal, frequently killing more than one person because of their wide fragmentation patterns. Like landmines, cluster munitions must be located and destroyed one by one, a costly and time consuming process.

In 1976, thirteen nations called for a ban on anti-personnel cluster weapons. Those countries were Algeria, Austria, Egypt, Lebanon, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Norway, Sudan, Switzerland, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia. They focused on the immediate effects of cluster weapons, stating in a working paper that:

These anti-personnel fragmentation weapons tend to have both indiscriminate effects and to cause unnecessary suffering. At detonation a vast number of small fragments or pellets are dispersed evenly covering a large area with a high degree of probability of hitting any person in the area. The effect of such a detonation on unprotected persons - military or civilian - in the comparatively large target area is almost certain to be severe with multiple injuries caused by many tiny fragments. Multiple injuries considerably raise the level of pain and suffering. They often call for prolonged and difficult medical treatment and the cumulative effect of the many injuries increases the mortality risk. . . . When the normal weapon effect is so extensive as to cover areas of several square kilometers in an attack by a single aircraft, these weapons are hardly capable of use anywhere without hitting civilians incidentally.

The past two decades of experience not only reinforce these conclusions but demonstrate the additional negative side effect of cluster weapons, that being the creation of de facto unmarked minefields.

As with land mines, children often fall victim to submunitions. Attracted by a combination of size, shape, and/or color, children often pick up submunitions and are killed or injured. A recent study sponsored by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kosovo found that children were five times more likely to be killed or injured by submunitions than by land mines.

[The Mad Monk]

That applies to every unexploded mortar round, flak shell, rpg, dumb bomb, smart bomb, and missle still lying around. It's too vague a concept to be of any use as a standard.

[Daz]

The army doesnt need TV transmitters. Its got much better ways to communicate. It simpy doesnt use them...

[The Mad Monk]

Because they got blown up.