How many violations of US arms laws are too many?

Sunday, 18 March 2012

How many violations of US arms laws are too many?

A B 1B dropping a stick of retarded Mk 82 bombs, fitted with AIR tails.

Based on the B-1A bomber, the B-1B bomber was developed by Rockwell International in the period of 1980.

100 of the aircraft were produced for use in nuclear missions.

These were stationed at varioua Strategic Air Command (SAC) bases.

The B-1B bomber was transitioned to a conventional-weapons mission able to carry Mk 82 bombs, fitted with AIR tails.

American-made cluster bombs have been dropped from aircraft all across southern Lebanon.

The U.N. has estimated that Israel dropped as many as 4 million of the bomblets in southern Lebanon, with perhaps 40 percent of the submunitions failing to explode on impact.

Civilians make up 98 percent of the tens of thousands of victims of cluster bombs in the 30 years since their introduction during the Vietnam war.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, drew attention to the issue Wednesday, August 30, 2006.

'What's shocking and I would say, to me, completely immoral is that 90 percent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution,' Egeland said.

US government

depends whether the miscreant enjoys “We will always have your back regardless”…. status

Sakina Merra, who was injured by a US Israel cluster bomb in the southern village of Aita Chaab, rests in a hospital in the southern city of Tyre (Soure) August 22, 2006.

Momentum is building for a long-overdue ban on cluster bombs that kill or maim thousands every year around the world long after wars have ended.

UN mine clearance experts have identified 390 strikes by US Israel cluster bombs in its recent attack on Lebanon.

Munitions include American-made M42 and M47 shells which each contain about 80 bomblets.

UN staff have also found the remains of Israeli-manufactured M85 weapons, which are fired by rocket and contain 644 bomblets.

American-made cluster bombs have been dropped from aircraft all across southern Lebanon.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, drew attention to the issue Wednesday, August 30, 2006.

'What's shocking and I would say, to me, completely immoral is that 90 percent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution,' Egeland said.

Chris Clarke, head of the UN mine action service in southern Lebanon, who has worked in bomb clearance in Sudan, Kosovo, Kuwait and Bosnia, said: 'This is without a doubt the worst post-conflict cluster bomb contamination I have ever seen.'

Photo: REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

Franklin Lamb

Beirut

Graphics By alex

Al-Manar

Beirut 1982

On March 6, 2012, the US Congressional Research Service released a report to the US Congress concerning Restrictions on the use of American weapons by recipient countries.

For those who have followed the subject there was not a whole lot new in the CRS study, yet it is instructive in identifying Israel once again as far and away the most consistent egregious violator of virtually every provision of every US law which purports to regulate how American weapons are used.

The author shown in West Beirut in earlyJuly 1982

collecting unexploded US cluster bombs that Israel

dropped on civilian targets in Lebanon. Stevens and

Lamb traded the Pentagon 36 pages of serial

numbers from US bomb canisters and other

US ordnance in exchange for the Pentagon allowing

the Indian Head Maryland Navy ordnance center

to give Lamb the then classified relevant CBU

manuals showing how to defuse them.

These manuals helped the PLO distribute posters

in the camps showing residents and security forces

how to disarm them. The FBI decided against

prosecuting Stevens and Lamb bringing

nearly 50 lbs. of highly exposive material into the

United States and the Reagan Administration

learned much about how far down the stockpile of

American weapons Israel was operating from.

In accordance with American law, the U.S. Government is mandated to enforce strict conditions on the use against civilians, of weapons it transfers to foreign recipients. Violations of these conditions can lead to the suspension of deliveries or termination of contracts for such defense items, and even the cutting off of all aid to the violating country.

Section 3(a) of the 1976 US Arms Export Control Act (AECA) sets the standards for countries to be eligible to receive American arms and it also sets express conditions on the uses to which these arms may be put. Section 4 of the AECA states that U.S. weapons shall be sold to friendly countries “solely” for use in “legitimate self-defense, for use in “internal security,” and to enable the recipient country to participate in “collective measures requested by the United Nations for the purpose of maintaining or restoring international peace and security.”

Should the President or Congress determine pursuant to section 3(c)(3)(A) of the Arms Export Control Act that a “substantial violation” by a foreign country of an applicable agreement governing an arms sale or grant has occurred, then that country is automatically ineligible for further U.S. military hardware. This action would also terminate provision of credits, loan guarantees, cash sales, and deliveries pursuant to previous sales or grants. Other options include suspension of deliveries of defense items already ordered and refusal to allow new arms orders.

The United States has only once used such an option against Israel.

A member of the Chinese U.N. Interim Force mine-clearing unit walks through a fruit farm September 5, 2006, while carrying unexploded bomblets from cluster bombs dropped by Israel forces during their attacks near the village of Al Hinneyeh in southern Lebanon.

The Israel military, including weapons: tanks, missiles, warplanes, artillery, shells, are all funded by the US taxpayer.

More than Fifteen million US dollars is given by US taxpayers to Israel each day for their military use.

Total funding is more than 4 billion US dollars per year.

Picture: REUTERS/Peter Andrews

Questions raised by researchers in Beirut during the summer of 1982 and by Washington Post journalist Jonathan Randel regarding the use of U.S.-supplied military equipment by Israel in Lebanon in June and July 1982, led the Reagan Administration to determine on July 15, 1982, that Israel “may” have violated its July 23, 1952, Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement with the United States (TIAS 2675) and the AECA.

The pertinent language of the 1952 agreement between Israel and the United States states:

“The Government of Israel assures the United States Government that such equipment,

materials, or services as may be acquired from the United States ... are required for and will be used solely to maintain its internal security, its legitimate self-defense, or to permit it to participate in the defense of the area of which it is a part, or in United Nations collective security arrangements and measures, and that it will not undertake any act of aggression against any other state.”

Alarm centered on whether or not Israel had used U.S.-supplied antipersonnel cluster bombs against civilian targets during its carpet bombing West Beirut during the nearly three month siege.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee held hearings on this issue in July and August 1982. On July 19, 1982, the Reagan Administration announced that it would prohibit new exports of cluster bombs to Israel. This prohibition was lifted by the Reagan Administration in November 1988 under US Israel lobby pressure on the White House designed to assist the Presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush against Senator Walter Mondale.

French UN peacekeeper holds an Israeli cluster bomblet in the southern Lebanese village of Khirbet Silem, May 2007.

A British member of a demining team has been killed by a cluster bomb dropped by Israel in its attack on Lebanon last year.

American-made cluster bombs have been dropped from aircraft all across southern Lebanon.

The U.N. has estimated that Israel dropped as many as 4 million of the bomblets in southern Lebanon, with perhaps 40 percent of the submunitions failing to explode on impact.

Civilians make up 98 percent of the tens of thousands of victims of cluster bombs in the 30 years since their introduction during the Vietnam war.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, drew attention to the issue Wednesday, August 30, 2006.

'What's shocking and I would say, to me, completely immoral is that 90 percent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution,' Egeland said.

Picture: AFP/Ramzi Haidar

The facts of this case which manly centered on events in Lebanon are instructive.During the 1973 Ramadan war, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, watching Arab forces advance on Israel troops following the October 6 Egyptian and Syrian offensive, and being advised by the Israeli Defense Ministry of a pending disaster, threatened President Nixon with Israel using nuclear weapons unless the US rescued Israel. Nixon’s immediate response was to order a massive air lift to Israel of US arms stockpiled for use in Vietnam at Clark air force base near Subic Bay, Philippines.

Israel’s Gifts to Lebanon

The base commander at Clark immediately resigned because being on the defensive in Vietnam, US troops he advised Washington needed those weapons.Included were eight types of US cluster bombs including the M-42, M-46,CBU-58 A/B, APAM (BLU) 77/B, MK 20 “Rockeye”, MK 118 and he M-43 “Birdie” as the U.S. Marines in Beirut referred it in late 1982 and 1983.During a late June 1982 meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Begin, Reagan was handed a note from George Shultz. Based on the information he had in hand, , Reagan directly told Begin that the US had reliable information than Israel was using American weapons against civilians in Lebanon. At this point according to Reagan, Begin became very agitated.

He lowered his glasses and while glaring at Reagan and shaking his index finger said, “Mr. President, Israel has never and would never use American weapons against civilians and to claim otherwise is a blood libel against every Jew, everywhere.”

Following their meeting Reagan told Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, as reported by Weinberger and by various biographers of Reagan that “I did not know what the term “blood libel” meant, but I know that the man looked me straight in the eyes and lied to me.”

Washington Post Pentagon reporter George Wilson
interviewed Lamb in Washington in late 1982, & said this
Janet Lee Stevens / Franklin Lamb research photo
convinced the Reagan administration to ban shipments of
American cluster bombs to Israel for nearly 6 years. Pres.
Reagan reportedly told Rep. Paul Findlay
that when he saw this photo and read the Pentagon
report he was furious with Israeli PM Begin for lying to him.

American researchers documented scores of US cluster bomb canisters including
the one pictured above during the summer of 1982 in Beirut and shared the serial
numbers with the US Navy in exchange for information on how the Lebanese
public could reduce the dangers from unexploded cluster bomblets. Meetings were
sometimes held in the summer of 1983 with US ordinance disposal experts at the
Beirut airport based US Marine barracks. One Marine was killed by an M-43
"birdie" in this period while examining the wing tipped device shown in the photo

The original Secretary of State George Schultz suggestion to Reagan of Israel using two types (the M-42 and the CBU-58) of American cluster bombs was soon changed to the charge that Israel in fact used all eight types of American cluster bombs Nixon had sent to Meir.

Expert from the Mines Advisory Group inspects an unexploded

Israel cluster bomb in the Lebanese village of Ouazaiyeh,
Lebanon, 2006. Photo: AP/Mohammed Zaatari

Proof of the use of the eight types of US cluster bombs was delivered to an assembly of US Pentagon and other officials in late July 1982 at the Indian Head Ordnance facility on the Potomac River in Southern Maryland on instructions from the late American Journalist Janet Lee Stevens to this observer.

Substantive and still preserved demonstrative and physical evidence, including photographs and US cluster bombs some of which still were filled with the high explosive minol,that were carried in my suitcase, (at least a ten year sentence in the Feds one imagines if done these days even inthe then ignorance of possible ignition) that had been gathered from around West Beirut by Janet and her research team that included Palestinian fighters delegated by Yassir Arafat and Khalil al Wazir (Abu Jihad) some Marabatoun fighters, as well several Amal milita as well as this observer to aid with the task,

Israel’s Gifts to Lebanon Anti-persons mines

The US Zionist lobby accurately considers American arms control laws as meaningless. The prohibitions against Israel’s use of American weapons against civilians have not, are not and in all likelihood will never be enforced against Israel given the regimes continuing occupation of much of the US government.

The once cherished American value of building a nation based on humane laws and the American national security interest of achieving a foreign policy that deals on the basis of equality with other nations have been sacrificedso as to delay the inevitablecollapse of the apartheid colonial enterprise implanted on Palestine.

The Obama “we’ve got your back regardless” genuflection endangers America as surely as it threatens with US weapons, every capitol in the Middle East and beyond that may even contemplate challenging Zionism’s regional hegemony.

It’s high time for true American patriots to take back their country and rejoin the community of nations on the basis of equality and mutual respect for all, entangling and corruptive alliances with none.