Statement Of Sen. Patrick Leahy
On The Feinstein-Leahy Cluster Munitions Amendment
To The FY 2007 Defense Appropriations Bill
September 6, 2006

MR. LEAHY.  I commend my friend from California, Senator Feinstein, for this very important and long overdue amendment.  I am proud to have worked with her on it and to be a cosponsor.

The problem of cluster munitions, which overwhelmingly maim and kill the innocent, has been known for many years.  Perhaps the most egregious example is Laos, where millions of these tiny explosives were dropped by U.S. planes during the Vietnam War.  Over three decades later they continue to cause horrific civilian casualties. 

I have urged the Pentagon to address this problem for nearly a decade.

While they have acknowledged the problem, they have not yet taken effective steps to solve it.  We used massive numbers of cluster munitions in the invasion of Iraq, including in densely inhabited areas, and innocent civilians paid and continue to pay a terrible price.  Israel used these weapons in Lebanon, and again it has been innocent civilians who have suffered disproportionately.

Cluster munitions, like any weapon, have military utility.  They can be effective against armor or military infrastructure.  But they are, in effect, indiscriminate because they scatter thousands of lethal bomblets over wide areas.  Many of them – between 1 and 40 percent depending on the type and the condition of the terrain, fail to explode on contact and remain as hazardous duds indefinitely, no different from landmines. 

The duds are activated by whoever comes into contact with them, and often it is an unsuspecting child who naively believes it is a toy.  The consequences are disastrous – lifelong disfigurement and disability, or death.

No one argues that it is possible to completely avoid civilian casualties in war.  Innocent casualties are an inevitable, tragic consequence of all wars.  But this amendment should not be necessary.  Weapons that are so disproportionately hazardous to civilians should of course be subject to strict rules of engagement. 

The Feinstein-Leahy amendment is fully consistent with the laws of war and international humanitarian law.  It uses the same standard as for incendiary weapons, which are also notoriously hazardous to civilians.  Rather than prohibit cluster munitions, the amendment says only that they should not be used where there are concentrations of civilians.   

Mr. President, this is a moral issue and it is an issue of our own self interest.  Using or selling weapons that are so indiscriminate, without strict rules of engagement, is immoral.  It is immoral.  Anyone who has seen the horrific consequences of children with an arm or a leg blown off, or a part of their face, or their lifeless body cut to pieces by the shrapnel, knows that.

But it is also contrary to our own interest to be using or selling weapons which, without strict controls on their use, cause such appalling casualties of innocent people who are not the enemy.  It fuels anger and resentment we can ill afford among the very people whose support we need.

So again I commend the Senator from California and strongly support the amendment.   I ask unanimous consent that a December 11, 2003, article in USA Today entitled “Cluster bombs kill in Iraq, even after the shooting ends,” be printed in the record.

I yield the floor.

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Text of Amendment.