Phase 5

Groves, S., Bromund, T. Ph.D. (2011) the United States should not join the convention on cluster munitions. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/04/the-united-states-should-not-join-the-convention-on-cluster-munitions

This article discusses the reasons the United States should not join the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM).  They provide U.S. policy on cluster muntions and direct quotes from people in office and their stance on why the U.S. should not disarm there cluster bombs. A specific instance is given from former State Department official Richard Kidd.  Kidd states that the most vocal orgaizations of a ban on cluster munitions do not consider the consequences that will follow such a ban.  Consequences such as, a decrease in U.S. military effectiveness, strains within alliance structures, impediments to forming peacekeeping operations, and that weapons used instead of cluster munitions will cause more damage to the civilian populace.  The article also states that cluster munitions are easily and quickly deployed, a characteristic that is vital when striking time sensitive targets.  If weapons with a single warhead (unitary weapons) were used, more of them would be required and would cause more calateral damage.  They bring to light that the biggest problem that anticluster munitions groups have is that all the bomblets inside a cluster bomb do not always explode on impact and go off later when disturbed by civilians after the conflict is over.  This argument could be applied to any weapon because no weapon used in war works with 100% efficency, so cluster bombs are not the only bombs that lay unexploded on a battlefield or pose a threat to the civilian populace.  They go on to say that cluster bombs actually cause very few civilian casualties.  In the year 2009 only 100 confirmed civilian casualties worldwide were from cluster munitons.  The total casualties caused from all unexploded ordinances, including landmines, from that year in Afganistan alone, was 508.  So by comparison the number of causualties caused by cluster munitions in Afganistan was very few.  Overall, this article totally ripped apart CCM's arguments as to why cluster munitions should be banned by providing real statistics backed up by people who deal with this "problem" on a regular basis and showed the advantage of using cluster munitions and the consequences that will follow a ban on cluster munitions.

I previously could not know what the specific advantages of cluster munitions were or the consequences that would result should they be banned from the U.S. arsenal.  This article provided that information through the U.S. Department of Defense, stating that these weapons were designed to effectively strike time sensitive targets with a primary objective of maximum destruction to personel and vehicles, giving friendly troops engaged with this enemy a definate advantage over their adversary, and with a secondary objective to reduce moral in enemy troops, overload medical teams, and take enemy personnel from the front lines to help with the wounded.  This also allows a smaller force of friendly troops to engage a larger force of enemy troops.  Should cluster bombs be banned, unitary weapons would have to be used resulting in more bombs being used, more calateral damage and should these unitary bombs fail to detonate, they would pose a more dangerous hazard to the civilian populous when the conflict is over.

The article argues that cluster munitions are becoming "safer" for civilians and provides an example of SFW's Skeet warhead.  If a Skeet warhead does not detect a valid target on its tragectory, it has three safety modes that will render in useless.  The first two will cause it to selfdestruct while in flight and the third will disable the warhead minutes after it has hit the ground.  If cluster munitions continue to improve in their safety features, then CCM does not have a valid argument calling for a ban on cluster munitions.

http://www.stopclustermunitions.org/the-problem/what-is/
This article disagrees with the article above.  They seem to imply that cluster bombs rarely ever work properly and they cause the most damage to civilian populous than any other unexploded ordinance.  The article above completely contradicts this belief and so do other articles I have looked at while researching this topic.  This shows that the two sides of the cluster munitions debate are utterly at odds with each other and the opposite information provided by both side shows that one side is stretching the truth a little because they cannot both be right.

Phase 4

http://www.2facts.com/icof_reuters_story.aspx?Type=1&ArticleTextID=TRE7AF2K8&term=cluster+bombs

 

I would rate this article as credible for multiple reasons.  My topic requires fairly new or recently updated information, no more than three years old.  The "Cluster Bomb Funds Shrinking Under Pressure" article was published November 16, 2011 so it meets this requirement.  The article discusses how protests from Human Rights activists is affecting the business side of companies that produce cluster munitions.  It was written by Stephanie Nebehay a journalist for Thomas Reuters, the worlds largest international multimedia news agency, a title that would quickly fall away should the website prove to have inaccurate information.  She is more than qualified to write this article because, judging by previous articles she has written, she has been following Human Rights groups for quite some time, so she would have valuable insight to their side of the story that other writers may not have.  It is a .com website, but considering it is a news website and it is the largest in the world, I would be willing to overlook that.

The article also has accurate information and approaches the controversy of cluster munitions with little to no bias.  The information appears to be first hand knowledge  because there are no citations provided for sources thatmight have been used, other than quotations from interviews making it more credible than if it was second hand knowledge.  I can verify most of the information provided through other sources I have come across in researching this topic and there were no grammical or spelling errors that I could find, indicating that it was written and edited by proffesionals and they tend to be more credible than Joe Shmoe at the end of the street.  The purpose of the article appears to be solely informative will no bias or opinion interjected into it.  The home website confirms this in there About Us link by stating that the only purpose of Thomas Reuters is to inform people of world events and issues.  Nebehay gives specific instances of companies that have refused to invest in producers cluster munitions (Royal Bank of Scotland) and other facts that can be readily tested, showing that this is a factual article and not opinion based.  Overall, I would be very comfortable citing this article.

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/cluster_munitions/index.html

I would rate this article as being very uncredible.  It is relevant to my topic because it discusses international legistlation that deals with cluster munitions and it was updated very recently, today in fact March 22, 2013.  However, I accessed this article on Wikipedia and they have a long history of having inaccurate information in their articles and there was no author provided.  Upon further investigation of why there was no author, I discover that Wikipedia allows anyone with internet access to edit and provide new information to their articles.  So anyone from a professional in the field to Joe Shmoe on the corner can change the information in the article.  This could result in inaccurate information and strong biased oppion throughout this article.  I could verify some of the information provided but not all of it and they did not provide evidence, examples, or events to back up their information.  Not only that, but the information they provided was an accumilation from almost 100 cited sources.  I do not have the time or desire to go through and make sure that each of those sources are credible and I have no idea how many uncited people edited and reedited the article.  Overall, I would be extremely hesitant is citing this article in a research paper.



I would say the Reuters article is more credible than the Wikipedia article.  Miss Nebehay was very proffesional in her approach, she backed up her information with examples and events and she had a very unbiased approach to the topic.  She also appeared to be an authority on Human Rights activities.  I believe the Reuters website adds to the credibility because one does not become the largest international multimedia news agency with inaccurate informantion.  The Wikipedia article, on the other hand, did not back up there information with facts that could be readily tested and because they allow anyone to edit the information in their articles, there is no way to tell if the writers are authorities on the topic or not.  There would also be no way to tell what parts of the article are accurate or not or what parts are up to date and what parts are out of date.  Between the two articles, I would be more readily to cite the Reuters article than Wikipedia's because it appears to be more credible.

Phase 3

Hanley, D. C. (2003). Why did the united states use cluster bombs in iraq? The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 22(5), 13-13. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.hacc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/218818607?accountid=11302

In this article Hanley discusses the wanton destruction of innocent lives through the use of cluster munitions and even goes so far as to call them weapons of mass destruction. She focuses on the civilian casualties caused by cluster munitions as well as the health risks supposedly caused by the fragments and unexploded rounds of these munitions. Hanley appeals to the emotional side of humans by sharing stories of children being killed or injured by cluster bombs. She also gives statistics on the amount of civilians injured and/or killed by cluster munitions. She seemed to be implying throughout the article that the U.S. had not considered the amount of civilian casualties caused by these cluster munitions and were not working on a solution for lowering these casualties.

Hinton, D. L. (2009). The stance on the cluster munitions ban: U.S. philosophy explained. Joint Force Quarterly : JFQ, (54), 103-109. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.hacc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/203705300?accountid=11302 

In this article Hinton explains the need for cluster munitions in the battlefield by discussing the tactical advantage and the flexibility they give our military commanders.  He states that cluster munitions can be deployed quickly, especially when there is not enough time to mount a strike or rescue force.  He also informs the reader that one of these weapons is capable of hitting multiple targets at once, whereas multiple unitarty muntions (single missiles or bombs) would be needed in the same situation.  Hinton does not try to hide or even minimize the fact that civilians are injured by cluster munitions and even goes into detail the amount of civilian casualties suffered in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Lebanon over the past several years.  He then explains that these casualties would have been greatly increased had unitary munitions been used because unitary munitions destroy everything in their blast radius, whereas cluster munitions are used specifically for enemy personnel, military vehicles including tanks, airstrips, and grounded aircraft.  He concludes stating that the U.S. government is working on a solution to further minimize civilian casualties caused by cluster munitions and that now that they have been introduced as a weapon they cannot be taken out of our inventory because then our enemies would be the only ones using them leaving us with disadvantage.

I chose these two articles because of the totally different angles the writers approached the topic of cluster munitions.  Miss Hanley addressed the humanitarian side of the story, showing her concern for the civilians affected by cluster munitions, whereas Mr. Hinton discussed the military aspect, showing the definite advantage these weapons gave our military as well as the effectiveness of these weapons.  I found especially interesting that Miss Hanley gave specific instances when civilians had been injured or killed by these munitions and that Mr. Hinton provided information concerning the "safety features" that have been installed in the newer designs, preventing them from being a hazard in the future.  One thing that Miss Hanley failed to bring up was the other side of the story.  She did not bring up the fact that these weapons give the user a definite advantage in the battlefield or the amount of lives these weapons have saved.  On the other hand Mr. Hinton took into account the harm cluster munitions can and have caused to civilians.

I have a much better grasp on the topic of cluster munitions.  I now understand that the main danger of these weapons to the civilian population is not so much the ones that explode, rather the duds that lay dorment for months or even years waiting for that one little bump that will cause them to go off.  I also know that there may be a solution the satify both parties.  For example, perhaps there is a way to take these cluster bombs and integrate this technology with missles.  This would allow us to add guidence systems to cluster munitions and reduce their randomness giving us something like the Jericho Missile from Ironman I.  This would alleviate the humanitarians concerns for the civilia populous, allow our military to keep the advantage on the battlefield, and would not hurt the weapons industry.  The question is, is this even possible?  How effective would it be? How expensive would it be? Or is this solution even nessecary? These are some of the questions I hope to answer as I learn more about this topic.