As I remember the problem, the weapons didn’t arm until you were airborne, but they didn’t have a way of disarming them, so they would add to the excitement if you couldn’t dump them.

To be honest, after talking to a retired Brit engineer friend who used to work on many military projects there, he said the main reason the Brits were ready to get rid of them is that they are unstable. They lost two Tornado’s under *mysterious* circumstances carrying these. 😉 Apparently (he said) one or more mines could become active prematurely, and if it happens to have a vibration or proximity sensor… bye, bye. Also, the pilots hate them! LOL They have to fly low and straight down an enemy runway while the pods dispense! And scooting up after release with all the bomblets exploding, lights up the departing aircraft nicely! Whoever thought these up, obviously never faced combat.

So, giving these to the Saudis may not be such a bad thing in the end. LOL

If their EOD people show the same level of attention, dismantling anything could be a problem.

Now that the Brit’s have signed on to the Land Mines Treaty, they are dismantling the stockpiles of JP233’s. They last used them in Iraq during Desert Storm.

When I was a child in Germany in 1958 they were still digging up ordnance in the local area, and they will never run out of it in Southeast Asia and Lebanon.

It really isn’t that effective, and is primarily a terror weapon – I know it scared the hell out of me when I encountered it. I have a relative on a disability retirement because of it.

It more World War I crap from people who can’t figure out that we are not going to be fighting that kind of war again. It is much easier, safer, and more effective to spread detection sensors and use directed fire to protect a hard point.

These people are hellbent on replacing al Qaeda on the top of the list of terrorists.

Seems a few of the other Intel org’s around the World failed to pick up subtle clues! Like the fact that whenever anyone asked us where we go to learn of something or other that was happening here or the UK or USA, we always said (straight faced) “Go ask the Russians.” Duh! LOL And possibly the fact that certain ASIO operatives often visited a quint little Russian Restaurant in Sydney, might have been a clue. 😉

But… I still have to wait a few more years until the REALLY good stuff is released!! Some of that will be so heavily redacted, even the page numbers will be blackened! LOL But… I can fill in the blanks, with pleasure!

And, on the topic of ‘Unacceptable’, I came across this:

Or perhaps we really do want to be known for maiming children?

On Friday, 111 nations, including major NATO allies, adopted a treaty that sets an eight-year deadline to eliminate stockpiles of cluster arms — pernicious weapons that scatter thousands of small bombs across a wide area, where they pose a long-term deadly threat to innocents. The Bush administration not only failed to sign the treaty but vigorously opposed it…. The campaign to ban cluster munitions, pressed by human rights activists, never attained quite the high profile of the one to ban land mines, a treaty that Washington also refused to sign. But the two weapons have this in common: Both wreak more damage on civilians than soldiers and present a threat long after war ends. Cluster munitions, fired from aircraft or artillery, spray small “bomblets” over an expanse the size of two or three football fields. Many do not explode on impact but can be easily triggered by unsuspecting civilians. The most appalling of these devices can look like a desired object — a can of food or a toy.

So… where is that moral high ground then? Just asking.

In Vietnam the lies started. This was the shift from public affairs officers to propaganda officers, and after the press discovered they were being lied to, the gentlemen’s agreement of World War II was tossed aside.

The military reacted by instituting a program to train better liars, rather than returning to the tried and true system of WWII.

After a long break on the war front, the people who represented the media didn’t have the training to deal with the military. You had the embarrassing press conferences during Gulf War I, when correspondents didn’t understand the most basic things about the military and got played like a cheap piano by the military briefers.

The whole “embedding” operation was a PR stunt. Journalists weren’t “embedded” in World War II, they just went along and reported what they saw, after it was read by a military censor. Operational details were all that was removed.

In the current mess, the military tightly controls what is seen, and the media produces PR pieces for the military, to order.

There’s a reason I keep putting a crossed out MAC-V before I mention MNF-I, because the Multinational Force-Iraq briefers are the same as the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam – agitprop professionals, trained to bend reality to their own purposes. Hell, I don’t even trust their name tags or the service strip.

War Made Easy

WAR MADE EASY:
How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
Narrated by Sean Penn

War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations.

War Made Easy gives special attention to parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq. Guided by media critic Norman Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis, the film presents disturbing examples of propaganda and media complicity from the present alongside rare footage of political leaders and leading journalists from the past, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, dissident Senator Wayne Morse, and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer.