On Laos.

And cleaning up the mess is up to the Laotians.  A national shame.  We lost that war, and if there were reparations, the US could never have afforded Iraq or Afghanistan.  Cluster-bombs on non-combatants.  We aren’t even up the Agent Orange, chemical warfare at it’s worst.  The “Ho Chi Minh” trail was in there someplace, but it’s a long-standing custom to bomb the enemy, not the countryside and innocent civilians in a non-combatant country.

We in the US talk about “state-sponsored terrorism”.  If this sort of thing, and “Shock and Awe”, drone attacks, and on and on and on, aren’t “state-sponsored terrorism” there is no such thing.  Somehow we see evil everywhere except the US, somehow we excuse ourselves for exactly that for which we condemn others.  Sometimes the US seems to me to be one big Jerry Springer show.  Hooting and hollaring at others, hypocritically trying to drown out our own shame.

On Laos from 1964 to 1973.  ”From 1964 through 1973, the United States flew 580,000 bombing runs over Laos — one every 9 minutes for 10 years. More than 2 million tons of ordnance was unloaded on the countryside, double the amount dropped on Nazi Germany in World War II.”

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-12-11-laos-bombs_x.htm

“So far, we’ve found 210 cluster bombs within 50m of the school,” he says. “There’s bound to be many more.”

“The database was compiled by the Pentagon which logged each of the 580,344 bombing missions flown over Laos and the location where every deadly payload was dropped.”

“The US charge d’affaires in Vientiane, Karen Stewart, says the level of bilateral aid to Laos’ communist leadership is limited by political realism.

“Essentially because it is humanitarian aid we are looking at it to solve the problems of the people,” says Stewart. “As long as the government here is willing to co-operate with the international community to address the problem, we on our side are willing to do our part.”

“Ms Stewart says its unlikely Congress would agree to increase the level of its assistance to Vientiane.’

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1100842.stm