In the summer of 2003, not long after U.S. forces had taken Baghdad, a group of Marines were clearing unexploded ordnance in central Iraq when one of the small grenades littering the ground detonated.
It was a cluster munition dud left over from an American attack, the same type of weapon that the United States is now sending Ukraine.
A Marine bomb technician lost his left hand, part of his right hand, his left eye and most of his right leg in the explosion.
Metal fragments also blasted into the torso and neck of Lance Cpl. Travis J. Bradach-Nall, a 21-year-old combat engineer who was standing guard about six feet away. He died minutes later.
The Marines were experts in their craft, trained for missions like these, and still there was an accident. The cheaply made grenades they were clearing were more hazardous than many other types of weapons they could encounter on the battlefield — easily hidden by debris, dirt or sand, and built with simple fuzes that could cause them to detonate if jostled.
Their task that day was made even more difficult by the sheer scale of the mess they had to clean up. A photo taken at the site for an investigation shows an old wooden ammunition crate packed with roughly 75 similar unexploded American grenades that the Marines had already rendered safe.
Mass produced toward the end of the Cold War, cluster munitions of this type scatter dozens or even hundreds of the tiny grenades at a time. These grenades were designed to destroy enemy tanks and soldiers deep behind enemy lines on land allied soldiers were never meant to tread.
U.S. government studies have found that the grenades have a failure rate of 14 percent or more, meaning that for every 155-millimeter cluster shell that is given to Ukraine and fired, 10 of the 72 grenades it disperses are likely to fall to the ground as hazardous duds.
More than 100 nations have banned their use because of the harm they pose, especially to children, but the United States, Russia and Ukraine have not.
In July, the Biden administration decided to provide artillery shells of this type to Ukraine after officials in Kyiv assured the White House that their forces would use them responsibly. Ukraine also promised to record where they used the shells for later demining efforts.
The decision was frustrating and painful for some American civilians who have dealt with the aftermath of their use in combat.
Lynn Bradach was driving near Portland, Ore., in early July when she heard the news on the radio, almost exactly 20 years after the same weapon killed her son, Corporal Bradach-Nall.
“I was like, ‘I can’t believe this.’ It’s just absolutely insane,” said Ms. Bradach, who spent years advocating a global ban on cluster weapons after Corporal Bradach-Nall’s death.
A few weeks ago in Oregon, on the banks of the Zigzag River, she said a final goodbye to her son. She had spread some of his ashes at places he loved in life, and released the rest into the water.
The White House’s…
2023-09-03 04:00:19
Original from www.nytimes.com