Sunday, December 6, 2009

No ducking land mine treaty, Mr. President

Saturday, December 5, 2009
San Francisco Chronicle

This country hasn't used land mines in nearly 20 years. It no longer makes the indiscriminate killers nor provides them to allies.
Why then is President Obama - off to Oslo this week to collect a Nobel Peace Prize - refusing to sign an international treaty to ban the shrapnel-spewing buried bombs?
His refusal is a shameful lapse for a leader committed to human rights and weapons controls. The devices, which maim and kill for years after a conflict ends, caused more than 5,000 casualties last year in the world's poorest places such as Cambodia, Angola and Central America.

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