Democrats horrified by Biden sending cluster bombs to Ukraine

Democrats have reacted with anger to the White House’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, with one California congresswoman accusing Joe Biden of stooping to the lows of Vladimir Putin.

The Biden administration announced on Friday they would send the artillery rounds to Ukraine, after six months of agonizing over the decision.

Cluster munitions are banned by over 120 countries worldwide, and the United States has not deployed them since 2009, in Yemen.

No cluster munitions of any kind have been exported since 2015, and they are no longer produced by American companies.

They are designed to detonate in the air and spread smaller bombs around a wide area – which experts say risk injuring civilians.

Unexploded cluster munitions deployed 50 years ago are still lying dormant in Vietnam and Laos according to the Cluster Munition Coalition, an activist group trying to get the weapons banned everywhere.

Barbara Lee, a congresswoman representing California, said she was outraged by Biden’s decision, while Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Sara Jacobs of California on Friday introduced an amendment that would effectively block the transfer of these munitions.

‘I am alarmed to hear @POTUS is considering sending cluster bombs to Ukraine,’ tweeted Lee. ‘Many people are unaware of these dangerous weapons.

‘The Ukrainian people are engaged in a just struggle for their rights, freedom and humanity. The US and Ukraine don’t need to stoop to Putin’s level.’

Chrissy Houlahan, an Air Force veteran who now represents Pennsylvania, said she strongly disagreed with the decision.

‘I challenge the notion that we should employ the same tactics Russia is using,’ she said.

‘And I challenge all of us to remember that this war will end, and the broken pieces of Ukraine will need to be rebuilt.

‘History remembers not only who wins a war but also how a war is won.’

Jim McGovern, representing Massachusetts, said: ‘I continue to strongly support helping Ukraine stand up to Russia’s brutal war of aggression. But cluster munitions won’t help.’

And Omar and Jacobs pointed out that it was against U.S. law to transfer munitions with a ‘dud rate’ of more than one percent.

Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is opposed to sending the cluster munitions

Sara Jacobs has joined Omar in filing an amendment seeking to block the transfer

The White House is planning on ignoring that, and sending munitions with up to 2.5 percent failure rates.

They filed an amendment seeking to block the delivery.

‘Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no military assistance shall be furnished for cluster munitions, no defense export license for cluster munitions may be issued, and no cluster munitions or cluster munitions technology shall be sold or transferred,’ reads the amendment.

President Joe Biden defended his decision on Friday, and said Ukraine was ‘running out’ of ammunition.

‘It was a very difficult decision on my part,’ he told CNN on Friday.

‘And by the way, I discussed this with our allies, I discussed this with our friends up on the Hill,’ he said. 

‘The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition.’

The US has decided to send controversial cluster munitions to Ukraine in aid of its counteroffensive against Russian forces

‘The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition,’ President Joe Biden said Friday, as he justified a U.S. turnaround in providing cluster munitions to Ukraine in its effort to turn back Russia’s invasion

His comments aired after national security advisor Jake Sullivan described the transfer as a ‘bridge’ until the U.S. was able to crank up production of artillery shells to meet battlefield needs and replenish depleted U.S. supplies.

Biden described the transfer as a finite effort during a ‘transition period,’ rather than as a wholesale change in U.S. policy. 

He was faced with trying to get around his administration’s denunciation of Russia’s use of the bombs on civilian areas amid its brutal war on Ukraine.

‘This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it,’ Biden said. 

‘And so, what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to – not permanently – but to allow for this transition period, while we get more 155 weapons (155mm caliber shells), these shells, for the Ukrainians,’ Biden said.

He also spoke about the challenges facing the Ukrainians in their renewed offensive, now that Russian forces have dug into their positions as Ukraine seeks to reclaim territory. 

‘They’re trying to get through those trenches and stop those tanks from rolling. But it was not an easy decision,’ Biden told the network. 

‘We’re not signatories to that agreement, but it took me a while to be convinced to do it.

‘But the main thing is they either have the weapons to stop the Russians now – keep them from stopping the Ukrainian offensive through these areas – or they don’t. And I think they needed them.’

The Ukrainian military has been slowly regaining territory and liberating some villages from Russian control, but not at the lightning pace of some of last year’s offensives. 

White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan took to the podium in the press briefing room Friday to defend the decision. 

He said making the decision to send Kiev the bombs was ‘not easy’ but ‘we will not leave Ukraine defenseless.’

‘We recognize that cluster munitions create a risk to civilians which is why we have deferred decision as much as we could,’ he said. 

U.S. law bans the transfer of cluster munitions that have more than a one percent ‘dud’ rate – or fail to go off more than one percent of the time. Such bombs that don’t go off immediately can create land mines and explode at a later date and harm civilians. 

But Sullivan confirmed President Biden had signed a waiver allowing a transfer of such weapons with a higher dud rate – but said the rate would be ‘not higher than 2.5 percent.’ 

This aerial picture taken on December 7, 2022 shows an expert of the prosecutor’s office examining collected remnants of shells and missiles used by the Russian army to attack the second largest Ukrainian city of Kharkiv

‘Russia has been using cluster munitions since the start of this work to attack Ukraine. 

‘Russia has been using cluster munitions with high dud or failure rates of between 30 and 40 percent,’ Sullivan told reporters. 

He said regions where the bombs would be used would already need to be cleared of mines once the war is over.  

‘Russia has already spread tens of millions of these bomblets across Ukrainian territory,’ he went on. 

‘So we have to ask ourselves is: Is Ukraine’s use of cluster munitions, on that same land, actually that much of an addition of civilian harm given that that area is going to have to be de mined regardless?’