The U.S. promised Ukraine cluster bombs. In Laos, they still kill civilians
The U.S. dropped over 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos, including cluster bombs, in the 1960s and '70s. To this day, many people are killed, crippled and disfigured by them, writes Lewis M. Simons.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Lewis M. Simons is the author of To Tell the Truth: My Life as a Foreign Correspondent.
They look more like toys than weapons of death and maiming. Bright yellow, red or black, some resemble whiffle balls, others miniature windmills, robots and Transformers. They're too tempting for any girl or boy to ignore, let alone kids from isolated villages in the hinterlands of a country where nearly three-quarters of the population live in grinding poverty. That country is Laos. And the illusory playthings are cluster bombs.
In the late 1960s and early '70s, theCIA-paid mercenaries and U.S. Air Force pilots who dropped
