80 million unexploded bombs: Obama pledges US help for Laos

[Usernames]

1 hour ago, mankondang said:

 

Laos has never been to war, yet it is the most bombed country in the world. During the Vietnam/American war, the CIA along with US armed services, built a secret (at the time) airforce base, the size of a small city in the very north of Laos (Sorry i do not remember it's name, but apparently it can be visited today). To that fact Laos was an US allay. Some of the reasons, i've been given for the bombings are, that bomb laden planes never return to base, but jettison the bombs prior to landing. Also, again i've been told, the border lines between Vietnam/Laos in the mountainous forest regions were not that clear and mistakes were made. I find the latter hard to comprehend, as this happened too often. This leaves me, unfortunately, thinking that the US did not care as to whether the bombs landed in Laos or Vietnam at the time, as many considered them allays to the communists.

Re the doubling of the grant from 45 M to 90 M, i think its a pittance, compared with the value of the bombs dropped and the pain, suffering and deaths that are still happening today.

 

The base was Long Tieng.  It was not an American military base.  There were no American military bases in Laos.  Air America flew out of Long Tieng and other Lima Sites. There were four (sometimes five) factions in this war and at least three of them changed sides several times.

[halloween]

9 minutes ago, Usernames said:

 

The base was Long Tieng.  It was not an American military base.  There were no American military bases in Laos.  Air America flew out of Long Tieng and other Lima Sites. There were four (sometimes five) factions in this war and at least three of them changed sides several times.

Oh it wasn't a US military base, it was a US spy agency base, that makes a HUGE difference. The biggest one being that it was kept secret from those paying for it, the US public.

 

[Berkshire]

35 minutes ago, HappyDazed said:

First time I went to Laos was in 1995, very limited infrastructure and only one real Road to speak of......I remember reading the following...

------

From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing missions—equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years – making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history.

--------

 

...thinking what Laos must have been like in the 1960's & wondering <deleted> were they bombing exactly, farmers and hunter gatherers?

 

Apparently scores of ancient temples were destroyed as these were the only landmarks the American airforce could find on their maps of Laos.

 

A war crime of the highest order....

 

 

 

 

Actually, yes, war crime of the highest order.  I saw the piece on CNN last night and the mind boggles.  Men, women, and children have been/are being injured, maimed, and killed because of these unexploded ordnances.  If these were Americans being hurt and killed in the present day, there would be outrage from here to high heaven.  But it's just these little brown people, no one cares.  What America did back then was incredibly reckless and cruel.  The President is doing the right thing, but perhaps not soon enough. 

[MaxYakov]

2 hours ago, Pimay1 said:

Who counted the bombs and came up with 80 million?

 

Exactly. And if there were 80 million, I'd be seriously considering determining why there were so many duds. Maybe remaining WW II ordnance? It has been documented that WW II bombs were being used at risk to the Carriers, aircraft and personnel.

 

Interesting Wiki article on unexploded ordnance worldwide.

 

 

[HappyDazed]

If the total number of bombs is known and the fail rate....then estimating the unexploded is fairley simple.

[Usernames]

11 minutes ago, halloween said:

Oh it wasn't a US military base, it was a US spy agency base, that makes a HUGE difference. The biggest one being that it was kept secret from those paying for it, the US public.

 

 

The difference is that there were no jet aircraft. No bombers.  No fighters.  Just a handful of prop driven trainers outfitted with rockets, some helicopters, and a lot of unarmed STOL aircraft such Helios, Porters, Caribou, and C-123s. BTW, the Russians were flying in goods and material too.

[Ireland32]

4 hours ago, ALLSEEINGEYE said:

The USA should have to pay for this and all illegal wars that they have waged over the decades.

 

I don't think the just over $1 for each unexploded bomb is really enough though.

 

If 80 million bombs didn't explode, how many millions of bombs did explode? Pure evil.

Sthu

[KKr]

3 hours ago, Shawn0000 said:

 

Bombs, absolutely necessary to save lives?  What in that war had anything to do with saving anyone's life?  The war was about preventing the spread of Communism, no ones life was at risk until the bombs started dropping.

 

Indeed, as I said the Generals must have thought about it. I did not say I understand their logic other than self centred decision making and recklessness, and maybe getting rid of some ordinance that was near "sell by" date and needed to be replaced anyway.

[Dexlowe]

1 hour ago, MaxYakov said:

 

Exactly. And if there were 80 million, I'd be seriously considering determining why there were so many duds. Maybe remaining WW II ordnance? It has been documented that WW II bombs were being used at risk to the Carriers, aircraft and personnel.

 

Interesting Wiki article on unexploded ordnance worldwide.

 

 

Weren't they sowing mines to make supply trails unusable? 

[Shawn0000]

1 hour ago, MaxYakov said:

 

Exactly. And if there were 80 million, I'd be seriously considering determining why there were so many duds. Maybe remaining WW II ordnance? It has been documented that WW II bombs were being used at risk to the Carriers, aircraft and personnel.

 

Interesting Wiki article on unexploded ordnance worldwide.

 

 

 

Cluster bombs were just very unreliable, perhaps purposely so.

 

[mankondang]

2 hours ago, Usernames said:

 

The base was Long Tieng.  It was not an American military base

gere were no American military. bases in Laos.  Air America flew out of Long Tieng and other Lima Sites. There were four (sometimes five) factions in this war and at least three of them changed sides several times.

 

Thanks for your information and corrections re the CIA established Air America base at Long Tieng.

Do you know or have any idea then, on why the US dropped so many bombs on Laos, a country reputed as never been to war.

As i said, in my initial post, all my information was given to me by others, hence heare say. This for my pure intereest sake as its topical due to ASEAN. Thanks.

[craigt3365]

10 minutes ago, mankondang said:

 

Thanks for your information and corrections re the CIA established Air America base at Long Tieng.

Do you know or have any idea then, on why the US dropped so many bombs on Laos, a country reputed as never been to war.

As i said, in my initial post, all my information was given to me by others, hence heare say. This for my pure intereest sake as its topical due to ASEAN. Thanks.

The North Vietnamese were inside Laos (and Cambodia) and the Russians and Chinese were supplying them with arms.  Which were being shuttled along various routes inside Laos.  Research the Laos civil war.  It will explain a lot.  I also provided a link above with some good info.

[Usernames]

25 minutes ago, craigt3365 said:

The North Vietnamese were inside Laos (and Cambodia) and the Russians and Chinese were supplying them with arms.  Which were being shuttled along various routes inside Laos.  Research the Laos civil war.  It will explain a lot.  I also provided a link above with some good info.

 

@mankondang

 

What Craig has said pretty much answers it.  After the Geneva Accords the US actually left Laos.  The North Vietnamese never did.  The Hmong were group primarily backed by the US.  And, btw, a select group of Hmong was trained to be pilots who used the old piston driven trainers as attack aircraft.  There is a lot of information on this.  Probably the single best book on the subject is Kenneth Conboys.  https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-War-CIAs-Secret-Laos/dp/1581605358

 

FYI, there are only a handful of Air America guys still living in Thailand, including the Thais that were part of it.  Although some guys from the US do pass through once a year or so.  And people should also realize that Thailand had b/w 20 and 30 thousand troops fighting in Laos during those years.

Edited September 7, 2016 by Usernames

[TooPoopedToPop]

The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, by Alfred W. McCoy; and Sideshow by William Shawcross are two books that cut through US propaganda and their attempts to rewrite history.

 

[12DrinkMore]

24 minutes ago, Usernames said:

 

@mankondang

 

What Craig has said pretty much answers it.  After the Geneva Accords the US actually left Laos.  The North Vietnamese never did.  The Hmong were group primarily backed by the US.  And, btw, a select group of Hmong was trained to be pilots who used the old piston driven trainers as attack aircraft.  There is a lot of information on this.  Probably the single best book on the subject is Kenneth Conboys.  https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-War-CIAs-Secret-Laos/dp/1581605358

 

Not entirely, the CIA retained a presence and then financed and managed the massive and utterly futile multi-year bombing campaign from Udon. Essentially attempting to destroy everything and everyone in northern Laos. The caves at Viangxai are very interesting, as indeed is the Plain of Jars. and another legacy of the CIA is Tham Piu cave, where 400 viilagers were killed when a CIA funded missile was launched into the cave.

 

The US may only have been one of the parties involved, but it was the US that caused most of the damage.

[Graemej100]

7 hours ago, KKr said:

Did not know the USA had dropped so much ordinance on Laos.
The Generals must have thought about it, and have concluded that it was absolutely necessary to save lives.

The contribution is about a dollar per device.
Looks like a pittance in comparison to the real cost of  a serious and coordinated de-mining operation.
(In Sri Lanka, some areas were swept three times before they were cleared for agricultural or residential use.)
 

 

US General Curtis LeMay famously said, "We will bomb them (Laos) back into the stone age". And so they did!

From what I understand there are more limbless people in Laos, per head of population, than any other country in the world, and many of them became that way as children. Unexploded cluster bombs etc. don't care who sets them off.

I also read, somewhere that somewhere around 35% (I think it might have even been a bit more) of all ordinance dropped does NOT explode.

[Usernames]

8 minutes ago, 12DrinkMore said:

 

Not entirely, the CIA retained a presence and then financed and managed the massive and utterly futile multi-year bombing campaign from Udon. Essentially attempting to destroy everything and everyone in northern Laos. The caves at Viangxai are very interesting, as indeed is the Plain of Jars. and another legacy of the CIA is Tham Piu cave, where 400 viilagers were killed when a CIA funded missile was launched into the cave.

 

The US may only have been one of the parties involved, but it was the US that caused most of the damage.

 

I see you've been on the Lao government's tour.  Actually, they are okay.  I like the people in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs there, who do help with getting filming rights and really work well with you.  Yes, the bombing campaign came in from Udorn.  But the Lima Sites were not US Air Force or US anything else.  The Air America guys, for example, cannot get a government related pension.  If they were CIA, they would have.  The best thing to compare them to is the American Volunteer Group in China during World War II.  In fact a lot of the early Air America guys, through CAT, came from Chennault's Flying Tigers origins. Funny how the Flying Tigers were heroes when fighting against Imperial Japan, but the Air America guys are considered villains by some for trying to hold back the biggest genocidal ideology in history, communism.

[12DrinkMore]

10 minutes ago, Usernames said:

Can't get rid of the quote box or cancel the post. Why???

 

Yep, I have had a few of those.

 

Try to mouse-click in the reply box after the quote box and then hit "delete" a couple of times. 

[HappyDazed]

1 hour ago, Usernames said:

 

After the Geneva Accords the US actually left Laos. 

 

You sure?.... If so, what year?

 

As I understand it the US left Indochina in 1975 after an ass kicking from a bunch of barefoot rice farmers using antique weapons.

[Usernames]

2 minutes ago, HappyDazed said:

 

You sure?.... If so, what year?

 

As I understand it the US left Indochina in 1975 after an ass kicking from a bunch of barefoot rice farmers using antique weapons.

 

History didn't begin in 1975. Read a book.

[Graemej100]

3 hours ago, MaxYakov said:

 

Exactly. And if there were 80 million, I'd be seriously considering determining why there were so many duds. Maybe remaining WW II ordnance? It has been documented that WW II bombs were being used at risk to the Carriers, aircraft and personnel.

 

Interesting Wiki article on unexploded ordnance worldwide.

 

 

 

 

3 hours ago, HappyDazed said:

If the total number of bombs is known and the fail rate....then estimating the unexploded is fairley simple.

From Wikipedia: 

Laos[edit]

Laos has the distinction of being the world's most heavily bombed nation. During the period of the Vietnam War, over half a million American bombing missions dropped more than 2 million tons^[32] of ordnance on Laos, most of it anti-personnel cluster bombs.^[33] Each cluster bomb shell contained hundreds of individual bomblets, "bombies", about the size of a tennis ball. An estimated 30% of these munitions did not detonate. Ten of the 18 Laotian provinces have been described as "severely contaminated" with artillery and mortar shells, mines, rockets, grenades, and other devices from various countries of origin. These munitions pose a continuing obstacle to agriculture and a special threat to children, who are attracted by the toylike devices.^{[citation needed]}

Some 288 million cluster munitions and about 75 million unexploded bombs were left across Laos after the war ended. From 1996–2009, more than 1 million items of UXO were destroyed, freeing up 23,000 hectares of land. Between 1999 and 2008, there were 2,184 casualties (including 834 deaths) from UXO incidents.

So, I guess they knew how many bombs they dropped and if 30% (say) is the given fail rate and didn't explode, and if the above figures are correct - 363,000,000 left after the war ended -  then the total dropped must have been somewhere around ....a shitload! That's a hell of a lot of bombs to drop on a small country of, then, less than 6 million people. That's pretty brave of the US and the CIA. And the Hmong are still the Laotian scapegoats.......but that's another story.

 

[HappyDazed]

14 minutes ago, Usernames said:

 Yes, the bombing campaign came in from Udorn.  But the Lima Sites were not US Air Force or US anything else.  The Air America guys, for example, cannot get a government related pension.  If they were CIA, they would have.  The best thing to compare them to is the American Volunteer Group in China during World War II.  In fact a lot of the early Air America guys, through CAT, came from Chennault's Flying Tigers origins. Funny how the Flying Tigers were heroes when fighting against Imperial Japan, but the Air America guys are considered villains by some for trying to hold back the biggest genocidal ideology in history, communism.

What a load of BS ..... Air America was run by the CIA and used for anything they wanted to do off the books.

Edited September 7, 2016 by HappyDazed

[HappyDazed]

10 minutes ago, Usernames said:

 

History didn't begin in 1975. Read a book.

 

Nobody claimed it did so you can put away the straw man.... However I did look up your claim which is why I asked for the year .......... Are you going to tell us the year or not? What with you being interested in history n'all

[7by7]

5 hours ago, craigt3365 said:

Let's remember what started this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Indochina_War

 

Are you blaming the Vietnamese for wanting independence or the French for not granting it to them?

 

When the Viet Minh were carrying out a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese from 1941 onwards, guess who armed and trained them?

 

Yep, the OSS! 

 

One of many times the USA's "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" foreign policy has come back to bite them on the proverbial!

[Usernames]

17 minutes ago, HappyDazed said:

 

Nobody claimed it did so you can put away the straw man.... However I did look up your claim which is why I asked for the year .......... Are you going to tell us the year or not? What with you being interested in history n'all

 

Here you go.  Maybe even drunken buffoons will understand it.  I don't mean you, of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Agreement_on_the_Neutrality_of_Laos 

[willyumiii]

11 hours ago, KKr said:

Did not know the USA had dropped so much ordinance on Laos.
The Generals must have thougt about it, and have concluded that it was absolutely necessary to save lives.

The contribution is about a dollar per device.
Looks like a pittance in comparison to the real cost of  a serious and coordinated de-mining operation.
(In Sri Lanka, some areas were swept three times before they were cleared for agricultural or residential use.)
 

A large percentage of these bombs were dropped in Laos by planes bombing Vietnam that had to land and needed to dump their bombs before landing.

Laos was their bomb dump.

[willyumiii]

10 hours ago, ALLSEEINGEYE said:

I didn't say the USA was the only ones that were evil, but their actions here were illegal and evil. 

 

They were not allowed by their own laws and congress, to bomb Laos or Cambodia yet they did, relentlessly. To the point where neither of these countries have recovered to this day.

 

This was a big cold war game between the US and USSR. The US lost in Vietnam, and what happened? Did the world end? No!!

 

60,000 US boys died, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. Who knows how many were killed in Cambodia and in Laos by illegal bombing that should be considered a war crime and crimes against humanity.

 

This also made it possible for the Khmer Rouge to come into power resulting in an estimated 2 million deaths.

 

Some speculate that Kennedy was assassinated to make way for this war to happen.

 

Was it really about keeping the world safe? Because losing the war didn't seem to make it less safe.

 

Or was this war and most others, just about the rich getting richer, while slaughtering innocent people to make it happen?

War is all about money and profits.

Freedom, democracy and stopping communism are only excuses to fool the public.

USA has not won a war since WWII ( and they did not win it alone ).

But Defence contractors in America have made billions in profit from the wars the US has not won.

This is still going on today in the middle east.

War is big business in America.

[willyumiii]

Paying a little over $1.00 per bomb is pretty cheap.

I doubt that it will put a dent in the problem.

But it is good press.

[MyFrenU]

10 hours ago, Pimay1 said:

Who counted the bombs and came up with 80 million?

Have you ever heard of inventory,budgets,audits,stock checks etc?

[MyFrenU]

11 hours ago, Tonawatchee said:

80,000,000 duds in Laos?

Wonder about Cambodia and Vietnam. Kids are still occasionally getting blown up in those countries 

War has no afterthought to any human welfare and we can still see that today.

Cambodia is heavily mined also,by both the Americans and the Khmer Rouge,probably Vietnamese also.I believe Angkor and Siem Reap was a KR stronghold and last time I was at the temple complex there were signs warning you not to step off the clearly delineated pathways and to have a guide with local knowledge,as in where the landmines were!