CBU Dash 87 slash B
Combined effects munitions
It is a sight to see (JSOW)
Thousand pound 14 foot cluster bombs
Ingenious american ingenuity
Over your head shrapnel comes
No cover, canot run
Nis, Serbia on the 7th of May
Body under a sheet clutches carrots
There is a leg that walked to the market
A childŐs face lays like mashed blood orange
Tunnels into backs faces blown apart...
The savagery just began to start
(thirty thousand wait like soda cans)
300 shards hit soft targets ,
(they lay like soda cans)
It is all human flesh going to the market.
— One of the many instances of civilian massacres blanked out from the US press, was the explosion of a cluster bomb in the Nis, Serbia marketplace. Reporters, photographers of many news organizations were present. Beyond this collateral damage upon civilians (who were resisting, striking, and organizing in large numbers against their fascist leaders years before the bombing) we must remember the murder doesnŐt end there. The US military left an estimated thirty thousand surprises in the fields of Serbia and Kosovo. That is , the unexploded bomblets of this vicious weapon. And tens of thousands more in Iraq. In Kosovo, children under 14 are nearly five times more likely to be killed or injured by a cluster munition than by a land mine left by retreating Yugoslav forces. The weapon that was used in Iraq is formally known as Joint Stand-off Weapon (JSOW). The 1,000 pound, 14-foot-long weapon carries 145 anti-armor and anti-personnel incendiary bomblets which disperse over an area that is approximately 100 feet long and 200 feet wide. In short, this weapon, which Quigley [a US official] describes as a "long-range, precision-guided, stand-off weapon," rains down deadly bomblets on an area the size of a football field with six bombs falling in every 1,000 square feet. The JSOW releases its sub-munitions about 400 feet above its target. These bomblets are also used in the most prevalent modern U.S. cluster bomb, the CBU-87(which has 300 or more bomblets) Once ejected, the bomblets, each the size of soda can, simply fall freely at the mercy of local winds. Even worse, US-made cluster bomblets are bright yellow, roughly the size and shape of soda cans, making them especially attractive to children.