'Secret War'

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The thing with top fives is that interesting T5 topics don't tend to present themselves very often with the opportunity to complete a quick set. By that i mean there's been plenty of good, bad and ugly that i'm storing away such as 'our alternatives to rock, paper, scissors ', 'shameful western behaviour abroad' and 'incidences with a dog', but these will have to wait (so far i only have two good dog incidences and i'm not in a hurry to add to them). However for the ten days or so we've been in Laos PDR we've been finding out more and more of the 'Secret War', where the US in total and startling-bare-face-lie denial to the rest of the world bombed the shit out of Laos just in case it fell under communism leadership, that might spread through Asia and the rest of the world...

So the gist of it is that from 1964 to 73 (prior and during the Vietnam War) the US Air Force carried out bombing equal to a plane load every 9mins for 9 years, which makes Laos the most heavily bombed country in the world per capita.

The startling (but again, really not that surprising?) elements get worse when you consider that after 35 years these bombs are still killing innocent Laos people - particularly rural children who don't know what unexploded bombs (UXO) are, but do know that they can get good money for scrap metal. And for a nation that is so poor (US $400 pa av. salary) there is very little outside support to help them dispose of the UXO. Certainly none from the US that i can see.

Anyhow, from the both eclectic and eccentric National Museum of Laos PDR, the fantastic COPE amputee rehabilitation centre in Vientiane and the even more brilliant Aussie documentary 'Bomb Harvest'*, here is the top five bombing facts about the USofA's 'Secret War' on Laos

5. Reported that up to 70%!o(MISSING)f all B-52 strikes in Indochina were targeted at Laos (so more than Vietnam)

4. USAF flew 584,000 missions to drop a total of 2million tonnes of bombs, equivalent to 700kg of explosives per person

3. The bombs predominantly used were Cluster Bombs. Each canister contained 300-400 tennis ball bomblets that each contained 300 ball bearings that would explode across an area equal to several footy pitches

2. No. of cluster munitions (bombies) dropped was in excess of 260m and the estimate failure rate was 30%! (MISSING)

1. Estimated no. of active bombies still in the country: at least 78 million

On these scales there is no justified debate or reasoning around world politics/ideologies then or now. Surely it's just a human to human case of wrong that now should be put right. Typical (from what little we've experience so far) of the Laos people though, they've found a use for much of the save 'left overs' - bomb casings used for hut stilts or flower baskets, fish ponds out of craters, etc, etc.

*The documentary is completely absorbing viewing, from archive footage of bombings and Presidents JFK and Nixon denying any US war in "LAYOS" through to banter/drama of an Aussie training Laos hopefuls to become 'UXO disposal experts. 5 stars!

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