[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 147 (Tuesday, October 30, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H7392]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          FOOD AID FOR AFGHANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. McKinney) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I know the American people want to help 
the suffering people of Afghanistan. And I am sorry to say that we 
already stand condemned by Medecins Sans Frontieres for conducting 
nothing more than a propaganda campaign regarding our food drops.
  Our brave young men and women are risking their lives to deliver this 
food, and how will we be judged, however, by this latest blunder?
  I ask my colleagues to take a look at this object and this object. To 
more than just a casual observer, they might even get mistaken for the 
same thing. And that is what has got the U.S. military quaking in their 
boots. Can one imagine the horror if this object, a cluster bomb, gets 
mistaken for this object, a food packet? One is life and the other one 
is death. The squarish one is the food. The roundish one is a cluster 
bomb. That is what the poor starving people of Afghanistan must now 
contend with.
  The U.S. military is dropping little notes to inform people not to 
pick up this one, the cluster bomb, thinking it is food because if they 
pick up this one, which is the wrong one, they will get blown to 
smithereens.
  Is it not bad enough that our military is dropping cluster bombs on 
Afghanistan anyway? Well, it is really bad because in the war in 
Kosovo, then-Major General Ryan refused to allow cluster bombs to be 
dropped because of the civilian deaths associated with cluster bombs, 
especially the children. But now our Air Force Chief of Staff Ryan 
refuses to issue such a directive, it appears, as the U.S. comes under 
fire from humanitarian organizations around the world for dropping 
cluster bombs on the people of Afghanistan.
  I have written a letter to our President asking that we please 
refrain from using cluster bombs. But a funny thing about cluster 
bombs. They have little bomblets that look like things; and so when 
kids see them, they think they are a toy or something.
  Now, Afghanistan already has 10 million landmines, and the unexploded 
bomblets from the cluster bombs add to that number. So now if the food 
looks like this object, what will hungry children do? But if the food 
looks like this object and the bombs look like this object, what would 
any hungry person do? The military bets that they are going to try to 
find something to eat. And so the Pentagon is concerned that people who 
are hungry for food that looks like this object will confuse it with 
bomblets that look like this object. The Pentagon is now worried that 
hungry Afghan people will try to eat the bombs thinking that it is 
American food.
  So the Pentagon has sent messages to the Afghan people. One message 
says, ``As you may have heard, the Partnership of Nations is dropping 
yellow humanitarian daily rations. Although it is unlikely, it is 
possible that not every bomb will explode on impact. These bombs are a 
yellow color and are can-shaped.''
  Another Pentagon message is more to the point. It says, ``Please, 
please exercise caution when approaching yellow unidentified objects in 
areas that have been recently bombed.''
  Mr. Speaker, not only do innocent Afghans have to worry about the 
Taliban, not only do they have to worry about landmines left over from 
the last war, not only do they have to worry about starving to death 
and the approaching winter, now they have to worry about bombs that 
look like food. I think I have heard it all now, Mr. Speaker.

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