Cambodia Bombing Database
Jul 23rd, 2002 by Jinja
Fascinating. Should the Khmer Rouge have been bombed? Probably.
But I’m not enamored of the strategy of carpet bombing, which killed a lot of noncombatants.
I wonder if the database lists flight crews, and armaments manufacturers?
- J
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U.S. firm provides Cambodia detailed list of 1970s U.S. bombing runs
Monday, July 8, 2002
(07-08) 06:21 PDT PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) –
A U.S. defense contractor provided the Cambodian government with computerized information Monday detailing the hundreds of bombing runs that American planes made on Cambodian territory during the Vietnam War.
The information is intended to help Cambodian demining groups clear land for settlers and agricultural development, officials said. The information came from the U.S. national archive, originally supplied by pilots after completing their missions.
U.S. bombing runs against suspected Viet Cong supply lines on Cambodian soil began in 1969 and bombing of suspected communists in Cambodia continued sporadically until 1973.
Tens of thousands of Cambodians were killed and injured in the raids, many of which were orchestrated secretly by the Nixon administration and later declared illegal by Congress.
Many of the bombs remain unexploded and scattered about the Cambodian countryside in addition to the thousands of more unexploded ordnance from more than 30 years of civil strife in the country, one of the poorest in the world.
In a ceremony at the government’s Cabinet office, Cambodia’s de-mining authorities accepted the information, contained in a CD-ROM, from Michael Sheinkman, a private analyst with ties to the U.S. Defense Department. The donation has the blessing of the U.S. government.
“We look forward to this database helping us do our work,” said the director general of Cambodia’s national authority on demining, Sam Sotha, a Cambodian-American citizen.
Sheinkman, a geographer for the Federal Resources Corporation of Fairfax, Va., described the information as the most complete database of a U.S. bombing campaign ever collected.
“If they were dropping leaflets, that’s in the database,” Sheinkman said.
“If they were shooting bullets, that’s in the database. Large bombs. Cluster bombs — anything that was in the air at the time it was recorded.”
U.S. Embassy Defense Attache Col. Mike Norton, who attended the ceremony, said the information may not be of “pinpoint” accuracy.
“But it’s better to know, ‘OK, this is the general area something may have happened.’ It will assist the deminers in their planning of demining operations,” Norton said.
Cambodia, funded by international donors, spends millions of dollars each year clearing land mines from its pockmarked countryside.
