From USA Today:

A four-month examination by USA TODAY of how cluster bombs were used in the Iraq war found dozens of deaths that were unintended but predictable. Although U.S. forces sought to limit what they call "collateral damage" in the Iraq campaign, they defied international criticism and used nearly 10,800 cluster weapons.

A cluster bomb is "a bomb that contains dozens or hundreds of small explosives and is dropped by aircraft." A cluster munition is "A piece of ordnance that contains dozens or hundreds of small explosives and is fired by ground-based howitzers or rocket launchers."

A world-wide moratorium campaign against cluster bombs is underway.

Cluster bombs have been controversial since they killed thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian civilians during and after the Vietnam War. They have since been used by armies around the world, including Russian forces in Chechnya and Sudanese government troops fighting rebels in a long-running civil war. But their use in urban areas of Iraq has given new momentum to a movement to restrict the use of cluster bombs.

....Cluster weapons are especially dangerous to civilians because they spray wide areas with hundreds of bomblets. Most are unguided "dumb" weapons, so they can miss their target, and many of the bomblets don't explode immediately.

Part 2 of USA Today's report is here. We urge you to read both reports in full.

Here is our earlier post on why cluster bombs should be banned.

Update: Human Rights Watch says hundreds of civilian deaths in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq could have been prevented by abandoning two misguided military tactics--cluster bombs and the U.S. "decaptiation" strategy. Their new 147 page report is available here.