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Landmines are responsible for 15,000 to 20,000 deaths every year around the globe, the vast majority of them (80 percent) civilians, according to the United Nations. Back in late 1997, a bunch of countries agreed that they should try and put a stop to these preventable horrors, so they signed a treaty in Ottawa, Canada, vowing not to use, stockpile or trade in anti-personnel mines. The US has actually been steadily moving away from landmines in recent years. For years, the US government maintained that it needed stockpiles of landmines at various military bases around the globe to ensure the safety of our men and women in uniform and the success of their mission. Then under President Bush, the government said that it would destroy all of its landmines except for those at US military bases in South Korea, which it said it needed to keep around in the event North Korea invaded. As the State Department under President Bush explained: