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Stars & Stripes: What GIs need to know about Kosovo
Stars & Stripes ^ | November 12, 2006 | Stella Jatras

Posted on 11/14/2006 6:46:18 PM PST by Bokababe

The Nov. 6 article “Training helps Guardsmen get Kosovo-savvy” deserves a response.

The Stars and Stripes reporter states that ethnic Albanians in Kosovo make up 90 percent of the population. Actually, a more precise number is 97 percent. It is also necessary for your readers to understand just how the Kosovo (Muslim) Albanians became the majority — considering the Christian Serbs were once the majority until hundreds of thousands of them were either ethnically cleansed or killed by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi troops, followed by the communist Josip Broz Tito, who, in his hatred for the Christian Orthodox Serbs, encouraged Albanians to cross illegally into Kosovo.

While training for the situation as it exists today is important, we too often send our young men and women into these foreign countries to do impossible tasks without a clear understanding of the cultural and historical background of the region. What the Wailing Wall is to the Jews, what the Vatican is to the Roman Catholics, and what Mecca is to Muslims, Kosovo is to the Serbs. It is their Jerusalem. It is their heart and soul.

While under the watchful eye of NATO’s Kosovo Forces since 1999, more than 150 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries have been destroyed or desecrated and dozens of new mosques have been built — including the Osama bin Laden mosque that now stands on Serbian soil. Is this why peacekeepers are in Kosovo? To protect mosques named after the prime terrorist who has vowed to destroy our country?

Following are facts of importance that should not be ignored:

We have known as far back as 1999 the terrorist connections of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) when The Washington Times reported that “some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war efforts through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden."

In 2004, a report by National Review stated: “A pogrom started in Europe on Wednesday. A U.N. official is quoted as saying that ‘Kristallnacht is under way in Kosovo.’ Serbs are being murdered and their 800-year-old churches are aflame. Much of the Christian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is on fire and could be lost forever. By these deeds too many of Kosovo’s Albanians have shown that all the speeches about democracy and multi-ethnicity we have been hearing in Kosovo since June 1999, and the naive repetition of them by the international community, are false. These words too are burning, as is the hope in the hearts of right-thinking policymakers across the world that Kosovo’s barbarians can be civilized at little cost to the West.”

Serbian culture, language and religion are being eradicated by Albanian mobs with the help of the Kosovo Liberation Army that has now been morphed into the Kosovo Peace Corps. Even under U.N. control, as noted in a May 20, 2002, briefing by Derek Chappell, spokesman for the U.N. Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) Police, sex slavery, prostitution and rape are rampant in Kosovo. The situation has become worse, not better.

The Wall Street Journal of Nov. 1, 2001 — in an article titled “Al Qaeda’s Balkan Links” — writes: “For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factors and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, (FYROM) Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which al Qaeda has also played a part.” …

It is a well-known fact that many of the jihadists who have taken over the government in Kosovo were trained in bin Laden’s terrorist camps. Sitting in the seat of government, Kosovo’s prime minister, Agim Ceku, helped to mastermind the most brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign in post-communist Yugoslavia’s history. According to an Amnesty International report, “Croatia: Impunity for killing after [Operation] Storm,” nearly the entire ethnic Serbian population of the region, estimated to be at least 180,000 people, fled in face of the attack. Hundreds of civilians were murdered, most of the victims being elderly and disabled persons who were unable to flee. The report estimates that “5,000 structures were torched by the advancing Croatian army.”

While the training emphasizes building relationships with the town leaders, does that include building relationships with the few Serbs who are left? Also, are our GIs being prepared for the renewed violence that Albanian Muslims have warned of if independence for Kosovo is delayed or refused? The violence may be directed at Americans who up until now they have considered to be “on their side.”

After Sept. 11, President Bush told the American people that we would do whatever it takes to defend our country against the Islamic terrorists, yet we denied the Serbs the right to fight the same enemy that we are fighting today.

Am I cynical? You bet. Through our flawed foreign policies in the Balkans, we destroyed a Christian people, our ally of two world wars, in order to appease the Muslim world, a world that cannot be appeased. Sept. 11 is a case in point.

Stella L. Jatras, a career military officer’s wife, lives in Camp Hill, Pa.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: albanians; balkans; dhimmwit; ihoppy; kosovo; military; serbs; toothlessdhimmi; wrongside; wrongwar
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To: Hoplite; LenS

How nice, two Islamofascist supporters find each other! Cue the violins.


41 posted on 11/15/2006 3:59:24 AM PST by FormerLib (Sacrificing our land and our blood cannot buy protection from jihad.-Bishop Artemije of Kosovo)
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To: LjubivojeRadosavljevic

The more you see of Hoplite's posts, the more obvious it is he cut his teeth posting on Democrat Underground (in the Lifestyles section, I'm sure).


42 posted on 11/15/2006 4:00:46 AM PST by FormerLib (Sacrificing our land and our blood cannot buy protection from jihad.-Bishop Artemije of Kosovo)
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To: lightman; uncbob; ninenot; sittnick; steve50; Hegemony Cricket; Willie Green; Wolfie; ex-snook; ...
"Yeah Bubba backed the wrong side but you won't hear about that from the MSM"

Worldwide Bubba always threw US miliary support behind the Islamists.

It was the Republicans like Bob Dole who were pushing him to do it. Clinton at first was resisting taking sides and was accused of APPEASEMENT and compared to Chamberlain in Munich.

Magazines like National Review were also involved in anti-Serb campaign.

Clinton was vilified that he was sympathetic to the French or European efforts to avoid war.

A sample from the 1990s - Clinton's Debacle in Bosnia
[...]
This acquiescence in the Anglo-French partitioning policy is the most significant characteristic of the settlement that was brokered by the Clinton Administration at Dayton. The Accords represent the culmination of a lengthy process by which the United States shifted from advocacy of the use of military force and Bosnia's right of self-defence to full acceptance of the British and French governments' de facto recognition of a 'Greater Serbia'. Rather than lead, the Administration simply capitulated.
[...]
the Clinton Administration's moves toward appeasement

Throughout its tenure, the Clinton Administration placed an untenably high premium on 'allied unity', which is another way of saying capitulation to policies that European powers perceived to be in their national interests.

Britain and France rationalized their sway over the US Administration by claiming a superior knowledge and wisdom acquired over hundreds of years of dealing with the Balkans. Stand back and stand down, their argument went: it is best to contain the fighting and allow Serbia, the largest Balkan power, to exercise its rightful hegemony over the region. It is true, of course, that British and French history and the two countries' proximity may initially have supported their claim to some special status as arbiters. The fact is, however, that Europe's four-year record is one of failure. Anglo- French knowledge and wisdom, not for the first time in history, turned out to be fundamentally flawed. It is worth remembering that, in their active form, they brought us Munich, while in inaction they brought us Hitler's unchallenged invasions of the Rhineland and the Sudetenland.
[...]

H.D.S. Greenway the senior associate editor of Boston Globe warned Clinton in 1993 (28 April, B.G.) :

[...] Respected opinion makers from both left and right have been beating the intervention drum, taunting Clinton, calling his caution a weakness and making shallow, ill-considered comparisons with Hitler-appeasing Neville Chamberlain.
[...]
Unfortunately for Clinton, he will have to live with the results of intervention while pundits promoting war today will be the first to denounce him should things go wrong tomorrow.

43 posted on 11/15/2006 4:49:35 AM PST by A. Pole (Orwell:He who controls the present, controls the past.He who controls the past, controls the future.)
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To: LenS

You're talking out of your arse, Lens.


44 posted on 11/15/2006 5:11:25 AM PST by Banat (DEO ?? REGI ?? PATRI?? | http://degaullist.wordpress.com)
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To: A. Pole

That was BOSNIA

Another mistake but this is about
Kosovo and Serbia where we bombed Belgrade to ruin


45 posted on 11/15/2006 5:15:30 AM PST by uncbob
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To: uncbob
That was BOSNIA Another mistake but this is about Kosovo and Serbia where we bombed Belgrade to ruin

NO! No "Another mistake but". These things are connected. First Bosnia then Kosovo.

46 posted on 11/15/2006 5:24:52 AM PST by A. Pole (Orwell:He who controls the present, controls the past.He who controls the past, controls the future.)
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To: uncbob; A. Pole; tgambill
>>>>>>That was BOSNIA <<<<<<

The orchestrated lies about "genocide" in Bosnia were used as a pretext to "prevent another genocide" and bomb Serbia civilians with impunity. Also, to ethnically cleanse Serbs from their ancestral land and destroy Christian heritage. Anyone who had moral indegrity and intellectual honesty to object those lies and actions was labelled "Serb lover" or "Serb supporter", the name "Serb" being made synonimous with Nazi and genocidal exterminator.

Replace the word "Serb" with "Jew" and you'll find where the inspiration came from - Nazi propaganda.The smear remained to the present day. What is rather puzzling is the disproportional number of liberal Jewish Americans in this plot.

Having in mind that Douglas Feith was AQ moneyman in Washington DC the silence of the neocons on FR discussions regarding Bosnia and Kosovo lies is thundering.

47 posted on 11/15/2006 6:14:08 AM PST by DTA (Mr. President, Condy is asleep at the wheel !)
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To: LjubivojeRadosavljevic
all you have to do is replace the word "Serbs" with "Americans" and then sign the statement (you give above) underneath with the name "Usama Bin Laden

Of course - because the international community's is equivalent to Al Qaeda.

How silly of me not to see it.

Can I get a Hitler comparison while you're at it?

As for Milan Babic vs. Oric, I'd compare and contrast what crimes they were found guilty of - what would you propose instead?

48 posted on 11/15/2006 6:19:00 AM PST by Hoplite
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To: Hoplite

come around eventually.....? you are correct, only....if the truth stops becoming the truth and the lie becomes a way of life.


49 posted on 11/15/2006 6:19:51 AM PST by tgambill (I would like to comment.....)
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Comment #50 Removed by Moderator

To: Bokababe

Query....

Under the guise of "full disclosure," why did Stella L. Jatras identify herself as, "a career military officer’s wife, lives in Camp Hill, Pa." instead of a staff member/writer for Antiwar.com, an organization,


"...dedicated to building an awareness to the globalist and interventionist forces that would enslave us all in a New World Order on which the sun never sets."

Who knows, maybe her real last name is "Yablonski," too.


51 posted on 11/15/2006 7:33:52 AM PST by PurpleMan
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To: PurpleMan
"Under the guise of "full disclosure," why did Stella L. Jatras identify herself as, "a career military officer’s wife, lives in Camp Hill, Pa." instead of a staff member/writer for Antiwar.com, an organization,"

Because Stella is not "a staff writer for Antiwar.com."

Stella is a freelance writer whose specialty for the last seven years has been the Balkans. Yes, antiwar.com has picked up some of her articles and letters, but so have a lot of publications, including Jewish World Review, The New American and Jihad Watch. You can't publish an author's entire resume as an intro to every article and Stella also IS "a career military officer's wife".

There is no conflict of interest, but it makes me wonder what your agenda might be in trying to pretend that there is!

52 posted on 11/15/2006 8:14:42 AM PST by Bokababe ( http://www.savekosovo.org)
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To: Bokababe

Agenda? Sheesh

I never wrote that there was a conflict of interest. That was you. She CHOSE to identify herself a certain way which lent credence to a identity as an innocuous military wife just posting a response to an article when, in fact, she is more than that.

She IS a journalist and she IS on the staff ("Researcher") of Anti.war.com and she WRITES for them. QED (Check out the right side of the page http://antiwar.com/who.php). Also a Nexix/Lexis search shows that she is a regular letter to the editor writer to the Washington Times

So, when posting here or writing there.....

Why be disingenuous? What is the purpose of the "deception"? Who benefits?

Waht's wrong with an agenda of haveing people say who they are?


53 posted on 11/15/2006 9:14:02 AM PST by PurpleMan
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To: PurpleMan

If I were writing an article for "Dog Fanciers" magazine, the "about the author section" would read "owner of a Border Collie and a Featherhaired Retriever" -- not "regular poster to Free Republic" Why? Because what is most relevant facts to dog fanciers are the dogs I own, not my political views.

When Stella wrote for a military magazine, the most relevant fact to other military personnel reading the article was that she was "the wife of a career military officer", period. I really don't see how Stella described herself, as being the least bit deceptive.

Most of the writing endeavors you have described aren't even paying gigs (as in a professional journalist) I know, because I have written articles for similar sites -- and I also know that after having written one articles for one site three years ago, they still list my name as part of their "contributing staff" -- it's a joke really, intended by the owners of the site to make the website sound like it has more muscle than it really does. I haven't even talked to them in nearly a year.

The idea that "career military officer's wife" is "innocuous" and has no other vocation or interests is a very subjective (and sexist) call. And it is "a call" that -- in this internet age, is easily checked by anyone in about 30 seconds by loading her name into an internet search engine and finding out, just as you did.

Requiring full disclosure indicates that there was some possible conflict of interest or "hidden agenda" on Stella's part. I don't see it.

I actually think this whole discussion between you and me is a big tempest in a teapot.


54 posted on 11/15/2006 10:40:38 AM PST by Bokababe ( http://www.savekosovo.org)
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To: Bokababe

"big tempest in a teapot"

Agreed. We need a virtual.. er... a real bar where people quickly, sanely, and intelligently discuss thoughts over a brewski. :>)


55 posted on 11/15/2006 11:27:55 AM PST by PurpleMan
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To: Hoplite
["How silly of me not to see it."]

Actually, Hoplite, Bin Laden did make a statement very similar to you wrote in your post #33. That's what prompted me.

I'm going to try to see if I can find it.
56 posted on 11/15/2006 11:39:56 AM PST by LjubivojeRadosavljevic
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To: tgambill
It's part of Hoppy's denial syndrome that he can't accept the stories which show the truth about Bosnia and Kosovo and he doesn't notice that more folks are realizing we were on the wrong side in the Balkans.
57 posted on 11/15/2006 11:54:06 AM PST by FormerLib (Sacrificing our land and our blood cannot buy protection from jihad.-Bishop Artemije of Kosovo)
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To: PurpleMan

Works for me, My-favorite-color Man!


58 posted on 11/15/2006 11:55:52 AM PST by Bokababe ( http://www.savekosovo.org)
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To: Hoplite
Hoplite says: ["If the Serbs continually choose a government which tells them what they want to hear, rather than giving them the unvarnished truth, then the consequences are theirs to bear."]

Bin Laden says: ["The American people should remember that... they elect their president. The American Congress endorses all government measures and this proves that the entire America is responsible...because they elect the Congress."]

See the similarities?
59 posted on 11/15/2006 7:30:54 PM PST by LjubivojeRadosavljevic
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To: LjubivojeRadosavljevic
See the similarities?

See how you're equating the international community with Bin Laden?

That's just stupid.

60 posted on 11/16/2006 7:24:10 AM PST by Hoplite
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