"...I'm waiting for Guam to capsize"
Posted on 03/22/2013 3:11:04 PM PDT by DeprogramLiberalism
[This is a companion piece to an essay I posted earlier in the week in regard to the tenth anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq: #22 The Quiet Funeral of Bush Lied - Thousands Died! Bill Clinton's war with Serbia over Kosovo in 1998 starkly illustrates the double standards of contemporary American liberals. It is written in the first person to liberals, but also for conservatives.]
Liberals believe that former President Bush lied to the American people to get support for invading Iraq (this erroneous belief will be completely debunked in #22 The Quiet Funeral of “Bush Lied – Thousands Died!”). They called it an “illegal war”. For this reason many liberals have wanted the former President to be somehow held accountable. During his Presidency they wanted him impeached and many have called for jail time. But where was their outrage when former President Clinton lied to the American people to get their support for a war with Serbia? [*aoxunnp] [10] President Clinton attacked Serbia with no U.S. interest in Serbia or Kosovo, no threat to America, no congressional approval, and without even bothering to consult the United Nations or formally inform them of his intentions. Providing very dubious evidence, his administration claimed “500,000″ ethnic Kosovars had disappeared as a result of “ethnic cleansing” by the Serbs, and on television he compared it to the “Holocaust” of World War Two when six million Jews were exterminated by Hitler’s Nazis, but the only legitimate comparison to the Nazis was Clinton’s flagrant use of propaganda to sell his war. It all turned out to be a complete fabrication. Even the most inflated casualty numbers from questionable post-war survey estimates topped out at 12,000. Actual body counts range up to only a few thousand. [6yds64e] [11] Many of those deaths were ethnic Serbs killed by American bombs and the Kosovar KLA Muslim terrorists that precipitated the Serb military action in Kosovo in the first place (incidentally, the KLA were recognized as Islamic terrorists by the U.S. government at the time). [*282hm8, *7d39eku] [12] President Clinton actually aligned America with a recognized Islamic terrorist group that essentially were domestic terrorists in Serbia. Did liberals demand rock-solid evidence before the war began? No. Did liberals demand a UN resolution before entering the war? No. So here is our next 800 pound gorilla. Where were liberals demanding impeachment and jail time for former President Clinton for conducting an “illegal war” based on outrageous administration fabrications of propaganda? Where are their parallel demands for Clinton to be tried for the same supposed crimes as Bush?
One can attempt to argue that there were extenuating circumstances with the Iraq invasion that singles it out from the Serbia attack, but that would only be making my point for me. For instance one might claim that very few American troops died in the Serbia war, but that changes nothing in the basic argument, because all that is saying is that at the beginning of the Iraq War before many American troops had died, the war was in effect justified, only to lose its justification after a certain undefined amount of casualties. That hardly makes sense. At least Bush jumped through all of the right hoops, getting UN resolutions, congressional support, providing time for inspections and at least attempting to validate his reasons for the Iraq War. Another argument might be that innocent civilians died in the Iraq War. This was true in the war with Serbia as well. Here is a video of the bombing of a civilian train by an American jet that resulted in 27 civilian deaths: [*67x2yj5] [13] And here is that story along with another about the killing of 60 Albanian refugees: [*5scyjta] [14]
I’ve never heard a liberal justify their condemnation of Bush on the extenuating circumstances, but only on the basic premise that Bush supposedly lied. In fact that was and still is the liberal mantra: “Bush lied – thousands died!” That issue will be dealt with later, but for now we definitely know that Bill Clinton did not tell the truth about his administration’s reasons for going to war against Serbia. There is no debate on that. His claim of supposedly “500,000″ ethnic Kosovars being “ethnically cleansed” and comparing it to the “Holocaust” was a flat out fabrication specifically designed to deceive the American public. (As a side note, this is not the first war entered based on a fabrication by a Democratic President. It has since been discovered and released in 2005 by the National Security Agency that the congressional Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which basically authorized the Vietnam War was also based on an invented incident by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. [*2tcalk] [15] Where is that liberal mantra: “Johnson lied – 58,000 American soldiers died!”?)
What about you, American neighbor? Were you a liberal who conveniently excused former President Clinton’s gross vilification of the Serbs and the subsequent war? Did you even know that the Serbs were responding to a domestic terrorist insurgency within their own country? Maybe you didn’t even know that the Serb war was based on a gigantic fraud. Of course that would not be entirely surprising since the orthodox media filter didn’t exactly report that part of it, but there were liberals that knew. There were big name liberals in the Democratic Party that knew. The orthodox liberal media knew. They could have made it common public knowledge if they had chosen to do so, but they didn’t. After all, Bill Clinton was one of theirs. But former President Bush? He was the political opposition. They preferred to keep you ignorant, knowing little or nothing of Clinton’s deception and instead hypocritically demanding so-called justice for Bush. You were played like a fiddle on these two wars, American neighbor (and much more than you yet know – later).
There were 800 billion people who died in the Iraq War. Over sixty million died from lupus and typhoid. Three hundred million died from high-capacity ammo magazines. Sixty billion died from boredom.
I always enjoy when political figures use numbers and just forget to list their source.
"...I'm waiting for Guam to capsize"
You will also notice that I had to use the WayBackMachine to get a link to the info that was on Wikipedia in 2009 when I wrote this. The Holocaust reference and the claim by the Clinton administration of 500,000 having been ethnically cleansed have since been scrubbed from the Wikipedia page.
LOL!
500 Million died from Large Sodas brought in by the Americans!
20 Million died from sex with sheep as they hid in the bunkers.
In this case you didn't need the WayBackMachine. The Wikipedia article for "24 March 2009, at 20:19" is included in the ordinary Wikipedia history. That version says, "Clinton compared the events of Kosovo to the Holocaust...The New York Times reported, 'On April 19, the State Department said that up to 500,000 Kosovar Albanians were missing and feared dead.'"
Thanks for that. When important info is scrubbed from the current page it makes me suspicious as to when it might be scrubbed from the history as well. I like Wikipedia, but I like the Internet Archive for keeping it honest even more.
Bump
I haven't checked the New York Times source for the earlier 500,000 attribution. If it's in the paper, though, then I think it belongs in the Wikipedia article -- unless there was subsequently a retraction -- because it's a more egregious example of the administration's overestimation of the casualties (especially if that number was widely publicized). The direct quotations of 100,000 from Cohen and Clinton, though, are pretty bad as they are.
Clinton's calling it a Holocaust, though, and the estimate of 100,000 (instead of a few thousand) were bad enough, and do seem to support your thesis.
Interesting. Considering it is the NY Times, the question must then be asked whether the correction is for real or a cover after a phone call from the White House. Probably no way to know however.
Also, Wikipedia should explain the reason for their later removal rather than leave it look like a coverup. It just makes them uneccessarily look bad.
~Accusing Serbia of "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo similar to the genocide of Jews in World War II, an impassioned President Clinton sought Tuesday to rally public support for his decision to send U.S. forces into combat against Yugoslavia~ CNN - Clinton- Serbs must be stopped now - March 23, 1999
Yahoo!, the Boston Globe (an affiliate of the NY Times) and the LA Times also reported the 500,000 number. Here is the wording from Yahoo! reported the same day as the NY Times:
~U.S. officials said in Washington that at least 100,000 and possibly as many as 500,000 Kosovo Albanian men were unaccounted for, raising fears they might have been killed by Serb forces.~
Here is the LA Times wording:
~The State Department said that at least 100,000 and possibly as many as 500,000 Kosovo Albanian men are unaccounted for, raising fears that they may have been killed by Serbian forces.~
Taken together it's hard to believe they all ended up with the same typos or misunderstandings.
~At least 100,000 and possibly as many as 500,000 Kosovo Albanian men are unaccounted for, raising fears that they may have been killed by Serb forces, U.S. officials said Monday.~
~But a State Department written report on "ethnic cleansing'' in Kosovo issued Monday said the number of missing men ranges "from a low of 100,000, looking only at the men missing from among refugee families in Albania, up to nearly 500,000, if reports of widespread separation of men among internally displaced persons within Kosovo are true.'' [...] But, said one official, "There's a tremendous amount of concern that the worst case scenario that many feared has happened.''~
This wasn't just about "displaced persons", as he went on to say:
~He said the United States has reports -- at least two from satellite imagery and others from refugees and members of the Kosovo Liberation Army -- of what may be 43 mass burial sites in Kosovo. ... These are places where large areas of earth have been disrupted since NATO began its air war against Yugoslavia on March 24.~
~U.S. officials said there is good reason to presume the worst about any of the Kosovo Albanians reported missing.~
He was talking "mass burial sites", not just people who could not be accounted for. And the "worst case" was "500,000 Kosovo Albanian men are unaccounted for", not including women and children, which would mean the total is implied to be much higher.
Clinton attacked Serbia with no U.S. interest in Serbia or Kosovo, no threat to America, no congressional approval, and without even bothering to consult the United Nations or formally inform them of his intentions. Providing very dubious evidence, his administration claimed “"500,000" ethnic Kosovars had disappeared as a result of “ethnic cleansing” by the Serbs, and on television he compared it to the “Holocaust” of World War Two when six million Jews were exterminated by Hitler’s Nazis, but the only legitimate comparison to the Nazis was Clinton’s flagrant use of propaganda to sell his war. It all turned out to be a complete fabrication.Partisan Media Shills ping, the media wing of the DNC carried water for Slick, then and to this day.
You’re welcome.
Good find. With several papers reporting it at the time of the briefing itself (April), a mere retraction by the New York Times later (in November) shouldn’t be enough to discredit the report that the claim was made. The quotations from the other papers indicate that the upper “State Department” estimate of the missing was 500,000, “raising fears that they may have been killed by Serbian forces”. Also that number was more consistent with Clinton’s comparison with the “Holocaust” (and in stark contrast with the confirmed evidence of only a few thousand).
Thanks. When the NY Times retracts something damaging to their leash-holders I get suspicious.
Me too. :-)
> Also, Wikipedia should explain the reason for their later removal...
Yes, that change was significant enough that it ought to have been noted. The problem is we don’t know when the change was made. The 500,000 was there in the “20:19, 24 March 2009” version (your WayBackMachine version), and checking the next few years, I see it stayed there a long time. It was still there in the “13:56, 7 July 2012” version, so it’s a relatively recent deletion.
I may check some more later and try to find the exact version in which it was first omitted (if you don’t do that yourself in the meantime).
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