Clinton's Allies in the War On Terror.
Posted on 09/19/2004 8:01:49 PM PDT by Nepalis
My intention is not to convince you of anything, you know the truth to well. I write only for the sake of lurkers who may not posses in depth knowledge of history.
When exposed in lies, you act like five year old xcaught with hands in a cookie jar.
You'd have Hap Arnold tried alongside Goering before you're done.
And I don't hate Serbs, DTA. I just won't accept people like you using FR to prosecute your idiotic little pseudo-race war through means disingenuous. When I point out that you don't know what you're talking about, all you have left is the bigot card, so you play it.
It's simple really, just like you.
This is the level of your factual knowledge.
Do you know who Mitchell Paige is?
Look him up.
Speaking of language used for ordnance inscription for April 24 1944 raid, the key point is the foreknowledge of the ground crew about Belgrade being primary target than who wrote it. It could be anyone who knew the phrase "SRECAN USKRS". This inscription is full of cynicism because proper Eester greeting is CHRIST IS RISEN.
On that day 520 bombers were used, accompanied by the 100+ fighter planes. Interestingly enough, there is almost no record what they did over Belgrade. Take for example 97th Bombardment group:
5 April 1944 - Ploesti Marshalling Yard, Rumania
16 April 1944 - Belgrade Marshalling Yard, Yugoslavia
17 April 1944 - Belgrade Aircraft Factory, Yugoslavia
24 April 1944 - Ploesti South Marshalling Yard, Rumania
29 April 1944 - Toulon Submarine Pens, France
5 May 1944 - Ploesti Pumping Station, Rumania
6 May 1944 - Brasov Aircraft Factory, Rumania
Happy Easter detail is important because it shows that the records for April 24th were rigged. Downtown Belgrade WAS PRIMARY TARGET, not a target of opportunity on a way back from Ploesti.
Orthodox Easter bombing of Belgrade was premeditated murder. of civilians.
Ploesti was bombed on the 24th of April, as was an aircraft factory in Belgrade. The 520 bombers were a total sent out to all targets by the 15th on that day, not just those assigned to Belgrade.
04/24/44
Fifteenth AF
520-plus B-17's and B-24's bomb M/Ys at Bucharest and Ploesti, hit aircraft factory at Belgrade, and attack rail line between Rimini and Ancona. Over 250 ftrs fly spt for the HBs.
Source
Mission No. 14, 24 April 1944 – Chitila M/Y, Bucharest, Roumania
For the third time during the month the Group went to Chitila Marshalling Yard at Bucharest, Roumania. This time the weather was CAVU with haze. The target was picked up by the lead plane, but unfortunately a bomb rack malfunction temporarily held up the bombs in the lead plane, which overshot the target. This was also true of most of the planes in the first attack unit who were dropping on the section leader. The second Section saved the day for the Group by getting 11 per cent of all the bombs dropped by the Group on the briefed aiming point. The flak was intense and heavy, but inaccurate. Of the twenty-five enemy fighters seen, several were encountered, one was destroyed, and one was damaged.
Source 461 BG, 49th Bombardment Wing, 15th AF
Target: Ploesti, Romania - Marshalling Yard. 34 B-24's dropped 84 tons of bombs on target.
Source 450th BG, 15th AF
Also, 456th BG, 15th AF, 4/24/44, Mission No. 37, 18 Aircraft, Bucharest Romania.
Source
And unless you can document your "Happy Easter" allegation, it's just a confused retelling of the stories bandied around during Allied Force of similar messages being written on ordinance by NATO personnel.
It is interesting to note that the Clinton administration in the winter of 1998-1999 stopped its brief bombing campaign on Iraq due to the period of Ramadan on the Islamic calendar. However, both English and American warplanes continued to bomb the Serbian Christians throughout the Christian Holy Week and especially on Easter Sunday of the Orthodox Christian calendar. Some of the bombs that were dropped by English pilots had the message painted on them, "Happy Easter."
Source
The other grievance was who Nato was targeting. From the foreign broadcasts (CNN, SKY, BBC) the message came across loud and clear - we have no quarrel with the people of Serbia, only with the president and the army. So why, asked the people of Serbia, did you have to bomb over Easter, one of the most holy periods in the Serb calendar, as the Nazis had done in 1941? Why did we find an unexploded bomb with the words "Happy Easter" engraved, if you were on the side of the "people?"
Source
Russian Minister of Defense and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Alexis II said that NATO bombed one of the oldest Christian Orthodox monasteries in Kosovo and British soldiers write "Happy Easter" on the bombs they drop on Serbs. If all of this does not qualify as crimes against humanity, I don't know what does.
Source
So in short, DTA, you're a victim of disinformation, and you compound that problem by accusing American servicemen of the premeditated murder of Serbian civilians.
Have you thought about posting at some other site? Perhaps one where your infantile anti-American BS would pass without such rudimentary scrutiny as I felt obligated to provide here?
Maybe you can write a column for antiwar.com, help Jared Israel out over at tenc.net, or compose your material for Ramsay Clark over at iacenter.org.
In reality, more than 2000 civilians were murdered. To put this number in perspective with known symbols of Nazi savagery:
">
GUERNICA: Luftwaffe murdered 1500 civilians
COVENTRY: Luftwaffe murdered 554 men, women and children
ROTTERDAM May 14 1940: Luftwaffe murdered 600-900 civilians
Sorry, no art is available to commemorate murder of 2000 civilians in Belgrade, although the number of murdered is larger than COVENTRY AND ROTTERDAM COMBINED.
All we got are rigged USAAF reports. Deception is also some kind of art, I guess.
That is how Democrats wage wars.
No, one can conclude that you are incapable of dealing with facts, and choose to keep playing the victim regardless of said facts.
The limitations of the technology of the time, and the toll paid by the French, for example, have already been explained to you, yet here you are keeping with your original line of argument, impervious to any information that does not conform to your views on the subject.
How's about getting some documentary evidence backing up your allegation regarding that "Happy Easter" UXO?
Bewailing oneself onto the muslims of Kosovo besmirches all those who are fighting our war on terror. Aint that right hop?
Let's start with the data found in the official documents:
According to USAAF, damage to civilians (today we would say "collateral damage") in Belgrade was negligible.
In reality,it was mass destruction. For example, the entire hospital complex consisting of several hospitals was destroyed. Germans left the town and gave air raid alert only after they left.
The next day after the first bombing raid, Yugoslav Royal Government and their diplomats officially complained to U.S. Government because Yugoslav Government in exile was not informed about area bombing although Yugoslavia was an ally.
Later, Yugoslav Governemnt complained about innacuracy in USAAF damage assessment and denial of harm done to civilians.
the loss inflicted on German forces was negligible.
This is documented fact. I guess that the letter of Gen. Zivan Knezevich, Military attache to Washington sent to U.S. Government can be found through NARA as well as the correspondence of U.S. Ambassadors to Yugoslav Royal Court, Lincoln Mac Veagh and Richard C. Patterson.
It is also fact that Tito only several days after the bombing thanked the Allies over BBC for bombing of targets in Yugoslavia.
One of the targets was German concentration camp Sajmiste (Zemun, then in Croatia), when more than 60 Serb and Jewish inmates were killed.
Dispatches of Tito and Tito's henchmen (Kardelj, Gen. Popovic) show that Tito instructed them to provide "wish list" of targets, while Tito's command will make final selection. Assigned targets were the entire Serbian towns, not speciffic military targets in them. .
In essence, USAAF over Serbia in 1944 acted as Communist Air Force to provide air support for advancing Communist troops.
The reason why would make hell of a book.
Believing that it was a an innacuracy is the same as believing someone slipped on banana peel, accidentally fell on knife and accidentaly stabbed himself, 12 times in a row.
Noted.
-USAAF reports do not metnion area bombing, only speciffic target bombing
-Yugoslav government not informed about area bombing
-Yugoslav goverment complaining about excessive civilian casualties compared to damage inflicted on Germans
Downed U.S. airmen who claimed they bombed Belgrade because it is "German town"
-Communists celebrating destruction of Serbian towns over BBC
-Communist documents showing it was Tito's clique who ordered the indiscriminate bombings of the entire towns and Tito's HQ who gave requests to the Allies
DTA, I can help you with this one. It was an MPRI contractor who wrote that. His son went to work for the same company years later and he told me that story while I was with NATO and we were flying together in a Chinook from Camp Bondsteel with a bunch of other MPRI guys carrying weapons to resupply the UCK in Aracinovo.
Two completely different entities.
The saturation bombing of Belgrade was carried out by subcontractors in the 15th USAAF as part of a contractual agreement between Minderbender Inc. and the Luftwaffe, which was outsourcing at the time.
If I can't rely upon you to get the story straight, Mark, who can I trust?
Did someone screw up the script and play the wrong story?
Or, is this just a plain, non-revised piece of 'old' history?
Everyone in Eastern Europe seemed to support the neo fascists (anti-Semites) except the Serbs. Even the Semites themselves!
Go figure!
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The Anti-Semitic Roots of Eastern European Nationalism
By Margaret Quigley, 5/6/90
Press coverage of the dramatic changes in Eastern Europe in late 1989 and early 1990 has failed to provide adequate context concerning theanti-Semitic and fascist currents in Eastern European nationalism.
As the New York Times has noted (10/8/89), the term "nationalist" has a"more extremist connotation here [in Eastern Europe] than in the West." Butmost reporting on Eastern Europe's nationalist movements, including that ofthe Times, has been rife with euphemistic references to "Christian values" and "Christian nationalism" without an explanation of the historic anti-Semitism that echoes in such rhetoric.
News coverage of Eastern Europe has generally overlooked the region's historical alliance with Nazism. Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria all joined the Axis powers; Nazi puppet states such as Slovakia and Croatia were also allied with Germany. But in much newspaper coverage, Eastern European history does not include World War II. For example, one timeline of Czechoslovakian history leapt from March 15, 1939 to May 16, 1945 (New YorkTimes, 11/22/89); another chart began in 1946 (L.A. Times, 11/25/89). A NewYork Times article (3/26/90) describing the history of the Catholic Church in Eastern Europe jumped directly from the 1930s to the post-World War II era, skipping over the murderously anti-Semitic clerical fascist movements, which were often led by Catholic priests.
The New York Times reported (3/26/90) that a new Ukrainian student grouprevered Stepan Bandera -- described by the Times as "a militant nationalist" who fought "Polish and Soviet rulers in the 1930s and 1940s." The article failed to mention that Bandera fought as an ally of Hitler's Germany, leading the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Bandera, which roamed the Ukraine during World War II killing Jews and others.
Media coverage of anti- Semitism in Hungary, which has the only significant Jewish population remaining in Eastern Europe outside the Soviet Union, provides an interesting case study. The now-ruling Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) was routinely described as a conservative, center-right or evencentrist party. The Los Angeles Times (4/11/90) even referred to MDF 's" politics of national pride." Articles that described the party's appeal to"Christian nationalism," "Christian democracy" and "Christian values" often failed to report the recurring charges of anti-Semitism.
The Washington Post, which in general provides scant coverage of Eastern Europe, did not mention the anti-Semitism allegations against MDF until late January, although the reports had first surfaced in the mainstream press in November. The Post (3/21/90) later described Istvan Csurka, an MDF party founder, as an "outspoken nationalist writer," ignoring the controversy over his anti-Semitic claims that a "dwarf minority" was dominating Hungary .
Several investigative articles went further in scrutinizing the involvement of the U.S. and Canadian right with Eastern European nationalists. In theToronto Star (4/14/90), Howard Goldenthal and Russ Bellant reported thatDusan Toth, an advisor to Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel , was the Secretary-General of the Toronto-based Slovak World Congress; a number of officers of the Congress are former officials of the Nazi-allied Slovak regime. An April 2, 1990 Nation article by Holly Sklar and Chip Berlet (of Political Research Associates) exposed the role of convicted Nazi collaborator Laslo Pasztor in recommending Hungarian nationalist groups for funding from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy .
There seems to be an unwillingness at some media to synthesize even the information that appears in the major papers. The Washington Post(2/18/90), for example, described three Russian newsletters as being connected to Pamyat , the anti-Semitic, pro-Stalin nationalist organization. But when individuals connected with these same three publications toured the U.S. under Washington's sponsorship, the visitors were blandly described by the New York Times (4/18/90) as "rightists."
Perhaps the most disturbing facet of media coverage is the recurrent explanations of the origins of anti-Jewish feeling that use rhetoric that seems to reflect rather than report anti-Semitism. For example, a New YorkTimes article reasoned (4/10/90), "Since many prominent Hungarian Communistleaders were Jewish, particularly in the early years after the war,anti-Semitism has become linked with anti-Communism."
The equation of Jews with Bolsheviks and traitors has been and is the anti-Semite's stock in trade. Journalists should avoid the appearance of accepting these rationales.
The point I was making in rebuttal to ptarmigan's comment by referring to Harald Turner is that attempting to portray the Serbs as the shining example of righteousness in the 1940's, or their present day enemies as being eager Nazi allies to a man, thereby give some sort of a free pass for the crimes committed by the Milosevic regime as if they were some sort of historical redress, is simply at odds with the historical record.
It turns out that one of the safest places to be a Jew in Europe in occupied Europe in the 1940's was Albania, which really doesn't square with all the material posted on FR that paints the Albanians as fervent Nazis. To put it bluntly, the residents of the Former Yugoslavia who felt the need to find someone to hate didn't have to look to the Jews - they had each other.
>>>It turns out that one of the safest places to be a Jew in Europe in occupied Europe in the 1940's was Albania,
Many Jews came to/through Albania in that period. In fact Albania bears the distinction of having been the only country in Europe with a higher population of Jews at the end of WWII than the beginning.
There used to be a couple of old folks in Durres who claimed to have helped a German Jew with frizzy hair get on a ship and to have recognized him on TV years later as the creator of the A-bomb.
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