"Collateral Damage".......civilian train bombed by Nato forces in Kosovo.
Posted on 07/26/2005 5:30:56 PM PDT by murdoog
Bill Clinton apologized last weekend for his "personal failure" to prevent the 1994 slaughter of 800,000 mostly Christian members of the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda.
It was certainly appropriate – if a little late.
But there was another genocide that took place during Clinton's watch that occurred not because of his inaction, but because of his deliberate, criminal and immoral military actions.
Let me tell you the little-known story.
In 1997, Osama bin Laden visited Albania to help establish the Kosovo Liberation Army. He provided between $500 million to $700 million and – according to an upcoming book by Paul L. Williams, "The Al Qaeda Connection" – 500 seasoned Arab Afghan troops to train KLA recruits at the al-Qaida headquarters in Albania and at another camp in Macedonia.
Understand the KLA was, from its creation by bin Laden, a jihadist terrorist group.
Here's how Williams tells the story from here:
At this point in the twisted history of Kosovo, the CIA and the Clinton administration began to view the KLA as an army of 'freedom fighters' and offered aid in the form of military training and field advice. The United States, unbeknown to the American people, was now in league with a group that contained enemies who were intent upon its destruction. They were generally not the innocent people who had been targeted and attacked by the Serbs.
A year later, with help from both al-Qaida and the United States, the KLA had an army of 30,000 with sophisticated weaponry, including anti-tank rocket launchers, mortars, recoilless rifles and anti-aircraft machine guns. Naturally, they began to use them – conducting hit-and-run attacks on Serbian special-forces police units.
Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia, responded by burning homes and killing dozens of ethnic Albanians. Soon, there was a little war raging – "culminating," Williams writes, "in the infamous 'Racak Massacre' of Jan. 15, 1999, when the bodies of 45 Albanians were discovered in a gully within the village of Racak."
Milosevic insisted the bodies had been placed there by the KLA to implicate the Serbs and justify Western intervention. In fact, European papers found his claim was supported by the unnatural position of the bodies, the absence of cartridge shells and the inability of Racak villagers to identify the bodies.
But, this time, Clinton wasn't going to sit on the sidelines and watch a genocide take place as he had done in Rwanda. On the basis of this "evidence" and amid international outcries of ethnic cleansing, the United States and its European allies became militarily involved – not as "peacemakers," mind you, but as partisans in an ethnic and religious conflict initiated by al-Qaida.
At a cost exceeding $4 billion, NATO forces soon reduced Kosovo to rubble, flying 37,465 missions, destroying 400 Serbian artillery positions, 270 armored personnel carriers, 150 tanks, 100 planes, killing 10,000 Serbian soldiers and causing 1.4 million Kosovars to flee for their lives. Williams calls it "the greatest mass migration since World War II."
Milosevic surrendered and NATO placed a force of 1,700 police officers on the ground to restore order.
But those forces did little to restrain the "victorious" KLA. Over 200 churches were burned – including monasteries dating back to the 13th century. There were uninvestigated reports of mass executions of Serbian farmers, the murders of scores of priests.
"Of the 40,000 Serbs who lived in Kosovo before the war, only 400 were left within a month after Kosovo became a U.N. protectorate," writes Williams.
Soon, hundreds of Wahhabi mosques and schools were built.
"Kosovo, with a Muslim population of 1.8 million now stood as an Islamic bulwark in the midst of the Balkans," Williams writes.
And an even more strategic objective was won by bin Laden. He now had his European connection for the international drug-running operation that would subsidize his future terrorist attacks – including Sept. 11, 2001.
i just wish the clintons would go away.
Without a doubt the greatest failure of the Clinton administration....
Sounds like their advance has been much reduced if all they've got left is Kosovo.
The article is too simplistic ~ the objective is, of course, to show how venal and stupid Bill Clinton was but it shouldn't be necessary to rewrite 600 years of history to do that.
pong
If only the media would expose all Clinton did that helped lead to 911, he and his disgusting wife would be history, and not in line to take charge of this nation again.
I wonder how many KLA veterans our troops are running into in Iraq these days.
Personal failure? He watched and did nothing. He didn't fail - you can't fail what you didn't try! He didn't try, he didn't care to try, he could have cared less. I hope they're not buying his crocodile tears over there. He's despicable.
"Collateral Damage".......civilian train bombed by Nato forces in Kosovo.
Wasn't Wesley Clark involved with this?
This is one story Savage has been right on. He was saying this stuff during the Hilary/Albright war.
I think this is what we claimed...not a sane accounting.
I don't know, there are the 800,000 Rwandans that he ignored while they were being chopped to death, there is the selling of nuclear and guide missile secrets to the Chicoms, he came down ond the side of the terrorists Muslims in Kosovo, he bailed in Somalia, he failed to take Osama when he had the chance.
And those are just off the top of my head.
In parts of that he ws actively involved in halting investigations.
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhh....
How could they? those people are Christians... Bill Clinton is a Mullah inside an American Mascot...
Kindly inform Mr. Tancredo to include Kosovo on "retaliation list".. and dont forget to include the Clinton's residence hehe sarcasm...
Yes. He was "Nato Supreme Commander" of the Allied Forces.
from CNN, April 14, 1999
NATO confirmed its missiles hit a train in a rural area about 200 miles southeast of Belgrade Monday in an attack that Serbian officials said killed at least 10 people, including a 10-year-old child, and injured 16 others.
The train was on a railroad bridge hit by America's newest and most accurate missiles -- the video-guided AGM-130, fired by a U.S. F-15E, Pentagon sources said.
Clark said the target was the bridge, which he described as "part of the integrated communications supply." He said the pilot "was not able to put his eyes on the bridge" as he fired the missiles.
"As the pilot stared at the aim point, and worked it and worked it and worked it, all of a sudden at the very last minute -- less than a second to go -- he caught a flash of movement that came into the screen and it was the train," Clark said.
"He couldn't dump the bomb at that point. It was locked. It was going to the target and it was an unfortunate incident we all regret. We certainly don't want to do collateral damage. The mission was to take out the bridge. He realized when it had happened that he had not hit the bridge, that what he had hit was the train."
Clark said the pilot then circled around and tried to hit the bridge from another vantage, but because of the cloud cover, he ended up causing additional damage to the train instead.
"It's one of those regrettable things that happen in a campaign like this one," he said. *****Apparently, he meant bombing from 15,000 feet, so your side doesn't take casualties.....at the cost of excessive civilian deaths************
"I do think that people should know, ground troops are not a shortcut. It would take two or three months to have in the theater, the kind of large-scale expeditionary force we need to fight our way in. We can't wait two or three months."
Someone, explain to me again just what was the compelling national interest that got us into the Kosovo war????
Knew it all along.
The train was bombed on orders of General Weasley Clark.
What's the point of the "Christian" comment here? Most of the killers were also Christian. The genocide was not religiously motivated - it was racial. There are some particularly horrendous stories of whole congregations being betrayed and slaughtered by their pastors.
I despise Clinton as much as the next person, but the Rwanda genocide was not something he could have done much to prevent, short of a full-scale invasion of the country. Rwanda was the responsibility of the Belgians, the French and of course, the UN. Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families is a must-read for anyone interested in the background of this terrible event.
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