Posted on 12/01/2005 8:58:07 AM PST by tgambill
Kosovo: Clinton 'lied, people died'?
________________________________________ Posted: December 1, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 Laurence A. Elder The White House – finally – began pushing back against irresponsible charges that Bush "lied" to the American people in making the case for war.
The garrulous Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., made many "Bush lied" accusations: "There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January [2003] to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud." And Kennedy later intoned on the Senate floor, "Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie."
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said, "... [T]he administration intentionally misled the country into war." Anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan, speaking to the president in a TV ad, said, "You were wrong about the weapons of mass destruction. You were wrong about the link between Iraq and al-Qaida. You lied to us, and because of your lies, my son died." Question: If Bush "lied," did former President Clinton "lie" about Kosovo?
Clinton, in a March 24, 1999, Oval Office broadcast, explained his military action in Kosovo: We act to prevent a wider war, to defuse a powder keg at the heart of Europe, that has exploded twice before in this century with catastrophic results ... By acting now, we are upholding our values, protecting our interests and advancing the cause of peace ... Ending this tragedy is a moral imperative. It is also important to America's national interests ... Do our interests in Kosovo justify the dangers to our armed forces? ...
I am convinced that the dangers of acting are far outweighed by the dangers of not acting – dangerous to defenseless people and to our national interests ... I have a responsibility as president to deal with problems such as this before they do permanent harm to our national interests. America has a responsibility to stand with our allies when they are trying to save innocent lives and preserve peace, freedom and stability in Europe. That is what we are doing in Kosovo.
The former president called Kosovo a humanitarian crisis. The New York Times, on April 19, 1999, wrote: In San Francisco on Thursday, President Clinton said that the Serbs had displaced 'over a million Kosovars' and had killed and raped 'thousands upon thousands of them.' From interviews that journalists and relief workers have conducted with scores of refugees from Kosovo, there is no reason to doubt him. But at this point it is also impossible to prove that he is correct.
Actor-activist Mike Farrell, who opposes the Iraq War, nevertheless supported military action in Kosovo, stating:
I am in favor of an intervention ... I was in Rwanda shortly after the slaughter there. I was infuriated then – and am now – that the international community did not step in ... I know that the escalation of violence and violations of human rights in Kosovo have been going on for some time ... I reluctantly find myself supporting the notion that something needed to be done and that it is appropriate for us to act, and if this is the only way, so be it.
But what about Clinton's assertion of the displacement of "over a million Kosovars"? According to USA Today on July 1, 1999:
Many of the figures used by the Clinton administration and NATO to describe the wartime plight of Albanians in Kosovo now appear greatly exaggerated as allied forces take control of the province ... Instead of 100,000 ethnic Albanian men feared murdered by rampaging Serbs, officials now estimate that about 10,000 were killed. But is the 10,000 number accurate? The Orange County Register, in a Nov. 22, 1999, editorial, said:
Months after the bombing has ceased, United Nations and European Union investigations have bolstered what critics had argued: NATO's estimates of Serbian genocide against the Kosovars were greatly overblown. Many observers now think the inflated numbers simply were part of the U.S.-led propaganda effort to build support for the war.
The latest evidence suggests that fewer than 3,000 Kosovars were murdered – horrifying, yes, but not many more than the number of Serbs who were killed by NATO bombing attacks on Yugoslavia, roughly estimated between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers and civilians. Does this mean that Clinton "lied, people died"? The intelligence turned out to be wrong, very wrong. Something like this always warrants a serious examination of intelligence failures. But intelligence failures, bad intelligence or failing to properly analyze the intelligence is a far cry from accusing a commander in chief of deliberately and intentionally misleading the American people.
Can we, perhaps, now drop the "Bush lied" nonsense, and pursue the business of winning the war against Islamo-fascism? Perhaps?
Funny how the NY Times and other liberal organs never talk about Kosovo. Why is that?
Didn't Slick put America on the side of radical muslims in Kosovo?
Does anyone recall how many civilians the bombings killed?
Given to excessive and often trivial or rambling talk; tiresomely talkative.
Wordy and rambling: a garrulous speech.
didnt he also bomb a chinese embassy too?
The recoveries of K-Albanians from the Serbian MUP grounds at Batajnica make any efforts to diminish the number of K-Albanian victims moot - Slobo's regime was murderous, and lost it's mandate to govern non-Serbs by the treatment it meted out to them, and that loss of mandate isn't going to be reversed in Kosovo by any American administration, no matter how hard the Serbs or their allies try to change it.
You'll note that we're in year 5 of the Bush administration, and our recent diplomatic moves in the region, aiming to finish our clean-ups of Milosevic's Bosnia and Kosovo messes, are highly unfavorable to the Serb nationalist interest.
So if taking out their angst on Clinton while we finish the job works for Serbia's dead enders and their proxies, more power to 'em.
So Milocevich was an "imminent" threat to America, possessed WMD and the whole military operation was authorized by the UN, right?
Which is exactly what we wound up doing in 1999.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Regards,
GtG
So why don't the Dems apply the same criteria to this war as they do to the Iraq war. Their criticism of the motives for the Iraq war sounds hollow because of this. Saddam was a brutal dictator who ignored warnings from successive US administrations and the UNSC (17 resolutions)and we bombed the snot out of him. How is it different?
"And Kennedy later intoned on the Senate floor, "Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie."
Then Teddy boy work up and realized it was he was lying week after week.
Of course, he wont admit it. Heck, that would be like calling the police after you drove your car in a lake with a woman drown in the back seat - and we know his history on that score.
Dunno. Don't care. I'm about as interested in Democratic posturing on Iraq as I am Clinton era Republican posturing on the Balkans - it's all for naught as soon as power changes hands and a realistic policy has to be substituted for opportunistic rhetoric.
Saddam was spilling into the entire Middle East which contains huge oil resources. Imagine Saddam sitting on Saudi, Kuwaiti and other ...aiti... oil.
Hand it off to Bush.
Worked pretty good too!
Once again, any current administration will not openly bad-mouth the previous administration's screw ups unless that was the primary focus of their campaign. The worse the screw up the greater effort to make it go away or appear otherwise. I'm firmly convinced that that should have been Reagan's 12th commandment because it seems to be an absolute of American politics.
And today, Kosovo is a cradle of peace and stability.
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