Former President Clinton never gets any tough questions from the news media on his hair-brained attacks (e.g. on the Chinese Embassy, Waco).
Also, keep in mind that the Left keeps nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Posted on 12/31/2005 2:48:27 AM PST by LjubivojeRadosavljevic
Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy. Alexandria: Nov/Dec 2005.Vol.33, Iss. 11/12; pg. 3, 1 pgs
Highly-placed NATO sources have confirmed the reason behind the US air strike - with three Tomahawk cruise missiles - against the Embassy of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Belgrade, (then) Yugoslavia, on May 7, 1999. The then-Clinton Government of the United States said at the time that the strike was accidental, due to faulty maps and intelligence, but this has been disproven by the NATO sources.
The NATO sources told Defense & Foreign Affairs that the attack was based on intelligence that then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was to have been in the Embassy at the time of the attack. The attack, then, was deliberately planned as a "decapitation" attack, intended to kill Milosevic.
The London Observer, on October 19, 1999, had said that the attack had been deliberate, noting: "... Politiken newspaper in Denmark and Ed Vulliamy cites senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US stating that the embassy was bombed after its NATO electronic intelligence (ELINT) discovered it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.
"Supportive evidence is provided by three other NATO officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels.
"All three say they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a "rebro" (rebroadcast) station for the Yugoslav army. The embassy was also suspected of monitoring NATO's cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective countermeasures."
The Clinton Administration blamed the attack on inaccurate intelligence information provided by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), alleging that the three missiles, which landed in one corner of the PRC embassy block, had been meant to target the Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement (FDSP). US Defence secretary William Cohen said at the time: "One of our planes attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an outdated map." Sources within the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency reacted with anger at the allegation that their mapping had been at fault.
Moreover, it was clear that Clinton appointee George Tenet, the CIA Director at the time, was involved in the deception operation built around the failed assassination attack.
There was widespread disbelief of the US Clinton Administration claim that the attack was "accidental", but no accurate background information as to why the attack against the Embassy was scheduled. The rationale cited by The Observer was not the true cause of the targeting.
In July 1999, then-CIA Director Tenet testified in Congress that out of the 900 targets struck by NATO during the three-month bombing campaign, only one was developed by the CIA: the PRC Embassy.
I don't care why we bobmbed that chi-com embassy, I just know it felt good.
The chi-coms aren't freinds by any imagination.
Beligerants is more like it.
Next time: More cruise missiles
"Highly-placed NATO sources have confirmed the reason behind the US air strike - with three Tomahawk cruise missiles - against the Embassy of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Belgrade, (then) Yugoslavia, on May 7, 1...."
"Supportive evidence is provided by three other NATO officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels.
"All three say they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a "rebro" (rebroadcast) station for the Yugoslav army. The embassy was also suspected of monitoring NATO's cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective countermeasures."
Maybe Clinton had at least half a testicle when he made this decision. More likely he was distracted, getting some tail in the oval office when the generals secured permission for the airstrike.
Ahh, I say we give Clinton credit where credit is due.
...uh...surprise...suprise...
That sounds good
I thought it was because they were holding debris from the down stealth fighter, but this is fine too.
Former President Clinton never gets any tough questions from the news media on his hair-brained attacks (e.g. on the Chinese Embassy, Waco).
Also, keep in mind that the Left keeps nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
["I thought it was because they were holding debris from the down stealth fighter...]
I suspect you are correct.
LIBO
Actions completely incompatible with their diplomatic and neutral status, if true. We don't need to prove it's true, they can't prove it wasn't an intelligence failure. Game even.
Gen. Wesley Clark to Valerie Plame: "I need more targets"
I believe Bubba said he was always PERSONALLY picked our targets. I never believed this hit was an accident but that there was someone killed that would could "hurt" Bubba's reign and it wasn't Milosevik.
IIRC we went so far as to reimburse the PRC for the cost of the repairs.
So if we're sending one, head on, down the chimney, you better watch out for your "rear door".
I was traveling in China with the then-senior Senator from Texas, Phil Gramm, and we met with the Prime Minister of China, not long after the Americans, under the command of GEN Wesley Clark, had bombed the Chinese Embassy in Serbia. The Chinese were understandably very concerned about that.
We said: It was a mistake. It was an error. And the Chinese Ambassador, with whom we were talking at the time, said: You have the best intelligence in the world. You must have known that was the Chinese Embassy. That was not a hidden fact. That was not a secret. You have the most accurate military in the world. You did that deliberately.
Then he pointed out to us that was not just the Chinese Embassy; that was, in fact, the headquarters of the Chinese intelligence operation throughout Central Europe. So we bombed an embassy and we took out their intelligence capability. They said: You did that deliberately. We said: No; it was a mistake.
I remember Senator Shelby saying: The proof of the fact that it is a mistake is that nobody would have been stupid enough to do that deliberately. Then the Chinese Ambassador said: If it was a mistake, why hasn't somebody been fired? And for that, we had no particular answer.
Checking into it, we found the reason that happened is because GEN Wesley Clark, the commander of NATO, was demanding targets: I need more targets. I'm running out of targets. And under the pressure of those demands from that commanding general, the CIA came up with targets, and they came up with an old target with bad information, under the pressure from a commander who was anxious to keep bombing even though he had run out of legitimate targets. In that pressure, a tragic mistake was made, and America's relationship with China was seriously damaged in that situation.
NATO electronic intelligence (ELINT) discovered it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.
ELINT ?? Yeah, right.
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