Posted on 03/20/2006 4:20:57 AM PST by Doctor13
AS I SEE IT Section of The Patriot-News,
As someone who has followed and written about the tragic civil war in the Balkans the March 12 headline, "Butcher" Milsoevic dies in jail,": prompted me to write yet another commentary giving the other side of the story.
I am no defender of Slobodan Milsoevic, who died under questionable circumstances, but in my opinion, he was nothing more than a two-bit dictator, and compared to Saddam Hussein, he was a piker. Unlike the treatment Milosevic received at The Hague, you can bet your bottom dollar that everything will be done to make sure Saddam gets a fair trial, and all the medical treatment he needs. Unlike Saddam, Milosevic was being tried in a trumpt-up International War Crimes Tribunal instead of in a court of his own people, whom he betrayed.
From the beginning of the war in Bosnia, the American people were not privy to many stories that would have given some balance to the conflict. In civil wars, all sides do terrible things; but in this war, the mainstream media misled the American people so as to present a favorable side for the Bosnian Muslims, while failing to report the meddling and bungling of U.S. foreign policy during the Clinton administration.
I remember the horrific pictures repeatedly shown on CNN of the two Muslim babies on a bus that had been "killed by a Serb sniper." I would never have known the truth had I not been watching France 2 TV where it showed the funeral of these innocent babies. Officiating at the funeral was a Serbian Orthodox priest. These were not Muslim babies killed by a Serb sniper, but Serbian babies killed by a Muslim sniper. However, for American consumption CNN had cropped the Serbian Orthodox priest from the video so that the American people would continue to believe that the Serbs were guilty.
If the "trusted" CNN lied about that, what else have they lied about?
The media lied about the supposed Trepca Mine atrocity, claiming Serbs had murdered 750 Kosovo Albanians, cut the bodies into little pieces and thrown them into the mine -- and the American people believed. It was Daniel Pearl, later murdered by al-Qaeda terrorists, who exposed the story as a hoax on the front page of The Wall Street Journal on Dec. 31, 1999.
The media also lied about the Markale market place massacre in Sarajevo, a massacre that was self-inflicted by Bosnian Muslim forces and for which NATO bombed the Serbian people. Yossef Bodansky, director of a congressional task force on terrorism, wrote in his book, Offensive in the Balkans, that the explosion at Sarajevo's main market place was a "special charge designed and built with help from Hizbullah experts," and that "This callous self-killing was designed to shock the West, especially sentimental and guillible Washington, to raise the level of Western sympathy for the Bosnian Muslims and further demonize the Serbs so that Western governments would be more supportive of Sarajevo's forcoming aggressive moves, and perhaps even finally intevene militarily."
ALL THE SUFFERING, bloodshed and death in Bosnia might have been averted had it not been for the meddling of our State Department. In The Lisbon Agreement of 1992, all three Bosnian leaders representing the Croats, Muslims and Serbs, endorsed the proposal that the republic be a confereration divided into three ethnic regions. The plan was scuttled when our American ambassador to Yugoslavia advised Alija Izetbegovic, representing the Muslim party of Bosnia, that "if he didn't like it, why sign it?" This doomed an agreement that even the same ambassador later said "wasn't so bad after all."
I leave you with the following quote: "This organized anti-Serb and pro-Muslim propaganda should cause anyone believing in democracy and free press serious concerns. It recalls Hitler's propaganda against the allies in World War II. Facts are twisted and, when convenient, disregarded." -- Yohanan Ramati, director of the Jerusalem Institute for Western Defense.
Wasn't it at about this time Hillary was quoted in, IIRC, Talk Magazine urging Bill to commence bombing after not talking to him for months following the Monica scandal.
They let this guy slide and now they want to impeach President Bush. I believe what the liberals really want is a Civil War in this country.
And it shouldn't be long before our pro-Muhammedan group of posters here on Free Republic show up to inform you that no mere mortal is permitted to question Bill Clinton's activities in the Balkans. They'll be armed with lots of links to sites sponsored by George Soros!
That is a possibility.
Anyone know for certain?
They have been playing one side against the other for years, Blacks against Whites. Guess now they will throw in the Hispanics and Muslims to really get it going.
A thing to remember. Also the Serbian Krajina did not have to be destroyed and Kosovo did not have to be purged of Serbs and Gypsies.
Yes, I am sure they will be but for it to work I would have to fall for their lies which I won't. Never fell for any of Clinton's BS and Carter's BS is what made me change parties.
Republicans like Bob Dole were demanding attacks on Serbs and accusing Clinton of Chamberlain style appeasement.
National Review was so viciously braying for the Serbian blood that I had to cancel the subscription.
Here comes the article from that time:
(C) BOSTON GLOBE
29 APRIL 1993
BEFORE WE JOIN A WAR, SOME QUESTIONS
by H.D.S. Greenway
In the last few weeks, the Bosnian town of Srebrenica has become another Guernica in the eyes of the West, and the Clinton administration is being drawn inexorably toward military intervention in the Balkan civil war.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher has laid out what he calls the "severe tests" of an interventionist policy: It must be clearly stated, there should be a strong likelihood of success, there must be an "exit strategy," and it must win sustained public support in this country. None of those conditions has been met.
But a public mood is rising. Television has zeroed in on Bosnia while other civil wars and ethnic cleansings go relatively unreported. Respected opinion makers from both left and right have been beating the intervention drum, taunting Clinton, calling his caution a weakness and making shallow, ill-considered comparisons with Hitler-appeasing Neville Chamberlain.
Before the United States commits itself to war, however, there are three questions that the administration needs to answer if intervention is to meet Christopher's "severe tests."
First, who will be our enemies? Second, what are our war aims? Third, what will we do if limited intervention fails to achieve our aims?
Bosnian Serbs are not allowed to link up their territories in what would become a "Greater Serbia," but the Croats in their part of Bosnia-Herzegovina fly the Croatian flag, use Croatian money and have linked up with Croatia. If we will go to war against Serbian aggrandizement in Bosnia, will we also bomb Croats to prevent Greater Croatia?
Will our war aim be "stopping the genocide now," as Sen. Joseph Biden has said? If so, whose genocide? Only last week in Central Bosnia, Muslims and Croats were at each other's throats and, according to the United Nations, summary executions, massacres and ethnic cleansings were committed by both Muslim and Croat factions.
And while world attention was on Serbs shelling Srebrenica, the BBC reported on the mass graves the Serbs were finding just a few miles away in which lay the corpses of Serbs who had been decapitated, mutilated and tortured by Muslims during the Muslims' Christmas offensive.
Simplistic analysts have put all the blame for the Bosnian civil war on the Serbs and their leader, Slobodan Milosevic, the former Communist turned ultra-nationalist who has played the ethnic card to fan the flames of hatred. That Croatia's leader, Franjo Tudjman, has done much the same thing goes largely ignored. The real cause of the war, however, was as UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali described it in an interview last summer. "You have three ethnic groups, and they have not taken into account the point of view of one of the three, which was the Serbs."
Croats and Muslims were granted rights of self-determination that the large Serb minorities living outside the province of Serbia were denied. Serbs had historical reasons to fear Croatian and Muslim domination, and Milosevic was able to take advantage of those fears.
True, the Serbs are responsible for the most atrocities, but if we intervene to tip the military balance against Serbs, will we be pre- pared to make war on Muslims and Croats if they turn on Serb civilians to enlarge their own territories?
This is not a cut-and-dried matter of forcing an invader out of another country. This is an entangled, tripartite civil war with 500 years of hatred. If putting back together the Humpty Dumpty of Bosnian unity --never more than an illusion-- is our aim, we'd better think in terms of a 100-year "exit strategy."
Lastly, what if a limited intervention fails to end the fighting and accelerates it instead? Unfortunately for Clinton, he will have to live with the results of intervention while pundits promoting war today will be the first to denounce him should things go wrong tomorrow.
Look, I'm a Beatles freak, but I've never heard of this song. What album is it on?
I never had much use for Republicans like Bob Dole just as I have no use for McCain and a few other Republicans.
And National Review? And others?
Face it - the war against Serbs was bipartisan.
Thanks for the article.
Ping for later.
Oh, it's McCartney, not the Beatles. Oof. Thanks. I was new in the States then and didn't follow the politics so much. However, after 911 you can't help but see what a mess Clinton tenure was and how many years it will take to clean up that mess.
In a sense, you're dead on, but I think it's more of a hellbent dream an Utopian oligarchy run by an elitist group of secular, agnostic, or atheist, self appointed tax-moochers that always 'know best' for what's the best for the rest of us in the US and the world with no offers of tolerance and compromise other than 'their way'.
Source:http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0307d.asp
This is as close as I could find.
It was. Go to: Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base
This is a January 16, 1997 report for the Senate Republican Policy Committe.
It's all there.
Obviously, no one read Clinton's treachery regarding his arming the Muslim Bosnians against the Christian Serbs.
A Must Read!
The voting record concerning the bombing of Serbia is no longer available on the House website, but it showed that the Democrats supported it almost unanimously while only a few Republicans supported it.
This isn't to deny that some Republicans supported this ill-conceived foreign relations disaster, but there were more against it than there were for it.
Odd, but the previous link worked for me, but let's try this one.
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