A Mysterious Death at The Hague

The Chronicles Magazine ^ | 24 Mar 2006 | Srdja Trifkovic

[A. Pole]

The mainstream Western media coverage of the death of Slobodan Milosevic, while predictably relentless in its clichés (the “Butcher of the Balkans,” guilty of “starting three wars” and ordering ethnic cleansing and genocide in his pursuit of a “greater Serbia,” etc.), has ignored the unresolved mystery surrounding the event itself. Having spent a week in Belgrade talking to a score of well-placed individuals at different ends of the political spectrum, I can present to our readers the facts of the case that are deemed unfit to print by their Gannett, Tribune, NYT, or Knight Ridder outlets.

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Milosevic was found dead in his cell at the International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) detention unit near The Hague on Saturday, March 11, at 10:05 in the morning. His death came less than a week after another indicted Serb—the former President of the Krajina Serb Republic Milan Babic—hanged himself in another wing of the same UN detention facility. It also came a week after the Tribunal formally rejected his petition for temporary leave to travel to Moscow for medical treatment.

Far more remarkably, Milosevic’s death came a day after he wrote a letter in longhand to the Russian foreign ministry, warning foreign minister Sergei Lavrov that his life was in danger:

[T]he persistence with which the medical treatment in Russia was denied, in the first place is motivated by the fear that through careful examination it would be discovered that active, willful steps were taken to destroy my health throughout the proceedings of the trial, which could not be hidden from Russian specialists . . . [O]n January 12th (i.e., two months ago), an extremely strong drug was found in my blood, which is used, as they themselves say, for the treatment of tuberculosis and leprosy, although I never used any kind of antibiotic during these five years that I’ve been in their prison. Throughout this whole period, neither have I had any kind of infectious illness (apart from flu). Also the fact that doctors needed 2 months [to report this fact to me] cannot have any other explanation than we are facing manipulation. . . . [by] those from which I defended my country in times of war and who have an interest to silence me . . . , I am addressing you in expectation that you help me defend my health from the criminal activities in this institution, working under the sign of the U.N. . . .

Within hours after Milosevic’s death was announced, his legal advisor Zdenko Tomanovic filed an official request to the Tribunal to have the autopsy carried out in Moscow, “having in mind his claims yesterday that he was being poisoned in the jail.” This was rejected by the Tribunal and an autopsy was carried out by a Dutch team, in the presence of Russian and Serbian doctors. No overt signs of poisoning were found, but the head of the Bakulev Cardiovascular Surgery Centre, Academician Leo Bokeria, who attended the autopsy, said that the medicines given to Milosevic might have exacerbated the situation: “We indicated how the patient could be cured, but no steps were taken… We warned for more than two years that something might happen to the patient, but the leadership of the tribunal avoided facing this.” Russian diplomats at the UN described the report from The Hague as “disturbing” and demanded a full report from the UN Secretariat.

Suspicions of foul play were fuelled by the ICTY chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte’s strange demeanor in the immediate aftermath of Milosevic’s death. She appeared almost gleeful on March 12 when she declared that Milosevic’s death may have been a suicide, and speculated that he might have wanted to thwart the impending guilty verdict in his trial. The theme of “Milosevic cheating justice” was duly picked up by the media pack and establishment politicians and repeated thousands of times, creating the impression that the trial was going well for the prosecution.

Anyone who had met Milosevic at The Hague—myself included—knew that del Ponte’s speculation was absurd. He was conducting his defense effectively and at times brilliantly, and he was positively looking forward to the rest of the trial—not because he expected a “not guilty” verdict (no such luck at The Hague), but because he believed that he was contributing to setting the record of history straight. Canada’s former ambassador in Belgrade James Bissett was one of the last defense witnesses to see Milosevic alive. He told me in Belgrade earlier this week that, in the course of their long meetings on February 21 and 22, Milosevic struck him as the man least likely to contemplate suicide at the ICTY, the prosecution team included:

He was perfectly relaxed, not in the least depressed, and seemed to be in a good health. He was busy trying to prepare for my testimony and he struck me as being content with the way the trial was going. The following day, however, around five o’clock—after we’d worked for 2 or 3 hours—he suddenly became flushed in the face and clasped his hands to his head. I was startled and asked if he was all right. He answered that he was OK and explained that although his blood pressure was under control, he had these constant ringing and echoing sounds in his head. This was caused, he said, by a problem with an artery in his ear. He complained about it before to the Dutch doctors who simply said it was psychological. But after increasing demands they gave him a MRI test and found that indeed he was right there was a problem with the artery in his ear. Artery had a “loop” in it and to correct it, surgery would be necessary. That is why he wanted to go to Moscow to a clinic that specializes in this type of ailment, but the Tribunal refused it.

Bissett was especially sorry to hear of Milosevic’s death because it means that the historical record that he had wanted to set down during his trial will be incomplete: now we are not going to hear the Milosevic’s story but only the media spin, as all of the evidence in his favor has been censored:

He knew his material. He has done a very good job of cross-examining the prosecution witnesses and destroying many of them who appeared before the Tribunal. He has discounted much of the case against him but the public hears none of this because there seems to be a deliberate news blackout on anything recorded in his favor . . . There is a sense of relief at The Hague, because the Tribunal was having a very hard time bringing forth any hard evidence to prove that there was genocide in Kosovo or that Milosevic entered into the criminal conspiracy to establish a ‘Greater Serbia.’ Nevertheless they would have found him guilty. He was under no illusion about that but he wanted to put the facts on the historical record. Unfortunately this is no longer possible and so it will be NATO’s interpretation of events that the world will have.

According to the former Yugoslav foreign minister Zivadin Jovanovic, who served at the time of the NATO bombing, the issue is not so much whether Milosevic was poisoned, as many Serbs still believe, but whether his death was made more likely by the Tribunal’s willful negligence. He and his colleagues from the Belgrade Forum, an NGO critical of the ICTY, note that there has been no serious attempt by any major Western media outlet to examine the facts of the case, and ask who exactly stood to profit from his death.

The suspicion of deliberate negligence is shared by many Serbs who had never been sympathetic to Milosevic, politically and personally. They complain that Western journalists have accepted a tad too blithely the Tribunal’s claim that Milosevic was illicitly taking powerful antibiotics that had neutralized his blood pressure medication, allegedly in order to create the impression that the therapy ordered by Dutch doctors was ineffective and that therefore he should be allowed to travel to Moscow for treatment. Even if Milosevic had been willing to risk his life by taking a powerful antibiotic, Rifanticin, which would have rendered blood pressure medication useless, the claim is unconvincing for three reasons:

1. Milosevic’s very public alarm about the antibiotic’s traces, evident in his letter to Lavrov, does not tally with his allegedly illicit scheme to self-medicate the drug;

2. Milosevic’s premises were under surveillance and subject to detailed searches;

3. All visitors and their possessions (briefcases, papers) are subjected to a thorough search by the detention unit staff.

As for the assertion that Milosevic “escaped justice,” impartial observers were of the opinion that Carla del Ponte was the one losing the legal battle. The charges against Milosevic—genocide, crimes against humanity, “joint criminal conspiracy” to create a “Greater Serbia”—have always been political, and they are collective by definition. They remain unproven and, by the standards of any normal court in a normal country, would have been deemed discredited by now. Neil Clark, who used to cover the ICTY for the Guardian, noted that “not only has the prosecution signally failed to prove Milosevic’s personal responsibility for atrocities committed on the ground, the nature and extent of the atrocities themselves has also been called into question.” In the worst single atrocity ascribed to Milosevic’s ultimate responsibility, that in Srebrnica in July 1995, Clark says that del Ponte and her team “produced nothing to challenge the verdict of the five-year inquiry commissioned by the Dutch government—that there was ‘no proof that orders for the slaughter came from Serb political leaders in Belgrade.’” John Laughland noted that the trial had heard more than a hundred prosecution witnesses by late last year, “and not a single one has testified that Milosevic ordered war crimes.” In Julia Gorin’s view, an attempt to create an Islamic “Greater Albania” was confused with one to create a “Greater Serbia”:

Surely if the latter were Slobodan Milosevic’s goal, he would have started by ethnically cleansing the nearly 300,000 Muslims of Serbia. Though he built his career in whatever dirty ways Tito’s Yugoslavia allowed, he was the least of the Balkans’ villains. For most Serbs, he was not a hero until he was called upon to defend an entire nation at The Hague. Now that Milosevic is dead, we are spared the worldwide riots that would have ensued had the tribunal mustered the courage to issue a verdict based on the evidence. And we can all sleep comfortably as the disproved charges are accepted as history.

The circumstances surrounding Milosevic’s death will be brought to light sooner or later, and the verdict will not be to the credit of the “international community” or the concept of transnational justice. He was guilty of many sins and errors, but they were a matter between him and his people. The Hague was the wrong court trying to find him guilty of the wrong crimes, and it has always been motivated by all the wrong reasons.

The verdict of history on Milosevic himself will be ambiguous because there had been more than one “Milosevic” in his 64 years (1941-2006). His career can be divided into four periods of unequal duration and significance. The first, from his birth in 1941 until his meteoric rise to power in Serbia in early 1987, was the longest and the least interesting. The only unusual element in his early biography was the suicide of both his parents, who had separated when he was a child. At 24 he married his only sweetheart, Mirjana Markovic, illegitimate daughter of a high-ranking communist official. She was neurotic, uncompromisingly hard-Left in her politics, ambitious, and able to dominate “her Sloba” until the very end. Unstable to the point of clinical insanity, more than any other person she had contributed to his serious errors of judgment and eventual loss of popularity and power base.

To all appearances, until 1987 Milosevic was an unremarkable apparatchik. His solid Communist Party credentials—he joined the League of Communists as a high school senior in 1959—were essential to his professional advance. After graduating from Belgrade’s school of law in 1964 he held a variety of business administration posts, eventually becoming director of a major bank and, briefly, its representative in New York. By the early 80s he increasingly turned to politics and made his way up the Party ladder by forging alliances and friendships that were pragmatic rather ideological. His name remained relatively unknown outside the ranks of the nomenklatura.

Then came the turning point. As president of the League of Communists of Serbia, in April 1987 Milosevic traveled to the town of Kosovo Polje, in the restive southern Serbian province of Kosovo, to quell the protests by local Serbs who were unhappy with the lack of support they were getting from Belgrade in the face of ethnic Albanian pressure. When the police started dispersing the crowd using batons, Milosevic stopped them and uttered the words that were to change his life and that of a nation. “No one is allowed to beat you people; no one will ever hit you again,” he told the cheering crowd.

Used to two generations of Serbian Communist leaders subservient to Tito and reluctant to advance their republic’s interests lest they be accused of “greater Serbian nationalism,” ordinary Serbs responded with enthusiasm. The word of a new kind of leader spread like wildfire. Milosevic’s populism worked wonders at first, enabling him to eliminate all political opponents within the Party leadership of Serbia at a marathon 30-hour Central Committee session in September 1987. A huge rally in Belgrade’s Confluence Park (1988) and in Kosovo to mark the 600th anniversary of the historic battle (1989), reflected a degree of genuine popularity that he enjoyed in Serbia, Montenegro, and Serbian-inhabited part of Bosnia and Croatia in the late 1980s.

Far from proclaiming an agenda for expansion, as later alleged by his accusers, his speech at Kosovo was full of old ideological clichés and “Yugoslav” platitudes:

Equal and harmonious relations among Yugoslav peoples are a necessary condition for the existence of Yugoslavia and for it to find its way out of the crisis and, in particular, they are a necessary condition for its economic and social prosperity . . . Internal and external enemies . . . organize their activity against multinational societies mostly by fomenting national conflicts. At this moment, we in Yugoslavia are behaving as if we have never had such an experience.

The precise nature of his long term agenda was never stated, however, because it had never been defined. He was able to gain followers from widely different camps, including hard-line Party loyalists as well as anti-Communist nationalists, because they all tended to project their hopes, aspirations and fears onto Milosevic—even though those hopes and aspirations were often mutually incompatible.

The key issue was the constitutional framework within which the Serbs should seek their future. They were unhappy by Tito’s arrangements that kept them divided into five units in the old Yugoslav federation. Milosevic wanted to redefine the nature of that federation, rather than abolish it. Then and throughout his life he was a “Yugoslav” rather than a “Greater Serb.” In addition he was so deeply steeped in the Communist legacy of his formative years—and so utterly unable to resist the pressure from his doctrinaire wife—that even after the fall of the Berlin Wall he kept the old insignia with the red star, together with the leadership structure and mindset of the old, Titoist order.

The tensions of this period could have been resolved by a clear strategy once the war broke out, first in Croatia (summer 1991) and then in Bosnia (spring 1992). This did not happen. In the third phase of Milosevic’s career, from mid-1991 until October 5, 2000, a cynically manipulative Mr. Hyde had finally prevailed over the putative national leader Dr. Jekyll. As the fighting raged around Vukovar and Dubrovnik, he made countless contradictory statements about its nature, always stressing that “Serbia is not at war” and thereby implicitly recognizing the validity of Tito’s internal boundaries. Anticipating the onset of the second stage even before it became fully apparent, and to many raised eyebrows in Washington, I opined that “Milosevic is cynically exploiting the nationalist awakening to perpetuate Communist rule and his own power in the eastern half of Yugoslavia.” (U.S. News & World Report, 18 June 1990), that he “needs outside enemies to halt the erosion of his popularity.” (U.S. News & World Report, 12 November 1990). In the end, for Serb patriots it turned out that “trusting Milosevic is like giving a bloodbank to Count Dracula” (the Times of London, 23 November 1995).

By blithely recognizing the secessionist republics within Tito’s boundaries, the “international community” effectively became a combatant in the wars of Yugoslav secession. Its “mediators” accepted a role that was not only subordinate, but also squalid. Lord David Owen, prominent among them, conceded that Tito’s boundaries were arbitrary and should have been redrawn at the time of Yugoslavia’s disintegration: “to rule out any discussion or opportunity for compromise in order to head off war was an extraordinary decision,” he wrote, “to have stuck unyieldingly to the internal boundaries of the six republics within the former Yugoslavia as being the boundaries for independent states, was a folly far greater than that of premature recognition itself.” But in all his deeds he and a legion of other mediators nevertheless stuck, unyieldingly, to that formula.

Milosevic’s diplomatic ineptitude and his chronic inability to grasp the importance of lobbying and public relations in Washington and other Western capitals had enabled the secessionists to have a free run of the media scene with the simplistic notion that “the butcher of the Balkans” was overwhelmingly, even exclusively guilty of all the horrors that had befallen the former Yugoslavia. At the same time, far from seeking the completion of a “Greater Serbian” project while he had the military wherewithal to do so (1991-1995), Milosevic attempted to fortify his domestic position in Belgrade by trading in the Western Serbs (Krajina, Bosnia) for Western benevolence. It worked for a while. “The Serbian leader continues to be a necessary diplomatic partner,” the New York Times opined in November 1996, a year after the Dayton Agreement ended the war in Bosnia thanks to Milosevic’s pressure on the Bosnian-Serb leadership. His status as a permanent fixture in the Balkan landscape seemed secure.

It all changed with the escalation of the crisis in Kosovo, however. His belated refusal to sign on yet another dotted line at Rambouillet paved the way for NATO’s illegal bombing of Serbia in the spring of 1999. For one last time the Serbs rallied under the leader many of them no longer trusted, aware that the alternative was to accept the country’s open-ended carve-up. For one last time they were let down: Milosevic saved Clinton’s skin by capitulating in June of that year, and letting NATO occupy Kosovo just as the bombing campaign was running out of steam and the Alliance was riddled by discord over what to do next.

The ensuing mass exodus of Kosovo’s quarter-million Serbs and the torching of their homes and churches by the KLA terrorists did not prevent Milosevic from pretending that his superior statesmanship, embodied in the unenforceable UN Security Council Resolution 1244, had saved the country’s integrity. The ensuing reconstruction effort in Serbia was used as a propaganda ploy to improve the rating of his own socialist party of Serbia and his wife Mirjana Markovic’s minuscule “Yugoslav United Left” (JUL).

For many Serbs this was the final straw. Refusing to recognize the change of mood, in mid-2000 Milosevic followed his wife’s advice and called a snap election, hoping to secure his position for another four years. Unexpectedly he was unable to beat his chief challenger Vojislav Kostunica in the first round, and succumbed to a wave of popular protest when he tried to deny Kostunica’s victory in the closely contested runoff.

His downfall on October 5, 2000, followed a failed attempt to steal yet another election. It nevertheless would not have been possible if the military and the security services had not abandoned him. There had been just too many defeats and too many wasted opportunities over the previous decade and a half for the security chiefs to continue trusting Milosevic implicitly. Their refusal to fire on the crowds—as his half-demented wife allegedly demanded on that day—sealed Milosevic’s fate. After five months’ powerless isolation in his suburban villa he was arrested and taken to Belgrade’s central prison. On June 28, 2001, Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic arranged for his transfer to The Hague Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, in violation of Serbia’s laws and constitution.

The final four years of Milosevic’s life were spent in prison. During this time a haughty and arrogant know-all of previous years rapidly evolved into a hard-working and efficient lawyer who conducted his own complex defense. He was helped by an indictment that was hastily concocted by del Ponte’s predecessor Louise Arbour at the height of the bombing campaign in May 1999 to serve political, rather than legal purposes.

In preparing his defense Milosevic was initially guided by personal motives. By the end of 2003 or early 2004, however, he came to realize that, regardless of his own destiny, what he was doing had a wider historic significance. He was accused of “genocide,” a crime that places collective stigma on a nation, not just its leader. Furthermore, the accusation of a “joint criminal conspiracy” with the purpose of creating a “Greater Serbia” was expanded by the Tribunal into an attempt to misrepresent two centuries of Serbia’s history as an open-ended quest for aggressive expansion, with Milosevic but the latest link in that chain. As John Laughland wrote in the Spectator last year, even more than the gross abuses of due process which it is committing, the Milosevic trial has shown the futility of trying to submit political decisions to the judgment of criminal law:

Because it seeks to comprehend war as the result of the decisions of individuals, and not as the consequence of conflict between states, modern international humanitarian law sees trees but no wood. In the Milosevic trial, the role of the other Yugoslav leaders in starting the war especially those who declared secession from Yugoslavia is grossly obscured, as is that of the countless Western politicians and institutions who were intimately involved at every stage of the Yugoslav conflict, and who encouraged the secessions.

Finally grasping the extent to which his trial was also the trial of the Serbian nation as a whole, Milosevic succeeded for the first time in his life to transcend the limitations of ideology and egotism that had blinkered him for so long. He turned the trial, heralded by the Western media class as a new Nuremberg, into a political embarrassment for “the international community.” His defense, effective and at times brilliant (one prosecutor acknowledged that “there’s no doubt who’s the smartest guy in the courtroom”), finally blended Milosevic’s personal interest with the interest of his people. When I met him at his cell in June 2004 he told me that he may never get out of there, but he was certain his “refutation of [chief prosecutor Carla] del Ponte’s ridiculous indictment would set the record of history straight.”

Milosevic’s death makes that certainty well justified, even if “the record of history” comes too late to alter the unjust and untenable temporary outcome of the wars of Yugoslav succession. It is to be feared that those who had “collectively invented a fictional character bearing the name ‘Slobodan Milosevic’ in the 1990s”—as one of my Belgrade interlocutors, Diana Johnstone, aptly put it—will use the historic man’s death as a welcome opportunity to put the finishing touches on the caricature, and promote it as the final, approved and unalterable likeness.

[Red6]

That's an ignorant argument.

There were Volksdeutsche Poles, Lithuanians, even Americans fighting in the Wehrmacht in WWII. What's your point?

Again, as mentioned above several times. To try to prove your point you have to reach out into the realm of absurd, you guys take the argument to the point where it's ridiculous to try to prove your point. Applying your reasoning, the US was on Germany's side in WWII. Why not? I’m only taking it a “bit” further than you did.

[DTA]

>>>To try to prove your point you have to reach out into the realm of absurd...<<<<<

I do not have to. You have proved the point for me. You were being speciffically asked :

"Are you saying that the the death/rape camps in Bosnia were as real as Auschwitz/Treblinka were? Are you saying that the deaths of 200,000 Bosnian Muslims is as certain as the deaths of millions of Jews during WWII?"

You responded : ABSOLUTELLY!.

Basic principle of logic is that if A=B then B=A.

If "the deaths of 200,000 Bosnian Muslims is as certain as the deaths of millions of Jews during WWII", then "the deaths of millions of Jews during WWII is as certain as as the deaths of 200,000 Bosnian Muslims"

You say : ABSOLUTELLY.

That means that for you, an U.S. Army Officer, the deaths of millions of Jews during WWII is a lie.

Because 200,000 dead Bosnian Muslims is a lie. There were no 200 000 dead Muslims.

The total death toll in Bosnia civil war was 102,000. This is ICTY data.

You dare speak of villifying of the victims. And in effect you are exactly doing this by villifying the Serbs as a people with your fake Nazi comparrisons.

This is no different from Palestinian Arabs, Norwegians, Danes and other assorted Hitler allies calling Israelis "Jewish Nazis".

I call it Nazi revisionism. So does German legislation.

You may be arrested in Germany and Austria for that.

[DTA]

>>>>>>That's an ignorant argument.There were Volksdeutsche Poles, Lithuanians, even Americans fighting in the Wehrmacht in WWII. What's your point? <<<<<<<<

My point is that your posts are pure Nazi revisionism. It seems that smearing of the Serbs was not enough for you, so you have to smear the Poles as well.

Poles, Czechs, Serbs and Greeks were the only European people who did not provide volunteers for Hitler. Calling ethnic Germans from Poland "Poles" is the same as calling Auschwitz "Polish extermination camp". it is an attempt to attribute guilt to the Poles as a people, Poles who were Nazi Victims, NOT collaborators. You know, it is villification of the victims. Millions of Poles were Nazi victims.

Your act is dishonest. I doubt you are an U.S. officer.

[Red6]

I can’t keep up with this stupidity-

But another error stated here is that all Jews just gave up. That’s not the case. Many in the ghettos fought back. Many did not volunteer their lives.

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In the Balkans you had one side that was a belligerent. Serbia had no intentions to stop. They were the ones with the tanks. They had the fighters, they had the ADA, intell, the heavy artillery…… Most the firepower of the former YU was packed into Serbia which had NO intentions to stop.

Even when the first peace keepers were on the ground it became evident that they would be ineffective since they could only intervene if they themselves were threatened. So they sat their and “watched” as this was going on which you now deny.

I’m not saying that the Bosnians/Bosniacs etc are any better. Give them the ability or chance and they are just as bad and at times they did get the opportunity and did do bad things too. I don’t deny that there are “Islamist” elements that were and even ARE still there. In fact it’s known that volunteers from some Middle Eastern nations were going there to fight. But none of this justifies the actions of Serbia. It’s unwillingness to compromise to achieve peace and the systemic state sponsored and organized actions at that time were simply wrong. Serbia was calling the shots and only had to loose if a peace settlement was worked out. Hence the trouble was with Serbia and pre-programmed when Great Britain and Germany (The two biggest political forces behind intervention) began to push hard for a solution to the Balkan crises.

The Balkans was not my war. I know many who were there or went in for follow on rotations, but I myself was in the Middle East (Combat) and Korea (non-combat / up along DMZ). At one point I was part of an organization that was staged for East Timor so we sat in the Pacific but never did anything.

Germany in the Balkans can’t be blamed for doing anything wrong except:

a. Recognizing Croatia as a nation while YU was still on the political map. They helped accelerate the decay of YU.

b. They were to hesitant to tae action and only after flooded with 250,000 refugees did they develop the moral courage to possibly take military action to stop what is going on in the Balkans.

You won’t find me defending Germany in the Balkans. While they eventually did the right thing, it was still motivated by self-interest. This is the same nation which then 7 years after THEY call on NATO to solve their European problems say “No blood for oil” and block all action in Iraq, back peddle even in Afghanistan…… As in Serbia, Germany has a lot of good people, I am of German origin (Not a factor for me), but I will be the first to admit that the Germans earned little from WWII and despite saying “Nie Wieder (Never again)” looked the other way in Rwanda, or today in Somalia. The Germans have become a “Volk” centered around themselves. Again, as in Serbia, most people just want to live and have no trouble, but the “state” will sit there and watch as thousands are killed in Iraq and if they are asked to help they will scream “No blood for oil”. Do I have a lot of love or respect for this nations behavior in the last decade? No – So don’t make it sound like I have some love for them.

If you read through my posts in other threads you’ll see I’m consistent in my thoughts. But I’m not the issue.

Bottom line – according to people like you, Serbian MIGs kicked the crap out of the USAF (The truth is covered up in a grand multi-national conspiracy), Serbia was a victim of the Muslims (And there is a grand multi-national conspiracy to cover that up) and now Milosevic was murdered in another “conspiracy” with a multi-national cover up. Do people like you feel stupid? Of course not! They just keep marching on.

[A. Pole]

according to people like you, Serbian MIGs kicked the crap out of the USAF

What?

[Red6]

Admitting that a few Americans fought on the side of the Taliban does not make the US guilty of what the Taliban did.

Admitting that a few whacko Americans fought for the NAZI's (And they did) does not make the US a nation that supported the NAZI's.

Admitting that a few Poles sided with the NAZI's does not deny nor belittle the fights in Warsaw or the near hopeless battles against an overbearing enemy in 1939.

YOU MAKE MY POINT! It’s ridiculous! It’s ridiculous to say that all Bosnians/Croats were happy subjects of the NAZI’s because a “few” went along with it. I suggest you learn where Tito came from. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito

The Bosnians are hate the Serbs, the Serbs hate the Bosnians. Nothing you do will change their views. Maybe with a lot of time they will not want to kill each other? God knows. But the simple fact was that Serbia was an obstacle to peace in the Balkans. They were the ones that had nothing to gain from it. They were the ones with the overwhelming military power. Everything else is qualifying these truths. All the references to WWII, the Islamists, bla bla bla is refocusing the attention from what really happened. You had one belligerent who was destabilizing a whole region. Who was pouring fuel on a fire in the Balkans that was spreading further even into Greece etc. You had literally over a million refugees and Germany alone took on 250,000. Something had to be done; and one party was not willing to compromise or concede anything. Therefore, while in reality, the Serbs are ethnically more like us, Christian, and the Bosnians were in reality no better if given a chance. It was the Serbs who were the ones with the tanks and airplanes and helicopters and were not willing to play along to achieve some solution other than us bombing them into it.

What else could we have done? Explain that.

[DTA]

>>>>>What else could we have done? Explain that.<<<<<

I assume that "we" represent U.S. government in 1992.

Lisbon agreement, brokered by Portuguese diplomat Cutillero provided a platform for peace in Bosnia BEFORE the civil war broke out. It was signed by all three sides. However, Bosnian Muslim leader Izetbegovic complained to U.S. Ambassador Zimmerman that he did not like the terms of Peace agreement. Zimmermann told him, if he does not like it, why he is not withdrawing his signature, U.S. will support him. Izetbegovic did, and the rest is history. Civil war broke out.

As a result, 102,000 Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs died, in a civil war that lasted three years

It could have been prevented.

According to Nuremberg, Zimmerman and Izetbegovic are guilty of crime against Peace.

They were not indicted by ICTY. So much of this bogus "war crimes tribunal", 'the biggest war crimes tribunal since Nuremberg".

Your inistence on fake information is mind boggling. There were no "Bosnians" and "Serbs". Serbs in Bosnia are Bosnians also. There are only Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs as warring parties.

The propagandists use this propaganda trick to mislead the audience in believing that the Serbs were aggressors in Bosnia. Aggressors in their own land. That is your main line. Wrong from the ground up. You got it all mixed up.

The problem with Nazi analogies you make is that in the Balkans, Nazi crimes are still living history, because there are still survivors.

When you speak of Bosnian Muslims being the sole victims, it is isensitive towards the all other victims in civil war.

Especially having in mind that Bosnian Muslims have started civil war in Bosnia.

[infidel_and_proud]

Red6, you wrote

"There are people who deny that the Holocaust ever happened. You fall into the same class with them. Ridiculous and pathetic"

So, you're comparing the Holocaust with Srebrenica I take it. O.K., let's look at the facts and see how closely the match up.

1) The Holocaust consumed 6,000,000 Jews. Srebrenica, even if we take the ICTY's numbers meant the death of around 6,000 muslims ( BTW the ICTY's case against the Bosnian Serbs is a joke but that's by the by )

So one tenth of 1%.

2) The Muslims had an entire division in Srebrenica. They were re equip-ed by helicopter and on foot. As the war progressed they became stronger.

Can the same be said of the Jewish inmates of Auschwitz? Did the Jews have an entire division within the camp?
Were they re equipped with anti tank missiles?

3) The 28th Muslim Division within Srebrenica was so powerful they almost linked up with the Muslim's main battle lines (the 2nd Corps) at Tuzla on a couple of occasions. In fact, earlier in 1995, they launched "Operation Grasshopper", the aim being to physically link up the Zepa and Srebrenica safe havens with TUZLA. They almost succeeded and were only repulsed after very heavy fighting.

Did the Jews in their concentration camps almost manage to link up with allied lines during WW2?

4) Oric's men torched the surrounding area (Prodrnje plateau) destroying 50 Serb inhabited villages in the process. They bragged of killing all Bosnian Serbs: women, children, OAP's.

They never took prisoners.

The Dutch soldiers would watch as the 28th Division would leave the safety of Srebrenica and then note that a couple of hours later, they'd see smoke coming from a neighboring Serb village.

Did the Jewish inmates of, say, Bergen Belson, torch the villages, killing all the ethnic Germans they found, women, children, the elderly?

And so the list continues.

The irony is it's you, Red6, who is intent on belittling the suffering of the Jewish people in WW2. You, if anything, are the Holocaust denier, for you compare that event with the deaths at Srebrenica.

ONE TENTH OF ONE %

Trust you to demean the memory of the Jews, Red6.

[joan]

Who was pouring fuel on a fire in the Balkans that was spreading further even into Greece etc.

What are you talking about? Nothing happened in Greece - you are making up things. There was no fighting in Greece. The war didn't even come close. Macedonia broke off in 1992 without any war and no fighting even spilled into that country until after NATO took countrol of Kosovo and Kosovo Albanians launched an attack from the UN/NATO governed Kosovo onto Macedonia in 2001 AFTER Milosevic was no longer in power.

[Red6]

(I’m writing fast and don’t have much time – sorry for error in grammer)

You mean the Srebrenica massacre? The event that never happened according to people like you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre

You mean the massacre where alone there 8,500 people were murdered and the bodies recorded and identified? You mean that even which people like you claim were no Muslims and even try to pretend that it was Serbs?

You mean Srebrenica, the town declared a safe zone in 1993 and where Dutch soldiers watched as the events unfolded and you deny this ever happened?

http://www.srebrenica.nl/en/ (Go to past articles – there they report on the Dutch soldiers who WERE there and DID see the atrocities but could not intervene).

**

There is talk here about how the Serbs were pushed out of their land-

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/bosnia.htm

Well, While I’m no hippy peacenik, maybe in this case it was Karma?

**

The entire defense of the Serb actions are based on fallacies and shear rhetoric:

a. Taking an argument to an extreme point where it’s absurd. Example that is kind of related to this in a way. I debated with a German here and explained to him that their was a Global War On Terror. I gave him examples, logical arguments and and and as to why a lot of the events are interrelated and Iran, Syria etc are all part of the larger issue. His counter argument was that this would mean that you need to annihilate 1.2 billion Muslims. Bogus argument obviously. That’s taking a point to a ridiculous extreme to prove ones position but it is complete BS.

b. Make it all relative. “Well, the Serbs only killed 8,500 in Srebrenica (ALONE) and that’s not as bad”

c. The debate ALWAYS is channeled into a discussion about who started it, what happened 100 years ago, that this is part of the global Islamic threat and and and. The real issue MUST be sidestepped if you want to hold onto your position. It’s an unjustifiable position unless you go into the realm of “polemics”.

d. As I said before and as you guys did; a major aspect of your defensive argument is to just blatantly DENY everything. They when you do admit it, you try to make it “relative”. Again, like a NAZI who tries to say that in the US we had segregation or the Indians, you try to make the issue all blurry with this fuzzy logic.

The similarities between the Holocaust and what happened in the Balkans are scary.

-You have one side with all the firepower (Serbs).

-You had one side that was made guilty of all the wrong, evil and ill which the other side had (Suendenbock).

-You had one side that didn’t want to stop what they were doing and only the use of force was going to put an end to it.

-You had the STATE sponsored, organized, planned and executed destruction of another people under false pretences to create “Lebenraum” for the “Uebermensch” as the Serbs see themselves.

-You had one side that had a massive propaganda machine which for a nation that size was quite impressive (Like Goebels). http://www.serbia-info.com/news/1999-04/15/10894.html At the time they even had a mock/fake (look alike) NATO website which when you read it was all spun news. There was a reason why the Serb state run TV channel was targeted in March 99.

What’s most shocking about this is that this is in Europe, in the late 1990s! That the Germany who screamed “Never again” let this happen right on the door step and didn’t do anything until they themselves were adversely affected, that as the Balkans spiraled out of control, as Greece, Turkey and even Iran were more and more becoming involved, Russia backed their old ally the Serbs, the Germans quickly backed their buddies the Croats. Russia was back-dooring weapons into Serbia and and and. A madness you expect in the Middle East was unfolding in Europe!

**

Most Americans don’t even know where Serbia is located. They simply don’t care much. I didn’t fight there, although I’ve been to YU on four occasions for leisure in the past. The Serbs will claim that the US picked sides: Obviously since we beat them into submission (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/kosovo_maps_air.htm ). Ironically the Bosnians are no different. They think we came too late, failed to protect them, and because they are Muslims were indifferent. Neither side is very appreciative of the US action in the former YU.

Are the Bosnians any better? Surly not. If given the chance many would do the same things. But the ones calling the shots where no a rag-tag Bosnian militia armed with a few AK’s. The arms restrictions on trade primarily hit those who were weak to begin with since the Bosnians were not getting arms delivers via Russia. Not until later did the Bosnians/Croats get a lot of heavy equipment. Much of it is old US surplus gear like M60A3 tanks. Some of the Croat officers are professionally trained in US schools in places like Ft. Knox.

Even here there is a lot of Irony. Bush Sr. who proposed an arming of the Bosnians and Croats was made to look like a war mongering blood thirsty animal in much of the European media. Ironically that is exactly what the Germans and others did later. And of course, just as the nuclear deterrence (Which worked very well), just like Libya and and and, they seldom go back and correct their statements. There were no apologies from the leftists like “Der Spiegel” but in the end the proposed idea of the Bush administration (Pre-Clinton who also attacked him in the elections for his position) were applied later and with success. Basically, you can not have a peace in that region without a balance of power and that includes outside forces.

Some relationships can ONLY be dealt with when there is a “Balance of power”. If S. Korea dropped it’s vigilance the North would attack them. Russia strong arms near all its former republics: Ukraine, Republic of Georgia, Belarus….. So to create this balance the Croats/Bosnians were armed. The M60A3 tanks the Croats have are no pre-war stock, neither is a lot of the other heavy equipment they have. From the Serb perspective it must all appear as if NATO picked sides. It’s rather that they just got in-between the war fighting parties. Since the Serbs were the ones dominating the fight and didn’t want to back down they were the ones to get one on the head.

But again, those arguing on the side of the Serbs will resort to arguments that sound more like my 4 year old arguing: “You started it first, NO you did!” It’ll turn into an emotional argument and will be full of semantics: “You can’t compare the Holocaust to the plight of the Bosnians!” (As you try to argue)

And again, let me reiterate this. I am not very appreciative of the Muslim faith. The Serbs are culturally more like me. The Bosnians if given the chance are just as bad and at times did do bad things. I know there was some Islamic sponsored influence in the Balkans. I agree that the Serbs to have a right to defend themselves. At this point let me use another analogy: Two guys are in a fight. Once guy is beating the piss out of the other and the police was called. The Police show up and tries to break up the fight getting in between the two parties. The guy dishing out the whoop-ass doesn’t feel quite satisfied yet and wants to keep beating on the other guy who’s just as much at fault for the fight. Now, who do the Police end up beating on? Does it mean the Police like the guy on the ground who’s getting beat?

**

http://www.nato.int/fyrom/home.htm

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/kosovo1/2001/0828nato.htm

The problem WAS spreading to Macedonia and in 1993 ALREADY there were troops on the ground there. Why don’t you check up something called “Operation Able Sentry” on our friend Google (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=operation+able+sentry ). Eventually this force grew to 3,500 – 5,500 men on the ground.

As I have said over and over and over – ALL you guys keep doing is DENY DENY DENY and make counter accusations.

**

Even the allegations that this was a US lead war is complete Non-sense. In the US there was widespread dissent for our involvement. Clinton came under fire from the Republicans, many US troops oppose being put under UN control and and and. The political forces behind action in the Balkans were the British and the Germans. Those two were the political engines driving the show.

So why did the US lead the air campaign, why was it even the US that led in the ground operations? CAPABILITIES.

We have SEAD capabilities that far overmatch anything which any NATO ally has. We have the C2 and C4I architecture capable of dealing with large-scale, multi faceted, multi-national campaigns in a full spectrum of operations raging from peace enforcement to major theater war. Was it really going to be a Tornado flying the high risk missions when the enemy IADS was still solid? No. When things began to get interesting in the Balkans and NATO was engaged, the US was basically being called on. It’s a matter of perspective. From the Serb perspective it’s a US led war, but in truth it was a European (Great Britain and German) initiative/push for this intervention. Something the Germans behind the intervention today want to downplay since it puts them in an awkward situation in light of Iraq and post 9-11 and their refusal to allow any NATO engagement on Iraq or their minimal effort in Afghanistan. From the US perspective all we got out of YU was “rocks”. Besides “rocks”, YU has ZERO to offer us. This campaign (big picture) cost us money, some lives and economically you can say we had no gain from it in any way. But in usual fashion you will deny it, make counter accusations, bla bla bla.

So let me recap: Grand conspiracy to start war. Grand conspiracy to cover up massive NATO air campaign losses and Serbian success. Conspiracy to lie about genocide which never happened. Conspiracy against Milosevic and his murder was covered up too (let’s not forget the original topic here). And where are the Serbs? Why of course, they are VICTIMS OF NATO AGGRESSION.

[DTA]

First of all, quantity is no replacement for quality of information. What you write is full of erroneous information, semitruths and outright lies.

I find it unnerving to think that such people can become U.S. officers.

Here is what you claim:

b. Make it all relative. “Well, the Serbs only killed 8,500 in Srebrenica (ALONE) and that’s not as bad”

This is outright lie. Bosnian Serbs did not kill 8500 Muslims in Sreberenica. Even Muslim propagandists say "8000". Killing armed men in combat is legitimate war objective.

c. The debate ALWAYS is channeled into a discussion about who started it, what happened 100 years ago, that this is part of the global Islamic threat and and and. The real issue MUST be sidestepped if you want to hold onto your position. It’s an unjustifiable position unless you go into the realm of “polemics”.

Bosnian Muslims created armed Patriotic League, 100,000 strong, under command of Sefer Halilovic (Commander Halil). It was not 100 years ago, it was in 1991, just before the war. Patriotic League was illegal military force and racist organisation (meant to erradicate Serbs). Following your logic and train of thought, Allies flattened German cities for no reason.

d. As I said before and as you guys did; a major aspect of your defensive argument is to just blatantly DENY everything. They when you do admit it, you try to make it “relative”. Again, like a NAZI who tries to say that in the US we had segregation or the Indians, you try to make the issue all blurry with this fuzzy logic.

It is your appeal to emotions (false Nazi analogy, Lebensraum, Goebbels etc.) that hope to blurry the facts. It is actually you who apply Nazi propaganda method: Majority of people will more easilly fall for a big lie than a small one. That is Hitler's teaching, used by an U.S officer today.

The similarities between the Holocaust and what happened in the Balkans are scary.

-You have one side with all the firepower (Serbs).

Another lie. Bosnian Patriotic league was fully armed beofre the hostilities started. Sarajevo was military garrison. So was Srebrenica.

-You had one side that was made guilty of all the wrong, evil and ill which the other side had (Suendenbock).

Before the war strarted, Bosnian Muslm magazine published a cartoon on a front page, depicting Serbs with severed heads and the title: The Fourth Reich is comming. It was an incitement to commit genocide, as per ICTR Rwanda ruling.

-You had one side that didn’t want to stop what they were doing and only the use of force was going to put an end to it.

What side? You had Bosnian Muslims bent to create Muslim Bosnia regardless of the cost. Hitler sacrificed 8 million Germans for Thousand Year reich. Izetbegovic was no different.

-You had the STATE sponsored, organized, planned and executed destruction of another people under false pretences to create “Lebenraum” for the “Uebermensch” as the Serbs see themselves.

What state? What lebensraum? Serbs owned 70% of Bosnian cadastre, arable lands and woodlands before the war. They merely wanted to keep what is theirs. Bosnian Muslims wanted to force them out. They were fighting for your lebensraum.

if you look at the census data made by Austro-Hungary, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Tito's Yugoslavia and compare it with the census of today, it is evident that both Serb population and Serb owned land shrinked in Bosnia as a result of WWII genocide and Bosnian civil war.

-You had one side that had a massive propaganda machine which for a nation that size was quite impressive (Like Goebels).

Goebbels? You mean this guy?

He got reincarnated into this creature:

The lies comming from his mouth are perfect example of Bernay/Hitler school of persuasion. You are good example. You have fell for it hook, line and sinker.

There was a reason why the Serb state run TV channel was targeted in March 99.

Actually, it was in April 1999. It seems that you have never read UCMJ because bombing of civillian TV station was clear cut war crime per Hague convention on warfare on land. It is war crime. You are quite an officer, hell bent on commiting war crimes.

What’s most shocking about this is that this is in Europe, in the late 1990s! That the Germany who screamed “Never again” let this happen right on the door step and didn’t do anything until they themselves were adversely affected, that as the Balkans spiraled out of control, as Greece, Turkey and even Iran were more and more becoming involved, Russia backed their old ally the Serbs, the Germans quickly backed their buddies the Croats. Russia was back-dooring weapons into Serbia and and and. A madness you expect in the Middle East was unfolding in Europe!

You have no clue what you are talking about. You have no clue of timeline of the events. Your post reminds me of characters in Buffalo Soldiers movie, who sit in US Army barracks in Germany and watch fall of Berlin wall. One asks "what country is Berlin".

[infidel_and_proud]

Wonderfully funny.

You should showcase your ignorance. Who knows, maybe people will pay to hear your nonsense.

1) The ICTY themselves don't claim that all the missing Muslims were executed as you claim. We're talking of executions in the 100's. Low hundreds. It was in retaliation to the Muslims slaughtering 1,000's of Bosnian Serbs in Eastern Bosnia. A nasty civil war. Try reading about the nature of civil wars. This one was no different.

2) You support your argument by quoting WIKIPEDIA? That's a joke of a source with is quite apt, seeing as you're the one doing the quoting.

3) Why do you call an entire division ( the 28th Muslim Divisions in Srebrenica ) RAGTAG? Have you even heard of Operation "Grasshopper"? Of course you haven't, and do you know why I know? Because WIKIPEDIA doesn't mention it.

4) It was YOU, YOU who dared to compare the HOLOCAUST with SREBRENICA. YOU are the one making the ridiculous comparisons.

5) BTW, it was the Serbs enemies who threw their lot in wit the Nazi in WW2. Not that you'd know.

6) Do you know what the ICTY based their evidence on? An insane mercenary and the Bosnian Muslims very own eavesdroppers, who'd been trained by the IRANIAN VEVAK.

7) It's good to see that the Iranian Military Intelligence have supporters on FREEREPUBLIC. After all, it's a free country.

Try not to quote WIKIPEDIA or people will be forced to laugh at you.

[Lion in Winter]

Then WHY waste your "precious" time posting on this thread????

Find a thread supporting mussies and GO THERE!

[Lion in Winter]

And HERE you are STILL here!! What is wrong with you???

[Lion in Winter]

YOUR original sentiment was that YOU did not care... SO, why are you still prattling on and on??? Are you dim??

[Lion in Winter]

You have zero credibility too. Arn't YOU just an opinionated mussie supporter??

[Lion in Winter]

Hey, mussie... how's the dole in Europe???

[Lion in Winter]

Wikipedia is for mostly morons, don't you agree? The quality of those supporting the bosnian muslims is really low and slimey.

Where do they keep the rock from under which they crawl? Probably at mecca.

[nuconvert]

"What is wrong with you???" " Are you dim??"

I ask the same questions of you. Can't you see that people are writing to me? As you now are?
I was prepared to leave, but people kept writing me.
Maybe you are in the habit of allowing people to insult you and make accusations and ask you questions without replying.

I am not.

Have a nice day.

[Lion in Winter]

And, STILL you are here on a thread which is of no concern to you!!

LOL... bulb gone out??? Apparently so.