Posted on 03/24/2013 4:03:35 PM PDT by Ravnagora
BELGRADE -- Today marks the 14th anniversary since the start of the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, i.e. the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ.
A heating plant in New Belgrade is seen after being hit by NATO missiles (Tanjug, file)
The bombing lasted 79 days and resulted in at least 2,500 deaths and more than 12,500 injuries.
The attacks on Serbia started on March 24, 1999, and the last one took place near Kosovska Kamenica on June 10 at 13:15 CET.
The death toll among the military and police forces reached 1,008, including 659 soldiers and 349 policemen. Around 6,000 civilians were injured, including 2,700 children.
The total damage was estimated at dozens of billions of dollars. NATO has never disclosed its losses.
The Pančevo Oil Refinery is seen after the attack (Tanjug, file)
“The NATO forces killed 631 members of the Serbian Armed Forces, while 28 went missing, which means that the total number is 659, including 72 officers, 41 noncommissioned officers, 18 contract soldiers, 191 conscripts, 245 reservists, 60 military volunteers and three civilians in the army,” Serbian Defense Minister Aleksandar Vučić stated in the Serbian parliament on February 11, 2013.
According to earlier data, 5,173 soldiers and policemen were injured.
The decision to attack Yugoslavia was the first in history to be made without the approval of the UN Security Council, and the order was given to U.S. General Wesley Clark, the allied commander at the time, by NATO Secretary General Javier Solana.
Later on, in his book “Waging Modern War”, Clark revealed that the plans for the air strikes against Yugoslavia were well under way in mid-June 1998 and completed in late August that year.
Yugoslavia was attacked under the pretext of failure of the talks on the future status of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, held in Rambouillet and Paris.
A destroyed bridge in Novi Sad (Tanjug, file)
After the decision on non-acceptance of foreign troops was ratified by the Serbian parliament, which proposed the UN forces to monitor a peaceful resolution of conflicts in Kosovo, NATO launched air raids on March 24, 1999 at 19:45 CET.
The 19-member Alliance launched projectiles from ships in the Adriatic Sea and four military bases in Italy, all with the support of strategic operators who took off from the basis in Western Europe and latter in the U.S. The first targets were barracks and air defense forces in Batajnica, Mladenovac, Priština and other locations.
There is practically no city in Yugoslavia which was not targeted on a number of occasions during the 11-week campaign.
The bombing caused damage to 25,000 houses and apartment buildings and destroyed 470 kilometers of roads and 595 kilometers of railway tracks. A total of 14 airports were damaged, as well as 19 hospitals, 20 healthcare centers, 18 kindergartens, 69 schools, 176 cultural monuments and 44 bridges, while 38 more were completely destroyed.
The Interior Ministry (MUP) headquarters in downtown Belgrade are seen in flames (Tanjug, file)
During the campaign, 2,300 air attacks were carried out on 995 facilities around Serbia and 1,150 fighter jets fired nearly 420,000 missiles to the total weight of 22,000 tons.
NATO fired 1,300 cruise missiles, dropped 37,000 cluster bombs which killed around 200 individuals and caused injuries to several hundred more people. The forces also used banned depleted uranium ammunition.
A third of the electric energy capacity of the country was destroyed, two oil refineries, in Pančevo and Novi Sad, were bombed, and NATO forces used for the first time the so-called graphite bombs to disable electrical power systems.
Facing mounting diplomatic pressure, NATO ended the bombing with the signing of the Military Technical Agreement in Kumanovo on June 9, 1999, and the latest missiles fell near Kosovska Kamenica on June 10 at 13:30 CET.
The NATO secretary general issued an order to stop the bombing on June 10, after which the Yugoslav forces began to withdraw from Kosovo.
On that day, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1244, and a total of 37,200 KFOR soldiers from 36 countries were sent to the province, with a mission to preserve peace and security.
Serbian PM Ivica Dačić will Sunday laid a wreath at the monument to the killed members of the Serbian Army in Belgrade’s neighborhood of Rakovica.
Dačić said that March 24 was the day when everybody, regardless of their political affiliation, should remember the ones who had given lives to defend their homeland hoping that in future no one will have to die for Serbia.
“I hope that we will not have to die for Serbia any more, but rather that we will be able to live and work in it and give it the best we can,” he said.
Aside the prime minister, the wreaths were also laid by Belgrade City Assembly Speaker Aleksandar Antić, family members of fallen soldiers, a delegation of the Association of fighters 1991-1999, the Association for Cherishing the Tradition of the Serbian Liberation Wars 1912-1918, principles of primary and secondary schools.
Vučić laid a wreath at the monument to members of Air Force and Air Defense in the neighborhood of Zemun.
Belgrade Mayor Dragan Đilas paid respect and laid a wreath to the killed workers of the Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) in Tašmajdan Park. Novi Sad Mayor Miloš Vučević attended a commemoration in Novi Sad’s Jugovićevo army barracks.
Labor, Employment and Social Policy Ministry’s State Secretary Negovan Stanković laid a wreath to the monument to children killed in the NATO bombing in Tašmajdan Park.
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What is a good resource to try and understand the real story behind this conflict?
One of the worst things this country has ever done.
I just got a book out of the library titled “ Fool’s Crusade” which I’m told is good. Haven’t read it yet though. Author is Diana Johnstone.
thank you, I will check it out.
King William’s Great Patriotic War Against Serbia.
Another Bill Clinton mystery...how much was he bribed to do this?
All you want to know ... site is a bit hard to navigate but stick with it.
www.truthinmedia.org
Excellent question, “NonValueAdded”. There are many “sources”, but unfortunately, too many of them support and “justify” the rationale behind the bombing of Serbia from March to June of 1999. I will try to find some sources that I would recommend as an “alternative” to what we’ve been fed through the mainstream AND cable media.
The “rationale” was the alleged Serbian “aggression” in Kosovo against the Albanian muslims.
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thank you, I look forward to the education in the truth
Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions - Diana Johnstone.
From the blurb:
“Military interventions on supposedly humanitarian grounds have become an established feature of the post-Cold War global order. Since September 11, this form of militarism has taken on new and unpredictable proportions. Diana Johnstone’s well-documented study demonstrates that a crucial moment in establishing in the public mind and above all, within the political context of liberalism and the left the legitimacy of such interventions was the “humanitarian” bombing of the former Yugoslavia in 1999.
In the course of the civil wars that led to the break-up of Yugoslavia, a complex history came to be presented as a morality play in which the parts were scripted to meet the moral needs of the capitalist West. The identification of Muslims as defenseless victims and Serbs as genocidal monsters inflamed fears and hatreds within Yugoslavia, and prepared the way for power to be shifted from the people of the region to such international agencies as NATO.
Deceptions and Self-Deceptionstests the popular myths against the reality of Yugoslav history. Johnstone identifies the common geopolitical interests running through such military interventions, and argues persuasively that they create problems rather than solving them. She shows that the “Kosovo war” was in reality the model for future destruction of countries seen as potential threats to the hegemony of an “international community” currently being redefined to exclude or marginalize all but those who conform to the interests of the United States.
A concluding chapter shows how the script prepared for Yugoslavia is being re-enacted in Afghanistan. Whether Milosevic’s trial before the International Court at the Hague or the capture of bin Laden will provide an adequate conclusion to this ideological play-making, remains an open question.”
Advise - take the book back. You just read all you need to know from this author.
But, it was a good way to repay the Serbs for their help during WWII, and to get the Albanian muslim nazi thugocracy into Kosovo - whereupon they destroyed many centuries-old Christian monasteries, burning priceless books and manuscripts. Thus setting the stage for modern muslim jihads.
To bad the Internet was only in its infancy at the time, else the MSN lies would have been exposed.
This may be the all time prize for shittiest thing which the US govt. has ever done.
Weasel Clark works for Soros, now.
Wow, I’m impressed. That writer put more spin in that one article than the US Lame Stream Media ever could. But why let a little thing like facts get in the way?
Not really, there was a thorough discussion here about the war. Mostly against. I lurked here then joined later.
Depleted uranium 'threatens Balkan cancer epidemic'
By Environment Correspondent Alex Kirby
A-10 aircraft fired depleted uranium munitions
A British scientist says the Americans' use of depleted uranium weapons in the war with Serbia is likely to cause 10,000 extra deaths from cancer.
A British biologist, Roger Coghill, says he expects the depleted uranium (DU) weapons used by US aircraft over Kosovo will cause more than 10,000 fatal cancer cases.
Mr Coghill, who runs his own research laboratory in south Wales, was speaking at a London conference called to discuss the use by American and British forces of DU in Iraq in the 1991 Gulf war.
High radiation levels
He said there had been evidence in other parts of the Balkans of elevated radiation levels during and soon after the war with Serbia.
In mid-June scientists at Kozani in northern Greece were reporting that radiation levels were 25% above normal whenever the wind blew from the direction of Kosovo.
And Bulgarian researchers reported finding levels eight times higher than usual within Bulgaria itself, and up to 30 times higher in Yugoslavia.
DU is a by-product of the enrichment of uranium for making nuclear weapons and reactor fuel. It is 1.7 times heavier than lead, and is used for making armour-piercing rounds.
Safety controversy
Both the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defence insist that it poses no significant danger. But Mr Coghill says that, while DU in its inert form is safe enough, when it strikes a target it does become a real danger.
"In an impact DU catches fire, and much of the round is turned into burning dust. The particles are extremely small, they can travel up to 300 kilometres. They are also beta-emitters, which are dangerous if inhaled."
The particles can then lodge in the lungs, resisting the body's attempts to flush them out, and can wreak havoc with the immune system. They can migrate to any tissue, though they often make for the kidneys.
Using calculations based on the Pentagon's statement that one in five of the rounds fired by its A-10 aircraft over Kosovo were DU munitions, Mr Coghill estimates that more than 500,000 DU rounds were fired, of which half detonated.
He says that would have resulted in the release of about one thirty-thousandth of the amount of radiation released at Chernobyl in 1986. "But that was in the form of caesium on the ground. This is free-floating particulate matter."
Delayed effect
Mr Coghill says the maximum effect will be reached about six months after the war, and he thinks the first cancers - probably leukaemias - will start to show up about a year after that.
"Throughout the Balkan region, I calculate that there will be an extra 10,150 deaths from cancer because of the use of DU. That will include local people, K-FOR personnel, aid workers, everyone."
He accepts that doubts remain over the effects of DU, and says it is vital to listen to critics who suggest that the higher cancer rates seen in parts of Iraq may have been caused by chemical weapons instead.
However, Mr Coghill notes that Bosnia, where DU weapons were used in 1995, was not attacked with chemical munitions, unlike Iraq.
"No epidemiological study can ever prove causality - all it can do is show an association. For proof, you need human, animal and cellular studies. All of those have been carried out on DU, and they support the association," says Mr Coghill.
"The total evidence is strong that DU is behind Gulf War Syndrome, and the increased rates of disease in Iraq - and in Bosnia.
"The birth deformities seen in the Gulf are identical to those seen in Bosnia, and in the children of some US service personnel who were exposed to DU."
He says there is telling confirmation of his distrust of DU. It comes in the form of evidence submitted by radiation physicists at the University of Maryland to the US Department of Energy in April on the long-term use of DU.
"They concluded that DU should never be used in a battlefield scenario, because of its hazards to health."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/408122.stm
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Thanks for making that point, “palmer”. I’ve always been very grateful for “Free Republic” because it’s one of the few places where the truth is allowed.
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This was accomplished by the discovery of a ditch filled with bodies dressed in civilian clothes near the site of a firefight between muslim Albanian freedom fighters aka the KLA and the Christian Serbian Army. The outrage was so great at this obviously ethic cleansing that BC had ‘no choice’ but to rectify the matter.
Later UN investigator from Sweden, found that many bodies had bullet holes in them but not in the clothing, plus there was little evidence that any of these so-called innocent muslims bled out anywhere near the scene. No KLA soldiers’ bodies were found.
This was the first of many propaganda scenes staged for the benefit of the willing Western press.
Two of the most famous incidents occurred later when a long line starving muslim refuges where filmed entering a safe refuge. However, the MSN did not shoe those same ‘refuges’ going out the back gate and getting back into line.
The next one was a shot of a very skinny man behind barbed wire - labeled “Serbian concentration camp found!”
The man was actually on the outside of the barbed wire and the photographer on the inside. The man had come over to ask the reporter why he was inside the wire enclosure.
So it went. Lie after lie. Clinton accomplished what the muslims had failed to do in 610 years - when the Serbs stopped the second muslim advance into Southern Europe in 1389.
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