In August 1995, during a Security Council meeting, the US delegation to the United Nations accused the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs of having committed wide-scale atrocities against Muslim civilians. With what amounts to a satellite photo "peep show," Madeleine Albright had an excuse already prepared for the lack of evidence to support her charges. The NY Times in referring back to that session of the UN Security Council wrote:
"On Aug. 10, [1995] the chief United States delegate to the United Nations, Madeleine K. Albright, showed selected photos of the two sites to a closed session of the United Nations Security Council. She then said, 'We will keep watching to see if the Bosnian Serbs try to erase the evidence of what they have done.'" One of the earlier versions was the vanishing corpses through a corrosive agent. In the same article, the NY Times adds:
"American officials said today that they suspect Bosnian Serb soldiers may have tried to destroy evidence that they killed thousands of Muslim men seized in and around the town of Srebrenica in July. The Serbs are suspected of pouring corrosive chemicals on the bodies and scattering corpses that had been buried in mass graves, the officials said. The suspicions first arose in early August, after Central Intelligence Agency experts analyzed pictures of the area taken in July by reconnaissance satellites and U-2 planes." With the absence of traces of a corrosive substance, when it comes time to dig up the "evidence," the entire legend falls flat. Another explanation had to be found: the bodies were simply dug up and moved someplace else. This excuse has its advantages: With the needle in the haystack search for "mass graves," the tribunal could keep the public at bay for quite a while. But also disadvantages: How do you remove thousands of buried, decomposing bodies without being seen by the "watchful eye" of Madeleine Albright's satellites? Undismayed by this factual detail, the Tribunal and media continue their course...
It was on the basis of these photos that the Security Council and tribunal accused the Serbian leadership of having committed a massacre. The Tribunal's indictments against Karadzic and Mladic were primarily based on faith in the journalists' faith in the Security Council's faith in the CIA and its spy photos. Neither the press nor the tribunal were given access to all of the photos, yet both take it for granted that the Bosnian leaders are "guilty as charged."
But once the indictment handed down, the Bosnian Serb leaders shut out of negotiations and the Serbian President Milosevic under effective threat (that he too could suffer the fate of his Bosnian Serb Brethren), the Clinton Administration showed little interest in helping "further the cause of justice."
Their pleas include references to the efforts to hide the evidence of the mass executions.
You should feel foolish still trying to deny what has become painfully obvious, Joan.
Some of the "pearls" that stand out are so obvious I had to bite my lip, because I was laughing so hard. I think this "evidence" was made public in hopes that FauxNews would carry them, for the public iliteratti who actually believe in Flat Earth.
Imagine a Chief of Staff, and acting commander of a brigade, didn't know the prisoners arrived but found about it from his -- wife! This guy knows the first and last names of each and every little junior officer he called on, yet he (conveniently) cannot remember the name (didn't think it was importamnt enough?) of an "elderly man" who actually told him something pivotal, i.e. that "...Nikolich had personally taken part in the execution..." Hearsay! Pure garbage!
And so is the rest -- he finds out that such as such happened, but wasn't there to see it, and so on. And his commander gives orders to execute prisoners over the radio and, of course, everyone listens.
The "confession" of Dragan Obrenovich was a sudden memory jarring process -- from April 18, 2001 when he was delivered to Carla's Lair, and his "recollection" on May 21, 2001, when he signed the "confession," looking rather shoddy that day. Funny how much one can remember in such a short time on prison food, given that he pleaded innocent and called his charges false four weeks earlier.
The prison stample and life also had an effect on his reasoning as well. He pleabargained so that his sentence (which was a foregone conclusion even without his pleabargaining) could be reduced from life to -- 15 to 20 years. What a deal!
I think he and Bilyana Plavshich must be related. She gave up her life sentence for 15 or so years instead. That would be considerable if she were not in her late 70's. But, prison food and water can have weird efects on people -- who would know, right?
So, where are all those people he names in his "confession?" Why don't they just take the investigators to where those bodies are? And what bout our ever-vigilant and all-seeing Predator, satellite and those Marine Corps RC model planes (weeeeeee) that keep an eye on the theater of operations 24/7/365?
On the matter of Mad Cow forgery... It is a noble thing to try to expose a government that has taken a moral nosedive to fabricate "evidence," to cheat and deceive and, in spite of all that, have to use brutal force to get its way. That's not what democracies are all about. Some of the fascist right wing thugs on drugs who appear on this forum waving the flag and disbelieveing "neutral" and "foreign" generals who acuse us of forgery are now enjoying a McCarhty revival -- for a time being. Historical facts show that the reasons we often went to war over were as bogus as a $3 bill, staring from "the Maine," the sinking of "the Lisutania," te War to End All Wars, the Make World Safe for Democracy, the Pearl harbor "surprise," the Gulf of Tonkin "incident," the Makrale bombings, the Rachak massacre, and now the "would-you-believe-if-I-tell-you" ready-to-shoot thousands of WMDs story for the Dumb and Dumber.
It doesn't matter if the evidence is falsified. There is nothing one can do to undo this. The victors write history -- for a while anyway. Don't waste your time.