Posted on 12/03/2001 8:55:47 AM PST by Pericles
West haunted by Balkans blunder
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
As the war in Afghanistan goes on, the ghost of interventions past sits in a courtroom in The Hague.
America can drop tons of explosives and send in the Marines to fight Taliban terrorism. But when the Serbs confronted a similar menace, they were demonized and bombed for 78 days, and had a province wrested from them and presented to Osama bin Laden's Balkan brigade.
Slobodan Milosevic has been charged with complicity to commit genocide and crimes against humanity. Before the travesty is over, he will doubtless be convicted of running the rail line to Auschwitz.
The former Yugoslav president is a thug whose brutality played into the terrorists' hands. Even so, the trial of Milosevic before a U.N. tribunal is intended to justify our Balkans blunder and discourage serious consideration of its consequences.
If what happened to Kosovo Albanians and Bosnian Moslems was genocide, what of the treatment of Orthodox Serbs? After NATO's air war, 200,000 were driven from Kosovo. Most who remain cower behind barbed-wire barricades in Mitrovica.
Altogether, 2 million Serbs were expelled from Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, and 240 of their churches were destroyed. When this happens to anyone else, it's called ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide.
The tragedy has its roots in the early 1990s, when the West decided Bosnians and Croatians were entitled to their own states. Fine, said Belgrade, but why should 2 million Serbs living there be forcibly expatriated? Who would protect their rights – the Bosnian Muslims who committed genocide against Serbs in World War II?
When local Serbs tried to secede from the secessionist states, they were reviled as racists who hated all non-Serbs and lived to rape and plunder.
After Bosnia and Croatia came Kosovo. Albanian Muslims became a majority in Serbia's ancient heartland through illegal immigration. They started when the Kosovo Liberation Army (on the State Department's terrorist list as late as 1998) began murdering Serb policemen.
Milosevic overreacted. At Rambouillet, then-President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave him an ultimatum (surrender of sovereignty over all of Yugoslavia) no self-respecting nation could accept. After the Gulf War, Washington was determined to prove its human-rights commitment by coming to the aid of persecuted Muslims. The result was the creation of a second de facto Islamic republic in Europe.
In October, NATO's secretary general, Lord Robertson, warned that the Balkans must not become another "black hole" of terrorism, like Afghanistan. He was referring to the operations of our erstwhile allies.
On Oct. 3, the Los Angeles Times reported, "Hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists who became Bosnian citizens after battling Serbian and Croatian forces present a potential security threat to Europe and the United States."
Bin Laden, who's been heavily involved in the region since 1992, was reportedly presented with a Bosnian passport for services rendered. The same international legion that's fighting with the Taliban earlier served the Islamic cause in Bosnia and Kosovo.
In his Islamic Declaration, former Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic (celebrated in the West as a multiculturalist) proclaimed, "There can be no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic societies and political institutions."
The Kosovo "freedom fighters" (as Sen. Joe Lieberman once called them) are equally grateful for Western support. In one of the al-Qaida camps overrun in Afghanistan, Americans found an entry application from a Kosovo Albanian that read, "I have Kosovo Liberation Army combat experience against Serb forces. ... I recommend suicide operations against parks like Disney."
After the subjugation of Kosovo, Muslims moved on Macedonia. Despite a NATO-brokered cease-fire, on Nov. 11 terrorists killed three Macedonian policemen who were trying to guard a mass grave said to hold the remains of civilians killed by the guerrillas.
Is the Albanian area of Macedonia destined to become Europe's third Islamic republic?
The circus surrounding Milosevic's trial is meant to distract us from the reality of our Balkans misadventure – when we went to war not against terrorism, but in its behalf.
1) 5 DNA samples......2 id'd
whoops, I mean I thought we had lists and lists of the "missing" from the 28th BiH Division. 6 years later and zillions of Bob Dole's taxpayer dollars later, you'd sure have thought that more than 400 DNA profiles would have been made. After all, weren't there "8,000 massacred" ? and only 400 relatives show up ?
the lack of DNA samples from 'grieving muslims' is simply more circumstantial evidence that the 1,200 unidentified bodies found are those of loyalist villagers murdered by Nasir Oric's execution squads
2) The names of the 2 victims have not been released.
Hmmmm.......perhaps because their names are not exactly muslim sounding......
3) one 15, one 17 years old
ICTY testimony made it very clear that the remanents of Nasir Oric's 28th BiH Division pulled along all sorts of individuals. If these two unfortunate boys do eventually turn out to be residents of Srebrenica, one can only condem the 28th for using these boys either as hostages or simply as child soldiers. Given Nasir Oric's prediliction for bestialty (see articles above) one can only shudder
4) 4,000 bodies
This lie was started by the provincial journalist David Rodhe who is desperatly trying to retain his ill gotten Pulizter. The ICTY testimony of UN forensic scientists is that they have have found just under 1,900 bodies. 600 were 28th division troops who the UN says were killed in a fair fight, 70 were prior id'd as BiH soldiers, and the remaining 1,200 could be Mujhadeen or could be civilians murdered by Nasir Oric during his rampages of 1993 - 95.
5) It certainly is curious that in every other mass grave investigation in the former Yugoslavia.....75-80% of the bodies are identfied very quickly. This holds true for all the other Bosnian graves and also for the Kosovo and Metohija graves.
But somehow mysteriously the Srebrenica bodies can't be identified. Perhaps it is because the 1,200 unidentified bodies aren't those of Nasir Oric's paramilitaries but because they are those of loyalist villagers killed by Oric.
Hoplite, again you try to sel the same old lies and distortions when anyone who close reads your latest bit of agit-prop realizes the BBC is simply distorting reality yet again.
When the full and complete forensic reports are made publically avaliable on the Srebbrenica mass graves, then and only then will we be able to really discuss this. Until then, the only solid evidence we have is Nasir Oric's videos showing beheaded civilians which Nasir loved to show reporters.
It is interesting though that you refuse to accept that some of the bodies found by the UN forensic teams may possibly be those of loyalist villagers killed by Nasir Oric. Many of the grave sites are located precisely in those villages in which the Nasir Oric's execution squads operated. Are you trying to tell us that there isn't the slightest chance that the UN teams didn't find one body of the 3,200 loyalist villagers killed by Nasir's execution squads ?
Thanks.
Didn't you catch that article? The exhumations there laid the groundwork for the indictments of Mirko Norac, amongst others.
Also, the BBC has written extensively about the situation in Kosovo since 1999. Just because their reporting doesn't match what you'd like to see doesn't mean you can write them off as terminally biased.
If you can prove their reporting is factually incorrect, however, that's another thing entirely. Be my guest.
straight from psy-ops textbooks........of course the reporting is not factually incorrect.......what it does is distort, omit, and mis-inform.......
Hoplite you are getting desperate as usual when presented with difficult questions to you wild conspircy tales.
Instead of the Clintonista complex and contradictory tales of Srebrenica....why not accept the rather straight forward story.......
The 10,000 paramilitaries of the 28th BiH division under Nasir Oric simply abandoned their fortified positions and made for the hills when some 1,200 BSA soldiers attacked them. In the ensuing pursuit of the remants of the 28th, the overstretched BSA was only able to attack a few elements of the 10,000 fleeing paramilitaries. That is why there have been only 670 Bih soldiers discovered by the forensic investigations. The remaining 1,200 bodies appear to be those of Serbian villagers killed by Nasir Oric's execution sqauds between 1993 and 1995.
It is pretty straight forward and agrees with the hard evidence. The Clinonista version of events involves numerous conspiricies, hidden agendas, secret hide outs, false book keeping, moving graves, more moving graves, and then using Nasir Oric's nephew as the key witness.
Hoplite, perhaps your complex and contradictory tale would work as a made for TV crime tale. But it is just too outlandish and doesn't jive with the hard facts to be believed.
Who wants to read something slanted, distorted, or biased, something which only serves to erode reality, truth--above all credibility?
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Is the Albanian area of Macedonia destined to become Europe's third Islamic republic?
I think Islam makes a magnificent cover for communist repression, terror and drugs bound for the West. I suppose a pragmatist might not mind their cranking the arc of Islamic fundamentalism such that NATO's got carte blanche to keep an offensive eye open in the region.
The sad fact is ... regardless the occasional Tweedle-dum Tweedle-Dee dust-up, from the Balkans to China to the uses of Terrorism to get citizens to trade liberty for security, The Message They're Sending is the Same Thing
I noted 'massacred' and 'slaughtered'.
What words would you have preferred?
(From a NATO briefing)
It was also suggested that Serbian forces operating in the area might have been responsible for some of the deaths at the second location, perhaps using machine guns on the refugees. Factually wrong? Does the BBC accept any responsibility for what they are spoon fed?
After NATO attacked the front vehicles, Serbian planes may have attacked the rear vehicles.... And so the BBC pays homage to the cindered bodies of the innocent refugees--who were trying to return to their homes. But the BBC was only writing what they were told--and not asking any questions. (BBC Online Network, April 19, 1999)
You then reference a news report from the 19th (5 days after the event):
Brigadier-General Daniel Leaf of the United States Air Force, said that there had in fact been two convoys and he admitted there may have been civilian casualties at both locations. The following is a detailed account of his briefing:
Meanwhile, you seemed to have missed World: Europe Nato pilot bombed Kosovo refugees, also from the 19th.
And if that weren't bad enough, you also missed: World: Europe NATO admits bombing Kosovo refugees back from April 15th, the day after the refugees were bombed.
Doesn't seem to me that the BBC is doing NATO any favors by burying the story - there are more articles on their website related to this incident, btw.
However, Belgrade's only real propaganda victories were Nato blunders, such as the bombing of the refugee convoy in April.
Nato took five days to come clean.
Just writing what they were told, whatever.
But, once again, to quote the BBC from the first article you reference: BBC Correspondent Michael Williams: He said there was no evidence of military vehicles, but that 36 hours had elapsed since the bombing raids, allowing plenty of time for the scene to be doctored. This, from a BBC correspondent doing the "good work" of covering for a "NATO blunder." When Steven Erlanger of the New York Times was asked what was one of his most moving experiences in Kosovo, he paused briefly before saying that it was being at the scene of the aftermath of the Djakovica Refugee Column Attack. I wonder if he also thought that the scene had been doctored?
But it is your last comment that is most revealing: Just writing what they were told, whatever.
Is this the essence of journalism? Is this what you believe journalist do--Write what they are told?Not ask inconvenient questions that would expose a lie? Michael Williams' comment attempts to corroborate US/NATO'S story, mitigating the crime, debasing the innocent dead, further eroding BBC credibility.
My last comment was your last comment from post #73 above, and "whatever" is derisory.
Everyone employs propaganda; no one denies that. But my first statement about the erosion of BBC credibility stands. The above quote is both embarrassing (for the BBC) and degrading (to the innocent dead). ...the deaths may not have been falsified? Does Williams strengthen himself as a credible journalist? Isn't Williams doing a little stage-managing by writing something like that? Many BBC articles contain statements such as the above; they are the darkened thumbprints that offer the "appropriate slant" that cloud truth and erode credibility.
I purposely avoided commenting on your use of whatever because its use detracts from your arguments.
What do you want? In the middle of Milosevic's third murderous ethnic cleansing campaign, the BBC reports on friendly fire casualties, with the facts being presented as they become apparent, and editorial comments recognizable as such.
Same same as in the case at Gospic - your beef with the BBC goes deeper than wanting factual, credible reporting.
I don't think the Djakovica Refugee Column dead would--under international law--be classified as friendly fire casualties. That case should be presented in a proper court.
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