Milosevic's trial. Has Clark commited perjury?

UN ^

[Headfulofghosts]

America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian Muslims

The Srebrenica report reveals the Pentagon's role in a dirty war

Richard J Aldrich
Monday April 22, 2002
The Guardian

The official Dutch inquiry into the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, released last week, contains one of the most sensational reports on western intelligence ever published. Officials have been staggered by its findings and the Dutch government has resigned. One of its many volumes is devoted to clandestine activities during the Bosnian war of the early 1990s. For five years, Professor Cees Wiebes of Amsterdam University has had unrestricted access to Dutch intelligence files and has stalked the corridors of secret service headquarters in western capitals, as well as in Bosnia, asking questions.
His findings are set out in "Intelligence and the war in Bosnia, 1992-1995". It includes remarkable material on covert operations, signals interception, human agents and double-crossing by dozens of agencies in one of dirtiest wars of the new world disorder. Now we have the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims - some of the same groups that the Pentagon is now fighting in "the war against terrorism". Pentagon operations in Bosnia have delivered their own "blowback".
In the 1980s Washington's secret services had assisted Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. Then, in 1990, the US fought him in the Gulf. In both Afghanistan and the Gulf, the Pentagon had incurred debts to Islamist groups and their Middle Eastern sponsors. By 1993 these groups, many supported by Iran and Saudi Arabia, were anxious to help Bosnian Muslims fighting in the former Yugoslavia and called in their debts with the Americans. Bill Clinton and the Pentagon were keen to be seen as creditworthy and repaid in the form of an Iran-Contra style operation - in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia.
The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah. Wiebes reveals that the British intelligence services obtained documents early on in the Bosnian war proving that Iran was making direct deliveries.
Arms purchased by Iran and Turkey with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia made their way by night from the Middle East. Initially aircraft from Iran Air were used, but as the volume increased they were joined by a mysterious fleet of black C-130 Hercules aircraft. The report stresses that the US was "very closely involved" in the airlift. Mojahedin fighters were also flown in, but they were reserved as shock troops for especially hazardous operations.
Light weapons are the familiar currency of secret services seeking to influence such conflicts. The volume of weapons flown into Croatia was enormous, partly because of a steep Croatian "transit tax". Croatian forces creamed off between 20% and 50% of the arms. The report stresses that this entire trade was clearly illicit. The Croats themselves also obtained massive quantities of illegal weapons from Germany, Belgium and Argentina - again in contravention of the UN arms embargo. The German secret services were fully aware of the trade.
Rather than the CIA, the Pentagon's own secret service was the hidden force behind these operations. The UN protection force, UNPROFOR, was dependent on its troop-contributing nations for intelligence, and above all on the sophisticated monitoring capabilities of the US to police the arms embargo. This gave the Pentagon the ability to manipulate the embargo at will: ensuring that American Awacs aircraft covered crucial areas and were able to turn a blind eye to the frequent nighttime comings and goings at Tuzla.
Weapons flown in during the spring of 1995 were to turn up only a fortnight later in the besieged and demilitarised enclave at Srebrenica. When these shipments were noticed, Americans pressured UNPROFOR to rewrite reports, and when Norwegian officials protested about the flights, they were reportedly threatened into silence.
Both the CIA and British SIS had a more sophisticated perspective on the conflict than the Pentagon, insisting that no side had clean hands and arguing for caution. James Woolsey, director of the CIA until May 1995, had increasingly found himself out of step with the Clinton White House over his reluctance to develop close relations with the Islamists. The sentiments were reciprocated. In the spring of 1995, when the CIA sent its first head of station to Sarajevo to liaise with Bosnia's security authorities, the Bosnians tipped off Iranian intelligence. The CIA learned that the Iranians had targeted him for liquidation and quickly withdrew him.
Iranian and Afghan veterans' training camps had also been identified in Bosnia. Later, in the Dayton Accords of November 1995, the stipulation appeared that all foreign forces be withdrawn. This was a deliberate attempt to cleanse Bosnia of Iranian-run training camps. The CIA's main opponents in Bosnia were now the mojahedin fighters and their Iranian trainers - whom the Pentagon had been helping to supply months earlier.
Meanwhile, the secret services of Ukraine, Greece and Israel were busy arming the Bosnian Serbs. Mossad was especially active and concluded a deal with the Bosnian Serbs at Pale involving a substantial supply of artillery shells and mortar bombs. In return they secured safe passage for the Jewish population out of the besieged town of Sarajevo. Subsequently, the remaining population was perplexed to find that unexploded mortar bombs landing in Sarajevo sometimes had Hebrew markings.
The broader lessons of the intelligence report on Srebrenica are clear. Those who were able to deploy intelligence power, including the Americans and their enemies, the Bosnian Serbs, were both able to get their way. Conversely, the UN and the Dutch government were "deprived of the means and capacity for obtaining intelligence" for the Srebrenica deployment, helping to explain why they blundered in, and contributed to the terrible events there.
Secret intelligence techniques can be war-winning and life-saving. But they are not being properly applied. How the UN can have good intelligence in the context of multinational peace operations is a vexing question. Removing light weapons from a conflict can be crucial to drawing it down. But the secret services of some states - including Israel and Iran - continue to be a major source of covert supply, pouring petrol on the flames of already bitter conflicts.

[Headfulofghosts]

What is our exit strategy for Kososvo? Did we ever have one? What's life like for an average person there now? Does anyone have any info about what it's like now?

[Headfulofghosts]

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] The general -- well, I mean the general is speaking in general terms about the KLA, and you did not allow me to show a picture yesterday of the three Musketeers where he is like D'Artagnan with the leaders of these terrorists.

I'd like to see this photo.

[DTA]

[DTA]

Gen. Clark solution in the War on Terror: SALUTE TERRORISTS

[duckln]

paragraphs, not breaks are our friends.

Wecome to FR.

[DTA]

Gen. Clark's KLA allies. Note the similarity with Daniel Pearl's murder.

[Headfulofghosts]

I'm not sure what his plan is, all I know is that he has serious problems with what he says and what happened. For example, one of his " Plans" is to get the Saudis to have a parimilitary group to search for Bin Laden. One, do they even have such a group? Two, the Saudis? Is he talking about the same people, who fund Bin Laden? Does he know of the story of one of our interagations, in which we had special ops disguise themselves as Saudis, and the terrorist wrote down the name of a Saudi prince?

[mark502inf]

Later, a few of the officers would refer to themselves as "dead meat."

We Army guys chuckled at this whole episode. The "dead MEAT" moniker was created by the USAF officers assigned to the team. They were duty bound to get at the truth and it became obvious early on that the USAF had greatly over-sold the effectiveness of the air attacks on the fielded forces of the Serbs. As a result, those guys knew their names would be forever fixed to a report highly distasteful to their superiors in blue--the Air Force higher-ups who would determine future assignments and promotions.

And there is actually nothing wrong with his answer of "enough" to how many tanks & etc were destroyed. The purpose of military action is to achieve your objective--whether you can do it through threatened use of force, doing a little bit of damage or inflicting a crushing defeat; you must do "enough" to impose your will on the enemy.

[mark502inf]

What is our exit strategy for Kososvo?

Leave when a political agreement on the future of Kosovo is reached between Belgrade and Pristina. They began talking in October--didn't go real well, but at least a start.

What's life like for an average person there now? Does anyone have any info about what it's like now?

Haven't been there for a while, but still communicate with military people working the issue here as well as friends in Kosovo at UNMIK, KFOR and a couple humanitarian agencies. Pretty safe and secure for Albanians and the UN and KFOR & NGO people. Minority enclaves are fairly secure, but Serbs in particular are still largely hated and exposed to harassment and danger when moving through Albanian areas.

The majority of Albanians have been through at least one episode as a refugee and most have also been the victim in some other way of Serb attack--burned, destroyed or damaged homes, robbery, bereavement, physical harm and so on--still lots of bitterness.

I've been through a big chunk of the whole place; village after village of burned and ransacked homes-- destroyed mosques and tekkes; and yes, Orthodox Churches as well. Unfortunately, many of our fellow FReepers' distaste for Clark and Clinton and the ICTY as well as the propaganda onslaught by the Serb apologists on this forum have contributed to a substantial misunderstanding of the actual situation.

The ICTY is too good for Milosevic. He should have been have been hung, drawn and quartered years ago. And you can also draw a straight line from Milosevic's exploitation of nationalist sentiment over Kosovo and his ensuing extremism and brutality to the current miseries of the Kosovar Serbs--he didn't do anyone any favors.

[faithincowboys]

I am pretty shocked that someone so respectful of the process like you thinks Clark should be immune to cross examination.

Also, if the War waged against Serbia is technically illegal, that is relevant. Adherence to international law is what undergirds the process. If the War was technically illegal, Milosevic could argue that his crimes were similarly "technically illegal." People died in the War in Kosovo, the International Criminal Court doesn't concern itself with results, it concerns itself with process.
For example, If people died at Serb hands due to stray bombs rather than systematic slaughter, the judgements of the ICC would be different. If NATO acted illegally, that is a legit defense for Milosevic.

Similarly, criminals get off if the judicial system acted inappropriately. I think Slobo is entitled to a defense. He could put the process of his removal and the War on trial. He could make the point that atrocities were committed on both sides, that it was a bloddy, civil war and that the NATO war against Serbia was illegal.

He probably would still be convicted, but he is entitled to put forth a defense and he is entitled to put a dreadfully compromised witness like Clark out of his misery.

[Headfulofghosts]

"Ten years ago we were arming and equipping the worst elements of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan - drug traffickers, arms smugglers, anti-American terrorists…Now we're doing the same thing with the KLA, which is tied in with every known middle and far eastern drug cartel. Interpol, Europol, and nearly every European intelligence and counter-narcotics agency has files open on drug syndicates that lead right to the KLA, and right to Albanian gangs in this country."

former DEA agent and author Michael Levine
Quoted in the New American Magazine, May 24, 1999

"[The] United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles ... Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values."

Senator Jo. Lieberman, quoted in the 'Washington Post', 28 April 1999

"American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia".

Tom Walker and Aiden Laverty, ‘CIA Aided Kosovo Guerrilla Army’, Sunday Times, 12 March 2000

[mark502inf]

"Ten years ago we were arming and equipping the worst elements of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan - drug traffickers, arms smugglers, anti-American terrorists…Now we're doing the same thing with the KLA, which is tied in with every known middle and far eastern drug cartel. Interpol, Europol, and nearly every European intelligence and counter-narcotics agency has files open on drug syndicates that lead right to the KLA, and right to Albanian gangs in this country." former DEA agent and author Michael Levine Quoted in the New American Magazine, May 24, 1999

What's your point? KLA involvement is well known and, unlike Serb atrocities against Albanian civilians, is not denied by anyone in this forum. Milosevic and his minions are being tried for their own criminal behavior. Killing thousands of people, to include women and children, as well as destroying homes in 300 villages and creating hundreds of thousands of refugees is somewhat more than a counter-narcotics operation gone wrong.