Posted on 01/20/2004 1:27:27 PM PST by Doctor13
Vojin Joksimovich, Ph.D., is the author of "Kosovo Crisis: A Study in Foreign Policy Mismanagement."
General Wesley Clark, former supreme NATO commander in Europe and now a presidential candidate, testified at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) as a witness against former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic, December 15-16 in the Hague. Clark directed NATO’s 1999, 78 day, bombing campaign of Yugoslavia and was the chief military negotiator of the 1995 Dayton Accords which terminated the war in Bosnia. His testimony was conducted behind closed doors and sealed for some 48 hours, while the U.S. government experts combed it for possible violations of so called "national security interests."
Clark arrived with an army of lawyers and PR aides. The tribunal web site advertised the telephone numbers of his PR experts. I have carefully studied 224 pages of the transcript. Walked away with an impression that Clark is becoming a pathetic figure basking in self-aggrandizement. Milosevic asked him a simple question about a comment made by his former boss, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Hugh Shelton. Shelton said that the reason Clark came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues. Clark proceeded to deliver a 10-minute monologue telling everybody how great of a guy he is. He even quoted public remarks made by Secretary Cohen, who refused to speak to him until the seventh day of the war. When Milosevic said: "I am asking him about Shelton," the presiding judge, Englishman Richard May, let him continue.
The same judge told Milosevic: "Remove the picture, please. This has nothing to do with the evidence." Milosevic intended to show the picture of a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commander holding two beheaded Serbian heads. Clark stated: "I don’t accept the definition of the KLA as a terrorist organization." It should be noted that several prior Western witnesses testified that the KLA was a terrorist organization. Clinton’s special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard said so. Several UN resolutions referred to terrorism in Kosovo. Milosevic countered: "Very well Mr. Clark, you are now on record saying that these happy KLA members holding the severed Serbian heads in this photo aren’t terrorists."
Earlier this month a team of investigators, posing as members of the Real IRA, funded by London's Daily Mirror infiltrated a KLA cell in Prisina and purchased from them 13.5 kg of Semtex, "enough Septex to blow up Oxford Street and the House of Parliament or down 40 Lickerbie jets," or to arm 30 suicide bombers. "We made our deal in Kosovo, a breeding ground for fanatics with Al Qaeda link. Our contact was the deputy commander of the KLA, Niam Behljulji, known as Hulji. The group was trained by bin Laden's men. Hulji, is said to supply terrorists across Europe and has been accused of massacring Serbian women and children during the war. He even posed grinning for a photograph, holding the severed head of one of his victims.
Judge May allowed Clark to contact Bill Clinton during the testimony, to ask him to send a letter or fax supporting his claims. He was then allowed to read out Clinton’s fax, calling him a great officer and Milosevic a liar, despite the fact that Judge May invariably warns witnesses that during the break they are not allowed to talk to anyone. The man who was impeached by the House of Representatives because he lied to the grand jury called Milosevic a liar!!
Judge May imposed restrictions on Milosevic’s cross-examination which were nothing short of absurd. He has narrowed down the scope of the questions to the exclusion of the NATO 78-day war and Clark’s book "Waging Modern War." Thus the scope was reduced to just the conversations between Clark and Milosevic. Milosevic said: "So you are not allowing me to put a single question in relation to the crimes that the witness committed against my country? Judge May: "These sort of allegations which you make are not matters which can be debated now, or indeed at any time probably in this trial." The behavior of Judge May, helped me cement the picture about the ICTY. Clark’s testimony proved beyond shadow of the doubt that the Milosevic trial is a farce. Clark was shielded from tough questions by Judge May’s robes.
The UN Security Council established ICTY in 1993, with prodding and financial support primarily from the U.S. and Germany. It is the court with scandalous protocol to achieve political objective to convict, e.g. no beyond reasonable doubt, no jury, prosecutor/judge alliance, hearsay evidence allowed, ex post facto and writ of habeas corpus violated, anonymous witnesses, no subpoena for defense, etc. ICTY has been assailed across political spectrum as NATO’s political instrument. Several distinguished lawyers characterized the court as "Medieval star chamber," and "It is not victor’s justice, it is no justice at all."
Milosevic is conducting his own defense. He lives in a 9x15 foot jail cell, uses pay phone, his taped conversations are handed over to the prosecutor. Two full time Serbian lawyers plus supporters in Belgrade are helping him with the research. In contrast, the ICTY has a staff of 1100 and annual budget of $100 million. Frustrated with the cost and slow pace, UN member nations are behind with financial contributions forcing the ICTY to dip into peacekeeping accounts to sustain prosecutions. Speaking of slow pace, the other two domestic key players in the tragic Yugoslav wars: Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and Bosnian Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic, have died before the ICTY was ready to serve the indictment notices. Given his poor health, Milosevic might die in the courtroom.
Back to the transcript. As an individual knowledgeable about the Bosnian and Kosovo wars, I found Clark’s testimony void of substance. He did not have much to say. He appeared to be the emperor with no clothes. The Scottish poet, Robert Burns, captured well Clark’s behavior in his poem, "To a Louse: "Would the Lord the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us." Another quotation comes to mind. Poet’s Virgil’s complaint about the gossips of Rome: "Suggestio Falsi; Suppressio Veri," (They promote what is false and suppress what’s true).
In contrast to my reactions, the media headlines have been: "Milosevic warned of massacre" or "Milosevic was guiding force behind atrocities." The New York Times reported that Milosevic "had advanced knowledge of the plan to massacre Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995...Clark’s testimony was crucial for the prosecution case against Milosevic because it provided fresh evidence that he was aware of Serbian wartime atrocities and failed to prevent them or punish those responsible." Let us examine closely this "fresh evidence."
President Clinton sent Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to the Balkans in August 1995 to begin the negotiations that would end the war in Bosnia. Lieutenant General Clark was a military man in his delegation. His title was the chief of Plans for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For the first time the six-member delegation met with Milosevic on August 17 for six hours. Holbrooke has provided an account of this meeting in his book "To End a War." In no uncertain terms Holbrooke told Milosevic: "You must speak for Pale (Bosnian Serbs). We won’t deal with them ever again." Holbrooke decided that the next meeting with Milosevic, on August 18, needed to be smaller. Clark was dropped. Not a word in Holbrooke’s book about Clark’s dialogue with Milosevic regarding Srebrenica."
Clark claimed that when Holbrooke took a toilet break, he and Joseph Kruzel approached Milosevic. Clark allegedly asked: "Mr. President, you say you have so much influence over the Bosnian Serbs, but how is then, if you have such influence, that you allowed General Mladic to kill those people in Srebrenica." Milosevic allegedly replied: "Well, General Clark, I warned Mladic not to do this but he didn’t listen to me." Clark then claimed that when he said "kill all those people," it was not a military operation, it was the massacre. Therefore Milosevic had foreknowledge of the massacre! It is common sense that nobody knew in advance it would be a massacre other than the All Mighty. Milosevic countered by claiming that Clark’s statement was a blatant lie. "First and foremost because we did not talk about Srebrenica at all, and secondly because I, throughout this time, through all of those years, I never issued a single order to General Mladic."
The only individual who could have corroborated this alleged conversation was Kruzel. However, he died shortly thereafter. Holbrooke asked Milosevic for a safer land route to reach Sarajevo, rather than the using "the most dangerous road in Europe over Mount Igman, as he says in his book. Milosevic’s secretary, Goran Milinovic, came back within 20 minutes with a fax from General Mladic guaranteeing safe passage. Clark testified that he has never seen such a fax! Clark met Mladic beforehand in a session characterized as cordial.. Holbrooke, however, would not accept a guarantee from Mladic. The three American diplomats: Robert Frazure, Joseph Kruzel and Nelson Drew lost their lives, as their armored vehicle tumbled four hundred meters down the mountain, as a result of this vanity.
Clark cynically tried to downgrade Milosevic’s leading role as the peacemaker in the Dayton negotiations by agreeing with that but concluding therefore that he must have taken leading role on the battlefield! He faulted Milosevic for his alleged intention to kill all KLA terrorists. Is it not the U.S. intention to kill all Al Qaeda terrorists? Clark displayed ignorance of the Balkan history when he talked about Serb "repression" of Albanians in 1946.
Clark claimed that under the UN Resolution #1199, NATO was authorized to use force, which is false. No words to that effect. He had no knowledge that in the time frame October-December 1998, after signing of the Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement, there were 470 KLA terrorist attacks! He did not respond to Milosevic’s question: "How many civilians did they (KLA) need to kill and soldiers and policemen for the state to be legitimately struggling against it, to take measures against it?" Clark went as far as claiming that he saved 1.5 million Albanian lives. This number exceeds the total Kosovo Albanian population at the time. Milosevic countered: "You caused a humanitarian catastrophe. You did not save anyone. I assume that you know that the Helsinki final act explicitly authorizes states to fight against terrorism in their own territory and that no other state has the right to stop it or prevent it from doing that. You interfered in this conflict and you took the side of the terrorists."
In the KLA insurrection from Northern Albania, 1998-March 99, about 2000 fatalities had been recorded, primarily between the combatants, one third being the Serb fatalities. The "humanitarian" war, had an anti-humanitarian outcome: more than three times the number of fatalities with high percentage of the civilian ones, $130 billion damage and the ecocide. In the post NATO war phase, in the presence of initially 45,000 NATO peacekeepers reduced now to 17,000 plus 4000 UN policemen, 6445 Albanian terrorist attacks have been recorded, 1194, mostly Serbs but also Albanians were murdered, 1136 abducted presumed dead, 250,000 ethnically cleansed, 112 Serbian-Orthodox churches demolished, graves desecrated, the remaining minorities living in NATO guarded ghettos. After 4.5 years of NATO occupation, the Amnesty International has concluded that there was no freedom of movement, only 2% of those ethnically cleansed have returned. Kosovo is a human rights black hole, society based on organized crime, with the UN mission declaring terrorist operations of the Albanian National Army (ANA).
As a presidential candidate, General Clark, has been lambasting president Bush for conducting a wrong war in Iraq. He portrays himself as the triumphant commander of Kosovo, and uses the lessons of Kosovo and Bosnia as a success model in contrast wish Bush’s incompetence in Iraq. He is even getting away with it as his interviewers, are essentially ignorant about the Balkans. It boils down to that had president Bush replicated Clark’s Kosovo model, Iraq would have been milk and honey rather than a goddamn mess! The truth is that Kosovo has been a goddamn mess from day one of Clark’s involvement until the present day.
General Clark’s military credentials need to be challenged as well. Instead of celebrating his "big victory over Milosevic" by virtue of having a victory parade on the 5th Avenue in New York as in the case of Desert Storm, he ended up in an involuntary premature retirement. The Kosovo war violated the National Military Strategy. It wasn’t the war Pentagon wanted to fight. There was the institutional split between the State Department and the Pentagon as well as the CIA. Even if Milosevic were a tyrant and his retaliations brutal, should NATO have allied itself with the KLA? Clark not only sided with the State Department but was a lead warmonger together with Secretary Albright. He even pressured Sandy Berger, the National Security adviser to go along.
In his book, bitterness towards own bosses at Pentagon dominates Clark’s account of running the military aspects of the war. Cohen, Shelton, and Army Chiefs General Dennis Reimer were villains in his tale more so than Milosevic. Clark’s insatiable desire for a ground war, which would have split NATO, was vetoed. He even succeeded in convincing Tony Blair. Clark wanted to take 200,000 troops over non-exiting roads in Albania, as Macedonia refused to allow passage through its territory, and over Mount Pashtrik, 2000 meters high, to "sweep the Serbs from the field." His Pentagon peers thought that the plan was outright ludicrous. His request to use Apache helicopters did not "pass any kind of common-sense test." It ended up in a fiasco.
Clark claimed how he spent 100 hours with Milosevic. Sold the White House and NATO allies that Milosevic was going to capitulate after 4-5 days of bombing. The Rand Corporation report called this a "misjudgment of near-blunder proportions that came close to saddling the U.S. and NATO with a costly and embarrassing failure." When Milosevic did not capitulate, Clark started incessantly bombing the Serbian infrastructure and would not even pause for the Easter despite the plea from the Pope.
It was Russian/G-8 diplomacy that ended the war, not Clark’s defeat of the Yugoslav army. The Yugoslav army had not lost an inch of territory in Kosovo and ended up substantially unscathed despite Clark’s initial claims that NATO killed 5000-6000 Yugoslav soldiers, damaged or destroyed 151 tanks or 40%, 269 armored vehicles (APCs) and 427 artillery pieces, or 60%. NATO’s subsequent assessment concluded that only a handful of tanks (13 to be exact), 18 APC’s and 20 artillery pieces were damaged. NATO’s planes were hitting decoys over and over again. NATO found hundreds of dummy tanks or decoys made of wood. In a way, NATO’s military doctrine was humiliated.
Clark made another boo-boo. When he discovered that a unit of some 200 Russian peacekeepers from Bosnia was on the way to secure the Pristina airport, he ordered the British general, Michael Jackson, to use the British and French paratroopers to storm the airport. This would have caused the most frightening crisis with Russia since the Cold War end. The British general openly defied him and refused to obey the order: "I’m not going to start WWIII for you." Jackson got full support from the British Government, while Clark was brushed-off in Washington.
If this is so, Clark is either an idiot or just plain evil.
Anyone that knows anything about Kosovo during WWII, knows that Albanian Nazi's were instrumental in halving the Serbian population in Ustache death camps. And after WWII Yugoslavia was formed and the Serbs got screwed by Tito's playing on the Serbian cultural desire for a polyglot regional peace.
I hope the worst I can say about Clark is that he is an idiot.
"The author, Dr. Vojin Joksimovich, was his family's only survivor of a German bombing raid in WWII and has experienced the totalitarian regimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Tito. His grand uncle was Dragic Joksimovic who courageously defended General Draza Mihailovic in the infamous Tito show trial of 1946. Dr. Yoksimovic graduated from Belgrade University, Yugoslavia, has a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London University.
With research and facts to be coming out during the campaign, I fear your hopes may be dashed. ;^)
During our bombing campaign of Serbia, Israel was their only ally. Does anyone know why? Historically, Serbian controlled regions have populations that are no more than 65% Serb. Does anyone know why? The answer to these two questions will tell you much about the Serbs and their neighbors.
My conclusion, is that Clark and Clinton should be on trial not Milosevic. The only people worth saving in the region are the Serbs. And the Albanians are the people most deserving of elimination.
My guess is that you are right,... judging by the company he keeps.
And the Cleaning Lady, Albright. For the life of me, I do not know how NATO went along with siding with the pimping, drug smuggling terrorist KLA and bombing the civilian infrastructure of a WWII ally. The whole thing makes me sick to my stomach. Prayers for the innocents....
No, BOTH
Damm, your right!
For the life of me, I do not know how NATO went along with siding with the pimping, drug smuggling terrorist KLA and bombing the civilian infrastructure of a WWII ally. The whole thing makes me sick to my stomach. Prayers for the innocents....
I do.The most powerful European Nation in NATO, (other than the brits) is Germany. The German/Croatian alignment has a long history based on their Catholic roots. The German/Croatian alignment has been bent on the destruction of Serbia from long before the beginning of the 20th century. Why is it so odd that the 20th century should end that way? The German/Croatian alignment has allied itself with Albania before for the purpose of the destruction of the Serbs.
What is amazing, is that we went along with it. Sort of like the betrayal of Hungary.
To show you just how corrupt and how arrogant the Clinton administration was, Joseph Kruzel was related to the former Bosnian Muslim Ambassador to the UN, Mohammed Sacirbey. How would you like to negotiate with someone whose relative is on the other side of the negotiations? Is it any wonder that the Serbs viewed this arrangement with suspicion?
Although it was an accident on Mt. Igman on the road to Sarajevo, the first words out of former Senate majority leader, Robert Dole was, "The Serbs did it!"
From a Reuter's report (6 Sep 95) out of Tirana, Albania, "Albanian Wednesday honored the memory of American defense undersecretary Joseph Kruzel, who was killed last month in a road accident in Bosnia, by naming a hospital trauma center after him. 'Mr. Kruzel was our greatest and most beloved friend and we are only doing our duty by honoring him,' Albanian Defense Minister Safet Zhulai said. Kruzel, who headed a joint U.S.-Albanian military commission since early 1993, died last month in a crash on a moutain road over Sarajevo."
BTW: Sacirbey has been charged with embezzelment.
Regarding Mt. Igman, the UN talked the Serbs into turning over Mt. Igman to NATO. NATO then turned Mt. Igman over to the Bosnian Muslim government and from there, Bosnian Muslim forces were able to shell the Serbian section of Sarajevo. Over 90,000 Serbs fled - few have returned.
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