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We Bombed the Wrong Side in Kosovo
G2mil ^ | Summer 2004 | Carlton Meyer

Posted on 05/29/2004 12:24:36 PM PDT by Destro

Editorial

While the Bush Administration dances around their lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction used to justify the conquest of Iraq, let us recall the Clinton administration lied to justify their conquest of Kosovo in 1999. No mass graves were found, except in places where a few dozen Islamic terrorists, and civilians caught in the crossfire, were killed in firefights with Serbian police. There was no "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbian army, which includes thousands of Muslim soldiers. Reports that civilians were forced to vacate cities by evil Serbian police proved false; they fled because they were terrified as NATO aircraft unleashed hundreds of bombs over a three week period, killing 2000 civilians. This destroyed the Serbian economy and terrorized their government into submission, which resulted in a compromise in which Serbia retained sovereignty over its Kosovo province and agreed to allow NATO peacekeepers to occupy Kosovo on a temporary basis.

As with the conquest of Iraq, it is uncertain why this conflict arose. Some think it was created by the powerful NATO bureaucracy to justify their post Cold war existence. Defense contractors made handsome profits though supplemental funding while by contractors like Halliburton continue to pocket billions of dollars to support the occupation of Kosovo. Others claim it was a public relations gimmick by President Clinton, while a few think more sinister reasons were involved. Here is an excellent update on the present situation:

THE NATIONAL POST (Canada) | 2004-04-06 |

We bombed the wrong side?

Major General Lewis MacKenzie - Armed Forces of Canada (retired)

Five years ago our television screens were dominated by pictures of Kosovo-Albanian refugees escaping across Kosovo's borders to the sanctuaries of Macedonia and Albania. Shrill reports indicated that Slobodan Milosevic's security forces were conducting a campaign of genocide and that at least 100,000 Kosovo-Albanians had been exterminated and buried in mass graves throughout the Serbian province. NATO sprung into action and, in spite of the fact no member nation of the alliance was threatened, commenced bombing not only Kosovo, but the infrastructure and population of Serbia itself -- without the authorizing United Nations resolution so revered by Canadian leadership, past and present.

Those of us who warned that the West was being sucked in on the side of an extremist, militant, Kosovo-Albanian independence movement were dismissed as appeasers. The fact that the lead organization spearheading the fight for independence, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), was universally designated a terrorist organization and known to be receiving support from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda was conveniently ignored.

The recent dearth of news in the North American media regarding the increase in violence in Kosovo compared to the comprehensive coverage in the European press strongly suggests that we Canadians don't like to admit it when we are wrong. On the contrary, selected news clips on this side of the ocean continue to reinforce the popular spin that those dastardly Serbs are at it again.

A case in point was the latest crisis that exploded on March 15. The media reported that four Albanian boys had been chased into the river Ibar in Mitrovica by at least two Serbs and a dog (the dog's ethnic affiliation was not reported). Three of the boys drowned and one escaped to the other side. Immediately, thousands of Albanians mobilized and concentrated in the area of the divided city. Attacks on Serbs took place throughout the province resulting in an estimated 30 killed and 600 wounded. Thirty Serbian Christian Orthodox churches and monasteries were destroyed, more than 300 homes were burnt to the ground and six Serbian villages cleansed of their occupants. One hundred and fifty international peacekeepers were injured.

Totally ignored in North America were the numerous statements from impartial sources that said there was no incident between the Serbs, the dog and the Albanian boys. NATO Police spokesman Derek Chappell stated on March 16 that it was "definitely not true" that the boys had been chased into the river by Serbs. Chappell went on to say that the surviving boy had told his parents that they had entered the river alone and that three of his friends had been swept away by the current. Admiral Gregory Johnson, the overall NATO commander, further stated that the ensuing clashes were "orchestrated and well-planned ethnic cleansing" by the Kosovo-Albanians. Those Serbs forced to leave joined the 200,000 who had been cleansed from the province since NATO's "humanitarian" bombing in 1999. The '"cleansees" have become very effective "cleansers."

In the same week a number of individuals posing as Serbs ambushed and killed a UN policeman and his local police partner. During the firefight one of them was wounded which caused an immediate switch from Serbian to Albanian as he screamed, "I've been hit"! The UN pursued the attackers and tracked them to an Albanian-run farm where they discovered weapons and the wounded Albanian who had died from his wounds. Four Albanians were arrested. Once again, the ambush had been reported in the United States but not the follow-up which clearly indicated yet another orchestrated provocation by the Albanian terrorists.

Kosovo is administered by the UN, the very organization many Canadians have indicated they would like to see take over from the United States in Iraq. The fact the UN cannot order its civilian employees to go or stay anywhere -- they have to volunteer -- combined with recent history that saw the UN abandon Iraq after a single brutal attack on their compound in Baghdad and the reality that Kosovo, under the organization's administration, is a basket case, disqualifies it from consideration for such a role.

Since the NATO/UN intervention in 1999, Kosovo has become the crime capital of Europe. The sex slave trade is flourishing. The province has become an invaluable transit point for drugs en route to Europe and North America. Ironically, the majority of the drugs come from another state "liberated" by the West, Afghanistan. Members of the demobilized, but not eliminated, KLA are intimately involved in organized crime and the government. The UN police arrest a small percentage of those involved in criminal activities and turn them over to a judiciary with a revolving door that responds to bribes and coercion. The objective of the Albanians is to purge all non-Albanians, including the international community's representatives, from Kosovo and ultimately link up with mother Albania thereby achieving the goal of "Greater Albania." The campaign started with their attacks on Serbian security forces in the early 1990s and they were successful in turning Milosevic's heavy-handed response into worldwide sympathy for their cause. There was no genocide as claimed by the West -- the 100,000 allegedly buried in mass graves turned out to be around 2,000, of all ethnic origins, including those killed in combat during the war itself.

The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early '90s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary. When they achieve independence with the help of our tax dollars combined with those of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this sends to other terrorist-supported independence movements around the world.

Funny how we just keep digging the hole deeper!

Maj-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, now retired, commanded UN troops during the Bosnian civil war of 1992.

(c) 2004 National Post . All Rights Reserved.

Serbia is a European democracy which maintains friendly relations with all nations. It delivered Milosevic to the war crimes tribunal in the Hague two years ago, although they are having trouble accumulating evidence that he used excessive force to suppress Islamic terrorists in Kosovo. Fighting had increased in the late 1990s as the CIA shipped arms to the KLA terror group and helped coordinate Iranian arm shipments to Albania funded in part by Al Qaeda. Deposing Milosevic and turning him over for "war crimes" was a key demand, yet NATO (e.g. the United States) has yet to announce when the temporary NATO peacekeepers will depart.

Kosovo has been part of Serbia for hundreds of years, and remains part of Serbia as recognized by every nation on Earth, including the United States. NATO and the UN have failed to keep the peace in Kosovo, and lack the resolve to pursue Islamic terrorists and criminal gangs based there. The United States hasn't the resources to provide security forever, and no European ally is anxious to add troops. The solution is obvious; allow Serbian peacekeepers to return to Serbia's Kosovo province. They are willing and experienced at this task, something they had done successfully for hundreds of years, until NATO pushed them aside.

Yes, there will be increased violence as Islamic terrorists and criminal gangs battle Serbian police, once again. The Serbians will win, once again. The terrorists will be pushed out and criminal activity reduced. Violence will also decrease in neighboring Macedonia which is often terrorized by rouge gangs from Kosovo. Serbians can return to their stolen properties and rebuild their Christian churches. During a 2000 presidential debate, George Bush said: "But one of the problems we have in the military is we're in a lot of places around the world. And I mentioned one, and that's the Balkans. I would very much like to get our troops out of there." Given the strain on the US Army, American troops should leave Kosovo by years' end. The last American officer to leave should tell his Serbian replacement: Sorry about all this, it was our mistake. Good luck and good bye.

Carlton Meyer editor@G2mil.com

G2mil editorials may be freely distributed without permission

G2mil is the only Warfare Research Portal on the Internet. If you are interested in military technology, weapons, tactics, future warfare, and military news, this website has hundreds of pages of unique content and links to hundreds of military related sites. This is not a government or corporate website, but an independent website run by former military officers.

Our editor is Carlton Meyer, a former Marine Corps officer who has participated in military operations around the world. He had written dozens of articles for military magazines, but became frustrated that important issues are ignored by editors fearful of upsetting their corporate advertisers or government sponsors. There are no advertisers or sponsors for G2mil.

What someone doesn't want you to publish is journalism, all else is publicity.


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: balkans; campaignfinance; kla; kosovo; racak; racakhoax; serbia; serblies; serbpropaganda; serbterrorism; x42; zippergate
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To: neutrino
I agree with you. Frankly, I think that President Milosevic and General Maladic were the good guys.

Sure, if you define good guys as mass murdering, ethnic cleansing thugs.

41 posted on 05/30/2004 8:10:53 AM PDT by mark502inf
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To: Destro

Albans like America. They are moderate Muslims and like America. It's the European country more pro-American. They support OP Iraqi Freedom and want to join NATO.

Milosevic is a criminal and a madman. He is anti-American and Communist. He deserves the death penalty for all his crimes.


42 posted on 05/30/2004 8:16:46 AM PDT by Reader of news
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To: A. Pole

"the real bad guys were Ahmed Ceku, Holbrook, Clark, Walker and mass media propagandists."

And don't forget NotBrightAtAll-Allbright!


43 posted on 05/30/2004 8:24:03 AM PDT by Jane_N (Truth, like beauty....is in the eyes of the beholder!)
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To: mark502inf
Sure, if you define good guys as mass murdering, ethnic cleansing thugs.

No, no, President Milosevic wasn't a mo-slime.


44 posted on 05/30/2004 8:26:08 AM PDT by neutrino (Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences. Robert Louis Stevenson.)
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To: festus
Slobo understood the threat that islamofascists posed firsthand and was doing something about it.

Yeah, that was why good ol' Slobo fought wars against the islamofascist Slovenes and the islamofascist Croats. And since the first U.S. troop deployment in the Balkans was into Macedonia to deter Slobo from "doing something about" that situation, I guess the Macedonians are islamofascists, too. And of course, the Kosovar Albanians are famous islamofascists--that would explain their Christian president, the secular law, the expansion of the Catholic church in Kosovo, the alcohol consumption rate (high!) & the babes in tight jeans.

As to what Slobo was really doing "about it", go look up the 60+ counts of his indictment at the ICTY.

45 posted on 05/30/2004 8:27:02 AM PDT by mark502inf
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To: neutrino
No, no, President Milosevic wasn't a mo-slime

You're right, he was an atheist who was denounced by the Serb Orthodox Church and is being tried in absentia for Belgrade for murder while he is also being tried in the ICTY for war crimes. He presided over the destruction of his own country and the deaths of a couple hundred thousand people while personally enriching himself through criminal activities as well as by selling arms to Libya and Iraq and being one of the largest recipients of Saddam Hussein's oil bribes.

46 posted on 05/30/2004 8:39:42 AM PDT by mark502inf
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To: Dubya's fan
Milosevic is a criminal and a madman. He is anti-American and Communist. He deserves the death penalty for all his crimes.

One of my arguments with international justice is the lack of a death penalty. Slobo richly deserves it.

47 posted on 05/30/2004 8:43:37 AM PDT by mark502inf
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To: mark502inf

A few minor little transgressions compared to the good he did.


48 posted on 05/30/2004 8:45:48 AM PDT by neutrino (Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences. Robert Louis Stevenson.)
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To: Wolverine
Why hasn't Wesley Clark been called on the carpet for this?

Because the article is B.S. Clark should have been called on the carpet and relieved for military incompetence; i.e. bad military advice to the Rambouillet negotiating team (Slobo will fold if threatened by NATO bombing); for failure to make the case for ground troops with the President& joint staff; for failure to have a military plan in place other than his anemic little several day bombing campaign; and for his micro-managing command style. But this article, besides the obvious anti-U.S. bias, is riddled with lies about the Kosovo situation. Better to have gotten rid of Clark for what he really did or did not do instead of based on Slobo's Kosovo talking points.

49 posted on 05/30/2004 9:01:30 AM PDT by mark502inf
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To: neutrino
A few minor little transgressions compared to the good he did.

Such as wars with Slovenia, Croatia, the Bosniaks, and Kosovar Albanians? A couple milllion refugees? Serbia's economy ruined? Sending weapons and military advisers to Saddam Hussein? But I'll bite--what good did he do?

50 posted on 05/30/2004 9:08:23 AM PDT by mark502inf
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To: Dubya's fan

Back then it was easy to like Americans and al-Qaeda if you were an Albanian since both were on the same sie.


51 posted on 05/30/2004 9:12:05 AM PDT by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorism by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)
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To: mark502inf

Lies. The Jews are gone from Kosovo - Kosovo ist JudenFrie! Kosovo is almost Serbain free and hundreds of Churches have gone up in flames.


52 posted on 05/30/2004 9:14:58 AM PDT by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorism by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)
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To: Destro

Albans hate Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. They support the USA in the war on terror. Like I told you, they are moderate Muslims.


53 posted on 05/30/2004 9:17:08 AM PDT by Reader of news
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To: Destro

Those who have burned churches are a little group. They don't represent most Albans of Kosovo.


54 posted on 05/30/2004 9:20:03 AM PDT by Reader of news
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To: Bommer
Is Saran and mustard gas sold over the counter now?

You can get Saran at just about any grocery store. Satin is a little harder to come by and isn't s effective for protecting leftovers.

55 posted on 05/30/2004 9:27:33 AM PDT by arthurus (Better to fight them over THERE than over HERE.)
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To: Brilliant

We were not just on the wrong side. We had no reason at all to be in that one. It was justified and celebrated as America's first Good War because the US had no national interest there at all. It was billed as a philanthropic war, as if we were doing it for United Way.


56 posted on 05/30/2004 9:30:25 AM PDT by arthurus (Better to fight them over THERE than over HERE.)
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To: Dubya's fan
The ethnic Albanian Muslims who dominate that strife-torn Balkan province have been pursuing what a NATO commander recently called "orchestrated and well-planned ethnic cleansing" against minority Christian Serbs. In mid-March, Kosovo Albanian mobs destroyed 30 churches in two days. (The mobs were inflamed by reckless reports in local media, presenting as fact a rumor that Serb teens had drowned three Albanian boys; NATO officials now say they believe the drowning was accidental.) Some of these churches had been places of Christian worship since the 14th century, jewels of medieval architecture treasured by art historians worldwide. Today they're ashen ruins. Thousands of their former parishioners are now refugees; some are dead.
57 posted on 05/30/2004 9:31:01 AM PDT by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorism by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)
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To: Dubya's fan
I will admit I know next to nothing about Albanian Muslims yet feel confident that you are totally wrong about them hating Osama.

If you are right, they are the only group of Muslims I have ever heard of who do hate terrorists, at least any large group of them.

58 posted on 05/30/2004 9:35:16 AM PDT by yarddog
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To: yarddog
KLA rebels train in terrorist camps

By Jerry Seper

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

May 4, 1999

Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden -- who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans.

The KLA members, embraced by the Clinton administration in NATO's 41-day bombing campaign to bring Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the bargaining table, were trained in secret camps in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere, according to newly obtained intelligence reports.

The reports also show that the KLA has enlisted Islamic terrorists -- members of the Mujahideen --as soldiers in its ongoing conflict against Serbia, and that many already have been smuggled into Kosovo to join the fight.

Known to its countrymen as the Ushtria Clirimatare e Kosoves, the KLA has as many as 30,000 members, a number reportedly on the rise as a result of NATO's continuing bombing campaign. The group's leadership, including Agim Ceku, a former Croatian army brigadier general, has rapidly become a political and military force in the Balkans.

The intelligence reports document what is described as a "link" between bin Laden, the fugitive Saudi millionaire, and the KLA --including a common staging area in Tropoje, Albania, a center for Islamic terrorists. The reports said bin Laden's organization, known as al-Qaeda, has both trained and financially supported the KLA.

Many border crossings into Kosovo by "foreign fighters" also have been documented and include veterans of the militant group Islamic Jihad from Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Many of the crossings originated in neighboring Albania and, according to the reports, included parties of up to 50 men.

Jane's International Defense Review, a highly respected British Journal, reported in February that documents found last year on the body of a KLA member showed that he had escorted several volunteers into Kosovo, including more than a dozen Saudi Arabians. Each volunteer carried a passport identifying him as a Macedonian Albanian.

Bin Laden and his military commander, Mohammed Atef, were named in a federal indictment handed up in November in New York for the simultaneous explosions Aug. 7 at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The indictment accused the two men of directing the attacks, which injured more than 5,000 people.

The indictment said bin Laden, working through al-Qaeda, forged alliances with government officials in Iran, the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and an Iranian terrorist organization known as Hezbollah. He was indicted earlier this year by a federal grand jury in New York for his suspected terrorist activities.

The al-Qaeda is believed to have targeted U.S. embassies and American soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia and Somalia. The organization also is accused of housing and training terrorists, and of raising money to support their causes.

The State Department, along with other federal agencies, offered a $5 million reward last year for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the two men. Mr. Clinton ordered a retaliatory attack on training bases controlled by bin Laden in Afghanistan and a chemical factory near Khartoum, Sudan, after the bombings.

Last year, while State Department officials labeled the KLA a terrorist organization, saying it bankrolled its operations with proceeds from the heroin trade and from loans from known terrorists like bin Laden, the department listed the group as an "insurgency" organization in its official reports. The officials charged that the KLA used terrorist tactics to assault Serbian and ethnic Albanian civilians in a campaign to achieve independence.

The KLA's involvement in drug smuggling as a means of raising funds for weapons is long-standing. Intelligence documents show it has aligned itself with an extensive organized crime network in Albania that smuggles heroin to buyers throughout Western Europe and the United States. Drug agents in five countries believe the cartel is one of the most powerful heroin smuggling organizations in the world.

The documents show heroin and some cocaine is moved over land and sea from Turkey through Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia to Western Europe and elsewhere. The circuit has become known as the "Balkan Route."

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said in a recent report that drug smuggling organizations composed of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians were considered "second only to Turkish gangs as the predominant heroin smugglers along the Balkan Route."

Greek Interpol representatives have called Kosovo's ethnic Albanians "the primary sources of supply for cocaine and heroin in that country."

France's Geopolitical Observatory of Drugs said the KLA was a key player in the rapidly expanding drugs-for-arms business and helped transport $2 billion in drugs a year into Western Europe.

German drug agents said $1.5 billion in drug profits is laundered annually by Kosovo smugglers, through as many as 200 private banks or currency-exchange offices.

Jane's Intelligence Review estimated in March that drug sales could have netted the KLA profits in the "high tens of millions of dollars." It said the KLA had rearmed itself for a spring offensive with the aid of drug money, along with donations from Albanians in Western Europe and the United States.

59 posted on 05/30/2004 9:58:45 AM PDT by Destro (Know your enemy! Help fight Islamic terrorism by visiting www.johnathangaltfilms.com)
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To: mark502inf
But I'll bite--what good did he do?

The question seems disingenuous, for you have already listed two laudable accomplishments in your post above. His approach to the bosniaks and kosovar albanians provides both direction and guidance to us all.

60 posted on 05/30/2004 10:24:08 AM PDT by neutrino (Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences. Robert Louis Stevenson.)
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