Posted on 10/03/2004 3:31:19 PM PDT by Soliton
Welcome to the "Balkans Front" threads Sarajevo. Don't know if you lurked here earlier than your sign up date but if you haven't seen the threads related to the Balkans before, you're in for some lively discussion.
Helped the Bosnian Muslims import jihadis some of who later served as members of the 19 al-Qaeda that carried out 9/11 - that's what.
When I'm looking to have another laugh, I'll let you know. Until then, do yourself a favor and just keep what passes for thoughts in that empty noggin of yours to yourself.
Not an international business guru. I deal in international business. The middle class in America is in tough times - the immigrants America is getting are sapping not strengthening America and vetrans of the Bosnian Muslim Army carried out 9/11.
Right, but here are some facts:
1. Slobodan Milosevic wasn't elected, but appointed at the time of NATO aggression.
2. His position has been jeopardized many times, let's just mention March the 9th, '91., spring of '93., fall/winter of '96/'97., April '98., etc. So, once before the shooting actually started, and once during the war itself. And at least two times before Kosovo. I can't remember Tudjman and/or Izetbegovic having a similar experience. Oh yeah, and remember how he got through the '96/'97 crisis? Dick Holbrooke and "factor of peace and stability in the region"?
3. One man couldn't start a war by himself, nor could one man be an excuse to go to war, regardless how evil or "evil" he is.
4. Now that you mentioned it, "elected" you say? Like in democracy? IIRC you once said (quoted, actually) "democracies don't wage wars on other democracies". So which shall it be, elected or self-appointed?
The RTS tower, if you'll remember, has the distinction of being one of the targets we notified the Serbs of in advance
By whom? Jamie Shea and his famous nine o'clock hit list?
which is why there have been lawsuits in Serbia where the relatives of the dead have sued the management who were notified of the impending strike but ordered the employees to go to work anyway.
And which were dismissed. I believe they filed one at EU court after that.
Dragoljub Milanovic, the director of RTS during Allied Force, was found guilty by a Serbian district court in 2002 of intentionally placing low-level employees at risk in an effort to increase the number of civilian casualties and discredit NATO.
Not exactly, he was charged with general disregard of safety regulations involving wartime and federal property, not that particular incident.
Also, it's the same legal system that dropped charges against Nato leaders. Not much of an independent court, right? Dancing to the music of powers that be.
Oh yeah, in an unrelated event, after Milanovic got sentenced, MPAA decided not to press charges against RTS and other state-owned media (TV stations) for severe copyright infringements.
But let's put it aside. NATO had no right to bomb RTS building, end of story. Whether it warned them in advance or not is irrelevant. Osama and his cronies talked about bringing war to American soil for years. So, can we conclude that they're not responsible for 9/11 simply because they warned in advance?
But leave it to the courts to decide. As you may know, relatives of the killed also sued several NATO countries before their very own courts.
How lucky for them they're not destabilizing Southern Europe, like Milosevic was...
He wasn't. Dick Holbrooke said so (see above). Or you think you're smarter than Dick?
Sarajevo: It was a Civil War, nothing more, nothing less. Painting the issue as a religious conflict is blatantly stupid.
Perhaps, but society has been divided along religious lines. Therefore, one could say that it was a religious conflict. You had muslims ("Bosniacks"), catholics (Croats), and orthodox chrs. (Serbs) fighting each other, one against other two. Also, Albanians are muslim. Actually, there were some nonreligious moments during the conflict, such as Fikret Avdic and his men (Bosnian muslims) fighting along Serbs vs. Izetbegovic's Bosnian muslims and Croats. And in Kosovo, it was pretty much Albanians vs. everyone else, regardless of their ethnic or religious background.
NOT!
Over 150,000 Serbs left Sarajevo from 1991, yet its total population today is significantly larger than prewar, AND IT IS VIRTUALLY all Muslims.
DOUBLE NOT!Over 150,000 Serbs left Sarajevo from 1991
I can't understand why, the Serb Army had the city surrounded. Even the muslim population had an escape route. It was an 800 meter long tunnel that extended UNDER Sarajevo Airport, an area of some of the heaviest fighting in the city.
Tuzla, I am told, has destroyed Orthodox churches, but where is the publicity for that.
Just where do you get your information from??? There are Orthodox churches, Catholic churches, and mosques in both cities.
Now, I need to ask, were you ever in Bosnia-Herzegovina?
Thanks! I just decided to put my two cents in since I was there as a soldier and as a civilian.
Sarajevo,
You'll also find that the poster names change over time as tempers occasionally flair.
Wraith and Ronly Bonly Jones (banned under that ID but I hope he's back in some fashion) also served in the Balkans and have widely divergent opinions on who did what to whom over there. TonyCavaough served with the Brits there but I think he's grown tired of these threads!
Clinton's Bosnian buddies trained thousands of OBL's terroists.
You forgot to mention Wes Clark's role in the matter
http://www.crucibleofwar.com/sarajevo.htm
The Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) population -- which had been about 50% of Sarajevo's population before the war -- was now 87%. The Bosnian Serb population had been reduced from 28% to 5%.
1991:
Bosniacs: 252,000
Serbs: 139,000
Croats: 35,000
Others: 75,000 [many of these were Serbs who considered themselves Yugoslavs]
1997:
Bosniacs:303,000
Serbs: 18,000
Croats: 21,000
Others: 7,000
Serbs controlled some suburbs of Sarajevo and the LINE OF CONFRONTATION ran near the middle of Sarajevo. The UN had its compound just on the Bosniak side. Further, UN soldiers have testified that the Muslim provoked and broke cease fires the most. A Ukrainian officer testified he heard OUTGOING mortars from just outside the compound where he and other UN staff were staying. He and the other soldiers believe it was the Muslims trying to get the UN hit by Serbs returning fire.
ma bell was in Tuzla last year and has pics of the ruined Orthodox churches there.
Testimony of Anatoliy Kruk a Ukrainian UN soldier stationed in Sarajevo:
Two times I do remember that when there was a severe violation from Bosnia side, when they penetrated to this zone and made a couple of shots. The first time, I remember it very well because there was a small table tennis championship. And when we started to play - I don't remember for what place and -- in coffee room - and there was two outgoing shots. And in -- very soon there was retaliation, and even a couple of sandbags just fell down this coffee room.Q. Thank you. Witness, why did these shots -- why did these outgoing shots occur? Or as you said, there was a security zone -- around the building? Do you know anything about that?
MS. MAHINDARATNE: I object, Mr. President. Inviting the witness to speculate.
JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Piletta-Zanin.
MR. PILETTA-ZANIN: [Interpretation] I wanted to know whether the witness knew or did not know, not whether he was imagining something. It's nothing that he has to speculate about.
JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Witness, you may answer that question. And please do it in such a way that the Chamber will know what's the basis of
Page 18251
your knowledge.
THE WITNESS: As I mentioned before, at that time not only me - there was maybe tens of people in coffee room - and we heard -- I personally heard outgoing shots from mortar, and I can say it was mortar 82 millimetres approximately, according to the sound. And everybody was very angry about this because it was strictly prohibited to provocate near UN camp because it can endanger UN personnel. It always was very strong protest from headquarter Sarajevo. And I do remember two times in the headquarter it happened and once it was during my engineer mission.
MR. PILETTA-ZANIN: [Interpretation]
Q. Yes. But the question was whether you knew the reasons for which these shots had been provoked. If you don't, you can just say that you don't.
A. I can say that -- and I will tell common opinion of the people who were present there. It was pure provocation.
Q. For what purpose? A. Maybe to -- to receive backfire, and in this case to make opposing side to be guilty for these might-be casualties or destruction for UN.
1626: 60,000+ inhabitants
1660: 100,000+ inhabitants
1910: 51,919
1921: 66,317
1931: 78,173
1945: 115,000
1971: 359,448
1991: 527.049
2002: 401,118 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarajevo
Hmmm. It seems that some of your information is out of date by a couple of years. Let us not forget that approxiamtely 25% of Sarajevo is located in the Republika Srpska (Serbian Republic)
He only had to win his first election fair and square - if he manipulated the system and used outright fraud to stay in power after that point that's nobody's fault but the electorate who put up with it.
In the end, the ICTY sided with NATO and did not order further investigation of the RTS bombing. Yet the fallout from targeting the Serbian media continues. In one development that bolsters the ICTY’s decision, former RTS director Dragoljub Milanovic was convicted of creating a " grave danger to public security " by failing to evacuate all employees from RTS headquarters. After hearing testimony that Serbian officials were warned of the attack in advance and that government officials had signed an order to evacuate countermanded by the RTS director, the court found Milanovic guilty and sentenced him to 10 years in jail.
Source
There was a Serbian Lawyer who had taken the case for the families of the RTS victims - Slobodan Sisic. How Mr. Sisic's efforts have fared since this news, I don't know.
You are entitled to your opinion as to what is and what isn't a legitimate target - we bombed State Television in Baghdad as well, so you're in for a hard sell on this one.
As to Serbia's suits against the various NATO nations, they were never anything more than a Milosevic era joke that the current government hasn't had the balls to drop - they're going nowhere.
And finally, as to my being smarter than Dick Holbrooke, if Dick is commenting upon the signing of the Dayton Accords and you're using those comments in reference to Kosovo, it's probably not either of our levels of intelligence which should be questioned, is it.
NOT
Is that why the tunnel was constructed UNDER Sarajevo Airport? It was used by Bosniak refugees and as a supply conduit into and out of the city over Mt Igman. The tunnel was made necessary by the deal made between the UN and the surrounding Serbian forces for continued UN usage of the airport.
Milosevic read out a quite interesting quotation from Lord Owen’s book. Owen says, "in Sarajevo, it became increasingly clear that in fact there were two sieges of the town, one which was implemented by the Bosnian Serb army with shells, sniper fire and blockades, and another by the army of the Bosnian government which prevented their people from leaving through internal blockades and bureaucratic complications. Able-bodied men from 18 to 65 and women from 18 to 60 were not allowed to leave because they were essential for the defense of the town, but their main reason was a different one. The Serb siege in the propaganda war evoked compassion on the part of the world, and that is why they needed the elderly and the children to remain. That was their most emotional propaganda weapon to draw the Americans into the war, and they didn't want that to weaken."In response Morillon said, “Well, I am not denying what Lord Owen may have written.” He then went on to say that “the Bosniaks used the presence of their population, as you have just said, to keep the attention of the world focused on their situation, it is true, but similarly they prevented the evacuation from Srebrenica.”
So not only did the Muslims hold their population hostage in Sarajevo as a propaganda ploy to win world sympathy, but they did the same thing in Srebrenica where, as Morillon explained earlier, Nasir Oric was terrorizing even the Muslim population.
Morillon explained in his statement that "The aim of the [Bosnian Muslim] Presidency from the very outset was to ensure the intervention of international forces for their own benefit, and that is one of the reasons why they never were inclined to engage in talks. In those days, the Serbs were ready for talks since they considered that they were winning. Whenever such an agreement was signed on humanitarian corridors, the problems came from the Presidency. Finally, the corridors would be accepted. The beginning of their implementation was to be the withdrawal of heavy weapons, which should have taken place at 1700 hours on the 24th of December. However, on that day, my residence in Sarajevo was shelled. The shell was fired by the Bosnian forces. That is quite certain."
http://slobodan-milosevic.ihostsites.net/news/smorg030904.htm
I mean the airport.
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