Posted on 11/28/2005 3:40:03 PM PST by SandRat
Give it a rest, FormerLib. You guys have been breathlessly reporting the imminent Kosovar-Albanian attack of NATO & the US for over 6 years. Instead, we've never been attacked and have been steadily drawing down troops in the Balkans to go to places where there really is an Islamic threat--Afghanistan & Iraq--where our Albanian & Macedonian & Bosnian & Croatian allies have troops fighting alongside us. No Serbs invited, however, as the US plans don't include ethnic cleansing, rape, and mass murder.
WTF are we still in the Balkans.
When it happens, the fact that real American soldiers will be paying the price will be the only thing keeping me from laughing "Told ya so" right in your face, marky-boy.
Because we never should have been there in the first place.
good question
I'll do ya one better, why where we there to begin with?
Never got it myself.
Oh well, theres lots I dont get ;) Im off for rest now.
BTTT
My thoughts exactly. Kosovo is Bill Clinton's baby so obviously its a good kinda military deployment.
Regardless, God bless those troops.
I didn't know we were still there in the first place.
Note to moderator, I take great offense to mark502inf's asinine remark.
Mark, you really are a disingenuous ass, I hope you're one of the first casualties in a KLA attack, I really do.
monty, the Serbs committed ethnic cleansing, rape, and mass murder in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Croatia. That is a fact whether you take offense to it or not. Read up a little:
Sort of losing it there, aren't you sport.
Anyways, the KLA has had lots of chances to turn me and tens of thousands of other Americans into "casualties" over the last 7 years and they haven't done so yet.
In honor of how well you handled this post, here's another:
Thursday, May 12, 2005 U.S. says Serbs still in denial over war crimes
By Beti Bilandzic
BELGRADE, May 12 (Reuters) - Most Serbs still do not believe their forces committed atrocities in Croatia, Bosnia or Kosovo, a senior United States diplomat said on Thursday, so the idea of holding war crimes trials in the country is problematic.
Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia are all trying to show their capacity to deal with the past after the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, insisting they are ready and able to dispense justice for war crimes cases at home.
U.S. charge d'affaires Roderick Moore, speaking at a seminar in Belgrade, said Serbs widely failed to recognise that their countrymen had committed war crimes, making it difficult for the judiciary to prosecute and convict perpetrators.
"I don't believe the political climate in Serbia is wholly favourable for trying war crimes impartially in domestic courts," said Moore, speaking in Serbian.
"I don't believe that your society has accepted the full extent of the crimes Serbs committed in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo," he added.
The seminar was part of a debate on whether countries involved in the wars sparked by the breakup of Yugoslavia were ready to take over some of the heavy caseload of the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Moore said less than half of Serbia's population believed that 7,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in 1995 by the forces of Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic, despite the testimony of witnesses, graves found and even the admission of Bosnian Serbs.
"Only 37 percent believe it is a war crime and only 38 percent believe Mladic should go to The Hague to answer for the crime," the envoy said.
Polls show the level of denial is similar for other atrocities, such as the killing of some 200 prisoners of war in Vukovar in Croatia in 1991, or for the 800 Kosovo Albanian bodies buried in Serbia during the 1999 war and found later. "Your society doubts the crimes happened at all," he said
Didn't know that. Last I heard of them, the 143rd Infantry was crossing the Rapido River in 1943. Or trying to.
MG Fred Walker wrote in his journal on 23 January 1944:
The Battle for the Rapido is over. It will long remain in my memory. Two of my regiments were wrecked there. Thank God, Keyes finally changed his mind and cancelled the third attack.
What an understatement, especially considering how hard he argued against making the attacks. He knew what slaughter was going to be done, and so too did the men who attempted the crossing.
The 36th didn't blame Keyes nor did they blame Walker. The blamed Mark Clark and they did not forget. Following the war the first thing they did was force Congressional hearings into Clark's wanton disregard for the lives of the men who attempted the crossing. Clark got a pass from the hearing, but at the words "Mark Clark," 36th veterans are likely to spit and curse, or say nothing and shake their heads.
I was in Normandy in June 2004 for the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. In our tour group was a veteran of the 36th division, whose grandson warned us not to get him started on the subject of Mark Clark.
He did, however, mention that the second attack on the Rapido was akin to Grant's second assault on the Cold Harbor defenses. It was that costly. And like Cold Harbor, it failed.
I don't know how anyone in the 36th division survived that campaign. And those who did deserve a special medal cast in solid gold.
They're there incognito. I've heard that some of the former Red Berets units (the JSO) and the Gendarmes are in Iraq working with the US forces over there, but haven't found any official information on it.
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