Posted on 08/01/2007 1:35:20 PM PDT by Bokababe
Citizens of a free country ought to expect they won't be burdened with the kind of propaganda barrage that has come to be associated with Nazi "interior ministers" such as Josef Goebbles or Soviet "media spokesmen" like Vladimir Posner. However, the more information that comes out about the NATO war in Kosovo, the more evident is the fact that NATO made an apparent "policy decision" to lie about Serbian atrocities. It seems the western democracies "stole a page from the play books" of their former totalitarian adversaries in Germany and the Soviet Union.
Writing recently in Liberty Magazine, David Ramsey Steele points out that in Kosovo we were told before the bombings that there was mass genocide occurring, the figure of "100,000 or more" was tossed around even though there was no evidence to back-up this claim. One media pundit suggested the number would be a quarter-of-a-million dead. NATO even gave a name to this "campaign of mass genocide," it was dubbed "Operation Horseshoe" but, as Steele says, the factual basis for the existence of such a genocide is spurious at best. In fact, Steele likens it to the Bryce report that reported falsified claims of genocide in Belgium in World War I.
Later after the NATO bombs began dropping, the official NATO claim was dropped to around 10,000 as it became clear no mass graves or killing fields even existed. The actual number of people found in the reported mass-graves totals slightly more than 2,000, a far cry from the hundreds of thousands that we were told originally. The loss of 2,000 lives is a great tragedy, but there are more Americans than that killed domestically every year and it hardly warrants the kind of violent response we saw in Kosovo. In fact, Mr. Steele states that Kosovo was safer than any major U.S. city prior to the NATO bombing. Moreover, as Steele shows, it is hardly evident that each of those bodies was killed as a result of a campaign of genocide.
Finally, Steele points out that the stories about Kosovo came not only from NATO officers but also from officials of the United Nations as well as from our own government. However, a few sources closely followed developments and seemed to get the story about right. Pablo Ordaz of El Pais magazine, Audrey Gillan of the London Review of Books and even two members of an inspection team sent to Kosovo for the purpose of investigating purported mass graves all challenged the stories of the propaganda machine.
Steele also shows that while we were told of ethnic cleansing and Kosovars who were being forced from their homes, the truth of the matter is they were being forced from their homes because of the danger and destruction being caused by NATO bombing in the region. If anything, this so-called ethnic cleansing appears as a direct result of NATO action. In fact, as Steele states, now that NATO and the KLA have control of Kosovo there have been widespread reports that the people we were supposedly protecting, the Kosovars, are now engaged in a murdering spree against the Serbians.
Instead of hearing the truth from our leadership, we were fed emotional tales of mass killing that were entirely blown out of proportion in order to justify force and violence in the region.
The sad trail of lies in Kosovo merely reinforces two facts. The first is that our republic depends upon a press that will question the claims of our leaders instead of just accepting them. The second is that Congress has shirked both its Constitutional responsibility to declare war before U.S. troops are sent into battle and its oversight responsibility to closely monitor the administration in its carrying out of foreign policy.
Wake up and smell your own garbage!
bfl
Ron Paul was right on Kosovo, I absolutely give him that.
But there is no comparison between Iraq and Kosovo.
We had no strategic interest in Kosovo. Milosevic was no threat to the US, Saddam was.
Iraq repeatedly violated the terms of the 1991 Cease Fire, and I don’t care what any one says, they were a major player in terrorism. That was a direct threat to this country, and why removing Saddam was perfectly justified, given his previous track record.
If a country is a direct threat to the USA, I have no problem standing up to them and if necessary going after them until they yell "Uncle"! We declare war and then whoop their butts until they surrender.
Where I do agree with Paul, is on the fact that we go into too many places where we have no business, there is no threat to the US, and we expect our troops to die for someone else's problem or business interests -- and we have too many "undeclared wars" that completely bypass Congress, as the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia did.
Iraq is a whole other question.
Point being here is that it seems that everyone who yells that we have been propagandized re the Serbs, gets called "a Serb propagandist". Well, here is a member of Congress who seven years ago, when it was very unfashionable to do so, saying exactly the same thing that we are saying.
The press beat the drums for that war. Christiane Amanpour was its Goebbels. Lying propaganda was pumped out of the MSM 24/7 to fool the people into supporting that war. I can't remember if they did polls everyday back then to gauge the public sentiment for that war.
It's clearly documented in the Congressional Record that the incident that turned the Democrats and their media so hawkish on the Serbs was when Milosevic shut down George Soros' media apparatus there. We fought that war on behalf of one man and almost everything else was deception propaganda to get Americans to back the effort.
Ok, I just watched the debate on you tube. I think Im cured of liking Ron Paul.
I knew some Macedonians who were saying that Albanians were also trying to take over parts of Macedonia like they did Kosovo. Muslims killing Christians and we sided with the wrong side.
Im going to take a closer look at Ron Paul.
Absolutely, the Albanians already started invading Macedonia.
If the Albanians are able to steal Kosovo, then Macedonia is a goner -- as is Southern Montenegro, Presevo Valley in Serbia (next to Kosovo), and Northern Greece.
When that happens, all the Muslims in the Balkans will be linked from Bosnia in the North down to Northern Greece in the South, from the Adriatic on the West through Macedonia to Bulgaria on the East. And Europe & the USA will have successfully screwed ourselves!
Check out the Albanian Civic League's map
Albanians regard all of this as "theirs".
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