Posted on 02/21/2008 11:04:42 AM PST by 11th_VA
BELGRADE, Serbia - Serb rioters broke into the U.S. Embassy Thursday and set fire to an office after a massive protest against Kosovo's independence that drew an estimated 150,000 people.
Masked attackers broke into the building, which has been closed this week, and tried to throw furniture from an office. A blaze broke out inside one of the offices and parts of the facade also caught fire.
Authorities drove armored jeeps down the street and fired tear gas to clear the crowd. The protesters dispersed into side streets where they continued clashing with authorities.
The neighboring Croatian Embassy also was attacked by the same group of protesters.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack strongly urged the Serbian government to protect the U.S. Embassy. He said the U.S. ambassador was at his home and was in contact with U.S. officials.
More than a dozen nations have recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence on Sunday, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany.
But the declaration by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership has been rejected by Serbia's government and the ethnic Serbians who populate northern Kosovo. Russia, China and numerous other nations have also condemned the declaration, saying it sets a precedent that separatist groups around the world will seek to emulate.
Kosovo, which is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, has not been under Belgrade's control since 1999, when NATO launched airstrikes to halt a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. A U.N. mission has governed Kosovo since, with more than 16,000 NATO troops and KFOR, a multiethnic force, policing the province.
But Serbia — and Kosovo's Serbs, who make up less than 10 percent of Kosovo's population — refuse to give up Kosovo, a territory considered the ancient cradle of Serbs' state and religion.
Earlier Thursday, police estimated that about 150,000 people had attended a rally in the Serbian capital. The crowd waved Serbian flags and carried signs reading "Stop USA terror." One group set fire to a red-and-black Albanian flag.
The U.S. embassy in Belgrade burns after masked attackers broke into the building and set an office on fire at the end of a massive protest against Western-backed Kosovo independence, in the Serbian capital, Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008. More than 150,000 Serbs gathered at the rally vowing to retake the territory which is viewed as Serbia's religious and national heartland. (AP Photo)
This thread has been all fire with little light this far. To comment any further, a few facts should apply:
1. How many Albanian Kosovars were expelled during the UN-Serbia war in comparison to the number of ethnic Serbs driven from Kosovo since?
2. How many ethnic Serbs have been killed in Kosovo since the UN took over in 1999?
3. How many Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries have been destroyed over the same period of time?
4. How many Jihadists have been trained in Kosovo during the same period?
The answers to the above should be informative. Anyone?
Do you think it is remotely possible that our leaders thought of this?
Ever read Tom Clancy? Our guys may not be Jack, John and Ding, but I strongly suspect they are not idiots.
When someone I KNOW knows more than I do does something that I think is really boneheaded, I have learned from experience that they were almost always acting on knowledge that, had I known it, would have caused the same decision by me.
What, our Gub’ment creating a muslim State out of thin air in someone elses counrty? It is the populace that is rioting not the Serb government, and you would likely too if they gave say Michigan to the mussies!
And you present no facts, source defending your position. The Serbs were animals in Bosnia. THAT IS A FACT! They were just about to do the same thing with Kosovo. THAT’S A FACT. What happened afterwards... I have no clue. Don’t get upset because I don’t go along with your agenda that Serbs are peachy keen people. They weren’t and you know it.
You again demonstrate the class for which you are justly famous, as well as providing more insight into the dark spaces of your own psyche.
I will again make the point you are too afraid to address directly:
Serbs burned a US embassy and the Serb government stands idly by.
Any American who approves such activity hates his own country.
One correction. The Serbs set up the state of Rashka in the sixth century in the area now known as Kosovo.
This is part of the NWO. Let the tolerant seperatists have their way. Making it acceptable for when the USA South West declares it's independence and aligment with Mexico-Aztlan. It's called conditioning.
I’m on the side that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I don’t like any of ‘em for that matter. They all hate each other and it should have been the Europeans’ problem. Not ours. How about them apples?
The idiot libs scream that Iraq was our worst foreign policy blunder. Way off mark. Clinton's disastrous Balkan adventure have caused us the worst post-cold war troubles.
We have NO business in the Balkans.We should militarily focus on the Middle East, secure Iraq and Afghanistan and fight Iran/Syria/Hezbollah/Hamas.
Mine too. :)
Nice dodge.
If Putin had any kind of balls his tanks would already be there
He has no ability to insert or support armor there and everone knows it.
That is exactly why he is not doing it.
So then why make up facts then if this is your position?
I call BS. The Serbs invaded Kosovo. Get your facts straight. We bombed Serbia to get them OUT of Kosovo.
Probably got a call from one of his Saudi Arab masters.
At this point? No, I think it's pretty clear that they have no freaking idea what they are doing. We fight a global war against terrorists on the one hand and give them whole new countries on the other.
The record shows... that Bush & Co. are a bunch of bumblers whose only solution to any problem is to throw immense amounts of taxpayer dollars at it. And that's the charitable interpretation.
How does one invade their own country? You're an idiot.
And you would be a liar just like the Clintons
“Remember why NATO spent 78-days bombing Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999?
There was the ethnic cleansing. The atrocities. The refugees chased out of Kosovo by the Serb army. The mass graves. The heaps of bodies tossed into vats of sulphuric acid at the Trepca mines.
NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said there were 100,000 Kosovars unaccounted for.
Remember?
If you’re like most people, you have at least a vague recollection of something that seemed to approach a modern-day Holocaust.
Problem is, none of it happened.”
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http://www.mediamonitors.net/gowans1.html
“
” The French newspaper La Monde had some trouble swallowing the story. It reported on Jan. 21, 1999, a few days after the incident, that an Associated Press TV crew had filmed a gun battle at Racak between Serb police and KLA guerillas. Indeed, the crew was present because the Serbs had tipped them off that they were going to enter the village to arrest a man accused of shooting a police officer. Also present were two teams of KVM monitors.
It seems unlikely that if you’re about to carry out a massacre that you would invite the press — and international observers — to watch.
The film showed that as soon as the Serbs entered Racak they came under heavy fire from KLA guerillas positioned in the surrounding hills. The idea that the police could dig a trench and then kill villagers at close range while under attack troubled La Monde. So too did the fact that, entering the village after the fire fight to assess the damage and interview the villagers, the KVM observers saw no sign of a massacre. What’s more, the villagers said nothing about a massacre either.
Yet, when Walker returned the next day with the press — at the KLA’s invitation — there was the trench with the bodies.
Could the police have returned later on and carried out the massacre under cover of darkness?
That seems unlikely. Racak is a KLA stronghold. Serb police had already discovered that if they were going to enter the village they would have to deal with the guerillas. How could they torture, mutilate and cold-bloodedly kill villagers at close range while harassed by KLA gunfire?
And why, wondered La Monde, were there few signs of spent cartridges and blood at the trench?
And now there’s a report that the Finnish forensic pathologists who investigated the incident on behalf of the European Union, say there was no evidence of a massacre. In an article to be published in Forensic Science International at the end of February, the Finnish team writes that none of the bodies were mutilated, there was no evidence of torture, and only one was shot at close range.
Thirty-seven of the corpses had gunpowder residue on their hands, suggesting that they had been using firearms, and only one of the corpses was a woman, and only one was under 15 years of age. Not the picture Clinton painted of innocent men, women and children, dragged from their homes, and sprayed with gunfire.”
Long read.
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