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I don't know whether Gen. Wesley Clark is qualified to be president, but Peter J. Boyer's profile in this week's New Yorker—which paints him as scarily unqualified—is an unfair portrait as well as a misleading, occasionally inaccurate précis of the 1999 Kosovo war and Clark's role in commanding it.Boyer relies heavily on some of Clark's fellow retired Army generals who clearly despise him. The gist of their critique, as Boyer summarizes, is that Clark, while a brilliant analyst, "had a certainty about the rightness of his views which led to conflicts with his colleagues and, sometimes, his superiors." I have...

The supposed “responsibility to protect” has taken America into a war on the side of the ultimate killers of innocents. (See also "Rebel Libya: ‘Brothers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, now is the time to defend your land!" on the Tatler.) In the absence of any evident national interest justification for bombing Libya, the Obama administration is said to have been motivated by the so-called responsibility to protect — or “R2P” per the wonkish English acronym. In American discussions, “R2P” has quickly come to be associated with Obama advisor Samantha Power. But “R2P” did not emerge full-grown from the...

A key witness in a war crimes case against a senior Kosovo figure has been found dead in Germany, the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo (EULEX) said Wednesday. "EULEX confirms that Agim Zogaj, known as witness X in the Klecka case, was found dead in a park in Germany," the mission's statement said. It added that the "German authorities are conducting the necessary investigation to determine the circumstances of his death." According to local media reports, Zogaj had agreed to testify in the case of Fatmir Limaj, one of the most prominent commanders of the ethnic Albanian guerrillas...

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90 percent of the public do not want us out right now. Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed...

PRISTINA, Kosovo -- Kosovo armed forces took over security duties on Wednesday, less than a year after the territory declared independence from Serbia, officials said. The Kosovo Protection Force replaces a 3,000-strong civilian emergency organization formed out of the disbanded ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army that fought Serbia in the 1998-99 war. New commander Lt. Gen. Sylejman Selimi, a former rebel fighter, said the 2,500 lightly armed troops would fulfill security duties in the fledgling nation, but would remain under the supervision of NATO's 15,000 peacekeepers in charge of overall security. It will be trained by British NATO officers, wear...

CAMDEN, N.J.—A man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to providing weapons to a group of men accused of plotting an attack on Fort Dix. Agron Abdullahu, 25, faces up to five years in federal prison when he is sentenced Feb. 6. Federal prosecutors have portrayed the New Jersey resident as having the smallest role among the six men arrested earlier this year in the case. The 27-year-old was born in what is now Kosovo and worked in a bakery.

Serbia has been betrayed by the world. From this day forward, all "nationhood" is liable. No nation is safe, no ethnicity is secure--except those being used to destroy others. Today, Sunday, February 17, 2008, the Albanian Mohammadans (Muslims) living in the Serbian province of Kosovo have declared themselves an independent nation. They have the full support of Europe and the United States. Only Russia opposes the move, based on some dim, past notion that Serbia is part of the once grand "Soviet Union." BadEagle.com has been a faithful supporter of Serbian nationhood and sovereignty. With numerous journal entries and many...

Dear Serbia Letter to a Friend…. By: Richard Byrne So you’re almost alone now. Like Garbo. Except for Kosovo. And Kosovo is leaving soon. I think you know that already. And when Kosovo leaves, you will be alone at last. Is this really what you wanted? And, if not, how did it happen? Why do all your neighbors look the other way now? The only group that really does want you is the European Union. It finds you geographically irresistible. And still you push the EU away. Why? Do you really prefer to flirt with Russia? I’m writing this letter...

After winning a delay in the diplomatic push to grant Kosovo independence from Serbia, Russia looks likely to win some major Serbian companies, too, sparking claims that the Balkan country is trading economic assets and influence for diplomatic support. Over the months to come, Serbia plans to privatize its state energy company, . . . Serbia's government recently decided to reopen a tender for the country's largest copper mine, RTB Bor, following lobbying from Russian metals tycoon Oleg Deripaska and President Vladimir Putin, according to people familiar with the matter.

First it came loudly and clearly through the State Department when on May 15 in Moscow, after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "Kosovo will never again be a part of Serbia." Then, in late May, George Bush himself came out in favor of the so-called Ahtisaari Plan for the Serbian province of Kosovo, named after its creator, Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland, by which that province is to gain independence under "international supervision," a view he has now restated at the G-8 Summit of the world's leading industrial states in Germany....

The effort by the US to cram an independent Kosovo down the throats of the EU and Russia, not to mention the victim of this international hi-jacking – Serbia - has almost run its intended course. First of all, we saw how prestigious US-influenced, or controlled, “think tanks” such as the International Crisis Group (ICG) and the Rand Corporation floated the veiled threat that the Kosovar Albanians would no longer accept UN supervision of their tiny impoverished province; that they would again take up arms to achieve their independence. By Wes Johnson Next, the UN was enlisted to seek a...

TRUTH in the David Hicks affair remains as elusive as ever after fresh allegations this week from inside the US military that the Guantanamo Bay commissions are so seriously flawed that a fair trial is impossible. The most damaging blows yet to the commissions -- still supported by the Howard Government -- came from three US Air Force prosecutors involved in the trials who have quit the investigation in protest. One, John Carr, said the process appeared to have been rigged and that the first four cases -- including Hicks -- had been been "handpicked" and would not be acquitted....

Belgrade, 2 July 06. (Tanjug) – The Coordination Center for Kosovo and Metohija announced that UNMIK Chief Soren Jesen-Petersen “leaving Kosovo in an armored vehicle”, showed that the international community did not fulfill its basic task for seven years, such as the creation of elementary security conditions of free living and freedom of movement. “Petersen’s earlier statement, stated that he is leaving Kosovo for private reasons. Before his departure he clearly stated slogans on behalf of Albanian lobbyists who use all means in the fight for independence of the Serbian southern province”, states the Center at the Sunday announcement. Coordination...

A visitor touches the monument to the Kosovo Albanian guerrillas killed during the 1998-99 war in Serbia's southern province, in the village of Morina, 50 kilometres (30 miles) northwest of the capital Pristina, June 20, 2006. The U.N. Security Council is due to hear the report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, on Tuesday, REUTERS/Hazir Reka

(Brussels, DTT-NET.COM)- A prestigious think-tank said that Kosovo’s independence must be imposed on Serbia, because of impossibility of reaching any agreement between Kosovan Ethnic Albanians and Serbian authorities on the future of UN administrated province. “To create a stable Kosovo, the international community must dare to impose independence rather than attempt finessing Pristina and Belgrade’s differences with an ambiguous and unstable settlement,“ International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report published on Friday. ICG says that agreement between all parties remains desirable in theory, “it is extremely unlikely that any Serbian government will voluntarily acquiesce to the kind of independence,...

he US yesterday made the case for offering Serbia incentives to reach agreement in negotiations over the final status of Kosovo, while setting out the possibility of independence for the province if the ethnic Albanian majority accepted compromises to accommodate its Serbian minority. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state, told a Senate hearing the US was neither championing independence nor autonomy for Kosovo. But diplomats said his testimony was a clear signal the US looked favourably on independence, under certain conditions. In what diplomats also called a significant policy statement, Mr Burns made clear the US had no objection to independence...

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Although I find in general most people, even many Serbs, accept the indictment of Milosevic as proof of his guilt, from time to time I check out the transcripts of his trial that are posted on my website. It usually seems to me that most of the judges in the case have generally favored the stories presented by the Muslims of Kosovo or Bosnia and have frequently cut Milosevic or his witnesses off in mid-sentence while the prosecution's case seems to get progressively untenable. In the past several weeks, beginning July 1, 2005, almost exactly four years into the Milosevic...

American forien policy

A controversial resolution on independence for Serbia's southern province of Kosovo has been withdrawn from the US Congress House International Relations Committee. The resolution had been proposed by Committee Chairman Henry Hyde and deputy Tom Lantosh. B92 learnt this morning from the office of the Serbian president that it was withdrawn after the State Department intervened.