------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1998 From: Serbia [name withheld] Subject: Details of NATO planning !!! I am beside myself with a deep sorrow and strong feeling of anger,unable to do anything .The threats of Nato bombing represent the greatest danger that the Serbs have faced so far in this gruelling seven years. The incessant attacks are worse than ever ...I feel fatigue setting in. Many people I have spoken to are beside themselves,helpless and disappointed in the World ...It is evident to whoever wants to see the facts that the whole thing is a "deja vue'" of Markale market killings,that was confirmed by many as staged event by the Moslims ... The world leaders are talking about Nato bombs as if it is a war game taking place- the people are going to be killed ,the chances are that the depleated uranuium will be used again...and it is the whole tragedy again...Interestingly I have come across another news item: The Times 2nd October 1998 Turkey launches attack on Kurds Istanbul: Turkish troops backed by attack helicopters and F16s were reported to have embarked on a big offensive yesterday against the mountain strongholds of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Tunceli province (Andrew Finkel writes). The Turkish Army has claimed significant progress in curtailing the PKK's armed activities. About 5,000 troops were said to have been involved at the start of the latest offensive, suggesting a concerted attempt to disrupt the PKK's efforts to stockpile supplies before the winter snowfall. The Foreign Ministry gave no details of any casualties. The Kurdish situation so closely matches Kosovo in many ways but the response to the brutal Turkish offensives couldn't be more different.And it has been going on for years !!! I am sending you the detailed plan for the attack...How very tragic.How many are they going to kill this time ?And the whole world is watching and many are aplauding ??? What will happen with the people of Yugoslavia left without diffence ?Who is going to protect 11 million of them from the fascist neighbours (Croatia),from Moslims in Bosnia,from Albanians themselves that have the arms and money to fight them to the end??? The Times > October 2, 1998 > Nato to target radar defences > > By Michael Evans, Defence Editor > > NATO military planners have outlined a three-phase air campaign against > Serbian military targets in Kosovo and elsewhere in Yugoslavia, it > emerged yesterday as alliance ambassadors held another North Atlantic > Council meeting to prepare for possible action next week. > > The military has drawn up a comprehensive list of targets which are > expected to include air defence facilities, bases from which the Serbs > have launched attack helicopter raids on villages in Kosovo, logistics > depots, ammunition dumps and Yugoslav Army barracks. > > Although one concern has been to limit the risk of civilian casualties, > the third phase of the proposed air campaign would involve widespread > attacks throughout Yugoslavia. Nato officials emphasised yesterday that > all alliance members hoped that a phased air campaign would be > unnecesssary and that President Milosevic, the Yugoslav leader, would > order his troops to withdraw from Kosovo. > ---<snip>--- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [separate posting] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bob Djurdjevic TRUTH IN MEDIA Phoenix, Arizona e-mail: •••@••.••• KOSOVO: FRAMING THE SERBS, ACTS IV, V, VI AND COUNTING PERTH, Australia - No sooner had we sent out to you our report, "The Kosovo Conundrum: Preaching the Virtue Chastity While Chastising Virtue" (TiM GW Bulletin, 98/9-7, 9/30/98), things started heating up again in Kosovo. A group of black hooded alleged Serbs committed an alleged massacre of real Albanians in Drenica, Kosovo. If the event weren't so tragic, it would be boringly pathetic. For, the combination of the Muslim and western "black ops" types had similarly provided a "justification" for the genocidal U.N. sanctions against Serbia with the infamous "bread line" massacre in Sarajevo, Bosnia, in May 1992. And they had repeated their heinous "made for TV killings" of real human beings many times since, including those at the Sarajevo Markale market in February 1994 and again in August 1995. The latter gave NATO the pretext for bombing of the Bosnian Serbs into submission during September 1995 in the largest display of military might since the Gulf War. And now, here's what two TiM readers had to say about this "Serb massacre" WORKS: WHAT "SERB MASSACRES?" "Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues." - Thomas Hobbes; Leviathon; 1651 NEW YORK, Sept. 30 - Today at 2:30 EDT, I went out on a limb regarding massacres allegedly perpetrated by "Serbian" police and army troops against innocent villagers in the Drenica region over the weekend. There are at least two alleged massacres, one of which we have ample evidence of outrageous brutality against elderly, women, a pregnant woman, and children. In the other though, we only have 14 pools of blood and a bloody pitchfork, plus a body passing by on the way to a graveyard. We do not even know if the blood is human. In a dispatch from AP this morning, local UN-OSCE observers involved with western reporters in documenting the massacres called for more outside forensic experts and not for immediate punitive bombing. Here are important open questions: Witnesses allege the attackers wore both police and army uniforms and wore Balaclava helmets (knitted face-mask caps) to mask their identities. The police and army do not wear those, the KLA does, as do many guerrilla and terrorist forces, which also makes it possible that a local Serb gang wanted some revenge. Further, police and army infantry do not operate in commingled groups. Further, Yugoslav authorities have kept their forces under very tight discipline all year to prevent groups going off and randomly terrorizing, and those methods have worked. We also have had a couple of reports of KLA attempts to cobble up atrocities to blame, with pliant reporters involved, the Yugoslav forces. The dead Albanian women and children are described by surviving relatives as "neutrals" in the struggle, but the district is home to the most ruthless of KLA terrorists, including those who are sons and grandsons of WWII Albanian veterans of the notorious Nazi-SS Skanderbeg Division, which mostly chased Serbs out of their villages and skirmished with Serb Chetnik guerillas. In such desperate guerilla operations, where the insurgents are clearly losing, nobody handy-by is a neutral, and if the last resort is to stage an atrocity, the KLA is most likely to perpetrate such a fraud --if force won't work, try fraud. Remember that Hitler started WW II by dressing up some prisoners in Polish Army uniforms, then massacred them near a radio station just inside Germany's border. Oddly, the New York Times reporter on the beat, Jane Perlez, though highly experienced in other stories, is new to this one. Chris Hedges, who was candid in debunking some earlier allegations of Yugoslav atrocities, was relieved from the story, then replaced by Mike O'Connor, who started off buying everything an Albanian could tell him. In today's Internet wires no Serb sources are quoted on site, all the alleged witnesses are Albanian. That is not balanced journalism protecting itself from propaganda tricks. The reaction from the White House, the highly-partisan Bob Dole (long a beneficiary of Croat-fascist funds and Albanian activist money), and from the UN establishment has been very inflated and reeks of more "wag the dog." Herr Schroeder of Germany is mighty truculent as he seeks to consolidate his government. Meanwhile those international field observers want to check the facts fairly --but that part of the AP story disappeared from later editions on the Internet. Notwithstanding rhetoric from Kofi Annan, the White House and elsewhere, NATO is still planning and won't meet until next week; neither will Mr. Annan get to a decisive meeting at the UN Security Council much before troops are ready to act, and they haven't been mobilized to Italian bases yet. But this afternoon everybody is declaring emergency meetings or issuing stern warnings; NATO is designating air force units. So there is to be a lot more posturing, even action, before this crisis is passed. Important to me is that the US and NATO have 30,000 ground troops at some risk in Bosnia which might become targets for snipers if NATO does something precipitous. Their security has to be considered and bolstered before a prudent leader would take action. Also important is the ongoing governmental crisis and insurrection by KLA allies in Albania. I remain skeptical and that is why I went out on a limb on KNX news radio in Los Angeles today. I do not wish to see any massacres perpetrated by either side, but it simply does not make sense for Yugoslav police and army troops to commit a massacre at the moment of victory. But it makes all the sense in the world for the KLA to perpetrate a phony atrocity to pin on Yugoslavian government forces in order to trick us all into a wider Balkan war. It makes sense for Mr. Clinton to seize on this "crisis" to cover over his increasingly obvious failure to keep Saddam in line. It makes sense for Herr Schroeder to play at being tougher than Chancellor Kohl, as he takes over leadership of the EU's most important member. This is not good for national sovereignty and not good for America's troops. Even if this were a random massacre by out of control Yugoslav forces, we had our My Lai and precedents for outside interference in a domestic insurrection in Kosovo set precedents for interference in America's moments of inner city domestic unrest and other odd situations, such as Waco. Under UN treaty law, Yugoslavia has the first obligation to try its alleged war criminals; I would keep the pressure there, while assuring neutral forensic experts assist in the gathering of evidence. But then, I am not President of the United States or Secretary General of the UN, nor do I aspire to be "emperor of the world." --------------- Ben Works is a Vietnam veteran who served in aerial reconnaissance in 1969-70 in III-IV Corps with the 73rd Surveillance Aviation Company, 1st Aviation Brigade. A graduate of Yale (1974) with an MBA from Boston University (1981), he spent 16 years in international banking and on Wall Street, before serving as CBS Radio's principal radio network consultant during Operation Desert Storm, the Somali intervention of 1992-93 and other crises. ---------- VRANJICANIN: ANOTHER PREDICTABLE "INCIDENT" TUCSON - Not too long ago, I predicted an "incident" that will occur in Kosovo, one that will seemingly justify intervention, and the prophecy came through! Not because I am intrinsically prophetic but because history tends to repeat itself. Sadly enough, we find ourselves in a strange company, directly or indirectly (for instance, the U.S. and Iran both voted against establishing a permanent war crimes tribunal for fear that the U.S. might be indicted one day). This time, the parallel is with a tactic Hitler used to "justify" his invasion of Poland. The players have changed, but the principle is the same: create outrage and then let outrage, not reason, not national interests, guide your policies of lynch. Germany used its soldiers, dressed in Polish uniforms, to shoot and kill several German border guards. Consequently, "outraged" Hitler invaded Poland. And now we turn to Kosovo. Serbs just about mopped up all pockets of resistance of the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army, and announced that the hostilities are over. Then, when the Serbs would have the LEAST to gain by something like a massacre, lo and behold not one but two occur almost simultaneously. When the Serbs were under direct threat of NATO involvement in Bosnia, a mine (later determined to have come from Muslim positions) lands in a market place in Sarajevo and the blame automatically goes to Serbs who stood only to lose from such a useless attack. But, as was the case with Gorazde, the perception and propaganda effect are more important than the truth and although the truth eventually comes out, it is too late to change the damage done by well orchestrated lies and deceit (we see a lot of that going on in our Capital, don’t we?). So, now, we have witnesses who say that masked men in Serbian police and Yugoslav Army uniforms, shot some 18 civilians, including children to death, some of them had their throats cut, some of them were mutilated or decapitated. No one asks why? Who really stands to GAIN by such useless killing? Interestingly, the entire Kosovo campaign was not very costly in civilian causalities. The Serbs would notify the inhabitants of various villages harboring KLA terrorists that they have 24 hours to evacuate the settlement, and then they would level it with artillery. A scorch-earth tactic, no doubt, and certainly one that might have elements of "ethnic cleansing" in it, but the war was generally not aimed at civilians by either side (some 30-40 Serb civilians are said to have been massacred by Albanians and their foreign mercenaries and "mujahideens" from Islamic countries - but these atrocities received almost no coverage and caused no outrage in our Nation’s Capital). One thing that stands out as highly suspicious in this entire story of masked men is why would these people even bother wearing masks but not covering up their uniforms! I mean if you want to conceal your identity, you would do it from head to toe. But, to the gullible public who can be fed just about anything this Administration decides to serve, outrage has been a major propellant of American foreign policy. Never mind the long-term effects of such policies and the damage they will create for the American interests in the future in such regions as the Balkans. We have set the stage for new and bloodier conflicts in the region at another opportune moment. We have reopened the wounds that are partially responsible for the hatred there. All that with no or minimal strategic, or any other gain to U.S. interests. Bosnia has been an administrative failure from the start. Serbs already link western civilian and military governing of Bosnia to Nazi occupation. American intervention in Kosovo will forever seal the American interests in the region in a negative light, supported only by an active American military presence. Both regions will have to be governed by people like Carlos Westendorp or Jacques Klein, using tactics that smack of previous communist regime as well as Nazi occupation. Balkans is obviously a region where things are not only never forgotten but also never forgiven. In a fluid world of politics, a visionary long-term approach would be a wise thing to do. But, then wisdom has not been the hallmark of this Administration in my opinion. ---------- Mladen Vranjicanin is a former U.S. Navy officer who now lives in Tucson, Arizona. ------------ ---- Bob Djurdjevic TRUTH IN MEDIA Phoenix, Arizona e-mail: •••@••.••• Visit http://www.beograd.com/truth - the Truth in Media Web site for more articles on geopolitical affairs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ a political discussion forum - •••@••.••• To subscribe, send any message to •••@••.••• A public service of Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance (mailto:•••@••.••• http://cyberjournal.org) ---------------------------------------------------------- Non-commercial reposting is hereby approved, but please include the sig up through this paragraph and retain any internal credits and copyright notices. .--------------------------------------------------------- To see the index of the cj archives, send any message to: •••@••.••• To subscribe to our activists list, send any message to: •••@••.••• Help create the Movement for a Democratic Rensaissance ---------------------------------------------- crafted in Ireland by rkm ----------------------------------- A community will evolve only when the people control their means of communication. -- Frantz Fanon
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