The Serbs and Yugoslavia: Betrayed again and again

Kathimerini
12 April 2006

In response to "President blasts Balkan failings," (12 April), President Papoulias "warned that multiculturalism had not yet taken root in the Balkans
and that the problem of nationalism would have to be overcome to ensure a brighter future for the region."
Before U.S. intervention, Yugoslavia was exactly a multicultural, multiethnic, and multireligious state. Although there are several reasons for the breakup of Yugoslavia sought primarily by the United States, one of the main reasons was because President Clinton wanted to appease the Islamic world for our daily bombing of Iraq even if it meant destroying the Christian Serbs. Furthermore, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty) needed a new mission since the Soviet Union no longer existed. Without a new mission, NATO would have ceased to exist, and what better place than Yugoslavia to drop their bombs for 68 unmerciful days on innocent Serbs?
I attended one of the demonstrations during the bombing of Yugoslavia in Washington, D.C., and I have to say that I was never more proud of being an American of Greek descent than when I saw the Greek flag, with its Cross, its beautiful blue and white colors, fluttering in the breeze.

Stella L. Jatras
Camp Hill, PA
USA

"The core of the problem is that the Balkans are still treated as a sphere of influence"
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100006_12/04/2006_68550
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http://expatriatedamerican.com/2006/04/12/the-serbs-and-yugoslavia-betrayed-again-and-again.aspx

Exaptriated American

Personal reflections of a man without a country...
"I love America; but the America in which I believe
doesn't exist anymore."



The Serbs and Yugoslavia: Betrayed again and again

This entry was posted on Wed, 12 Apr 2006 10:57:00 GMT and is filed under religion,Terrorism,Foreign Policy,ISLAM.

When I moved to Montenegro I had the same impression of the situation in former Yugoslavia as most Americans:  that the Serbs were monsters who subjugated the other nationalities in Yugoslavia.  I learned the truth first hand.

Like many views created and fostered by the media, this one was a lie. 

This hateful view of the Serbs was a huge lie propounded by the EU as a weapon to destroy Yugoslavia!  Why? Because Yugoslavia was the only state that could have successfully stood outside it in Europe.  To accomplish this, the EU supported thugs in Bosnia and Croatia who were as bad or worse than Serbia's Milosevic.

Worst of all the US participated in the bloody dismembering of Yugoslavia by contributing the bulk of the NATO troops who fought an aggressive war against a sovereign nation in violation of NATO's defense-only charter.  The same United States which worries about fighting Muslims during Ramadan had no compunctions whatsoever about bombing Orthodox Christians on Easter.

The simple truth is that the US, NATO and the EU intervened on the side of the Muslims in Yugoslavia because they were pandering to the oil-rich Arab states.

Here are some facts that Americans need to know:

+      during World War II, the Allies betrayed the King of Yugoslavia in exile in London and supported Tito and his communists over General Mikhailovic and the royalist forces;

+      the "westernized" Croats established a fascist puppet state headed by a wacko who murdered Jews and Serbs and forced Serbs to convert to Catholicism at gunpoint (as opposed to the Serbs who have no record of anti-Semitism);

+      Kosovo is the heart of Serbia-the Muslim Albanians were brought in by Tito and the Communists in an effort to "divide and conquer" the royalist Serbs;

+      the only sin of the Bosnian Serbs was that they wanted to stay united with their fellow Serbs, rather than forced into a state of permanent subjection to the Bosniak Muslims back by NATO guns;

+      the EU, NATO and the US have promoted self-determination for the Slovenians, the Croatians and the Bosniaks, but not for the Bosnian Serbs;

+      before the Dayton Peace Accords, the Bosnian Serbs controlled 75% of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in a huge sacrifice for peace, they willingly cut that back to 49%;

+      since the peace accords and under the NATO occupation, tens of millions of dollars of international aid has been poured into the Muslim side of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and almost nothing has found its way to the Serb side;

+      since the NATO occupation, the allies have been teaching the Serbs "democracy" by disallowing a majority of the officials they elect because those officials want union with Serbia.

Let me make one more point about Kosovo.  Kosovo Polje (field) is to Serbs what the Alamo is to Texans-the place of a great defeat which led directly to their independent nationhood.  I wonder if Texans would be willing to let a majority of Mexicans voted San Antonio back to Mexico?

The death of Slobodan Milosevic was a renewed opportunity to trash the Serbs. 

The simple response is this:

+      the Serbs are not perfect;

+      there were certainly atrocities; any perpetrated by Serbs were done in the heat of anger and in retaliation for atrocities visited upon them by the Muslims;

+      the Serb Orthodox Patriarch has forbidden the attack on the religious institutions of any other group and has insisted "we only protect our own";

+      Christians are being persecuted today in Muslim controlled Kosovo and Bosnia and this will only get worse if Kosovo is granted independence.

Who gains from this misdirected US policy?  What strategic interest does the US have?

The Serbs are being offered to the Muslims by the NATO as a sacrifice to keep the oil flowing.  One cannot help but wonder who they will sell out next-I certainly hope it is someone more deserving France or Germany.




 

Reflections on Milosevic

Milosevic's death & Carla's coiffure
Sent to BBC "News":

I filmed the Old City of Dubrovnik on 25 March 1992, 3 months after the total destruction. The roof tiles were old, the graffiti read "lynch the Serbs" [srbe na vrbe]... Columns of black smoke are -- ask any fireman -- from burning petroleum, outside the walls...
The synagogue was whole, but a Croat had taken a chunk out of the "Jewish Street" marble plaque with a pistol shot. The only gutted building was one marked with a sign in English -- "ICONS" and, in Serbian Cyrillic "IKONE". In autumn 1991 Croat gunners were firing from hotels full of refugees.Tito had built the hotels for dual purpose: tourism and defence. On 1 October 1992 a flood of 7000 Croats, who feared the fascist rebirth, and 3000 Serbs fled Dubrovnik. The first deaths were Serbs. A resident told me his neighbor's car had been set alight.Neighbors -- Croats and Serbs and others -- tried to extinguish the blaze. I asked why the attack: "because he's Serb; I'm not;I'm a Muslim."  British Honorary Consul Sarah Crowgey Marojica starred (Nov 1991) in a kitschy (but proze winning) docu-drama with ITN's Paul Davies. Remember ITN of the kinny guy hoax at Trnopoljse "Death Camp"? --Sighed Sally: "Like the Blitz, isn't it?". -- So, from Act I Britain's consul was in on the break-up of Yugoslavia. -- On 6, 9 and 10 February I spent hours with Slobodan Milosevic, preparing my testimony, not buried along with him. He was not suicidal, but confident of trumping amblance chaser Geoffrey Nice..  Milosevic complained that the "court" was accusing him of  (pick one) not taking his hypertension medication or (2)smuggling in a medication for TB and leprosy, which neutralized the blood pressure medicine. The guards at Scheveningen must be careless. --Milosevic was confident of refuting the ICTY "court". I dare you to put the Hague Show on the BBC telly. Let the public judge the judges and the "journalists"...
The Serb atrocity stories are as fake as WMDs, incubator babies, Tonkin Gulf, or the 2 SAS men caught in Basra in a van packed with bombs and timers (wearing Arab garb). Or Carla's blonde mop.

John Peter Maher


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http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=656

Balkanalysis

Reflections on Milosevic

Date: Friday, April 14 @ 01:00:00 EST
Topic: Other Balkans Articles


By David Binder

No Serbian leader had such renown since the time of Prince Lazar and Tsar Dusan. No Yugoslav except Tito had such international recognition. One must concede that to Slobodan Milosevic and, at the end of his days he appeared to relish that prominence immensely - the sole reminder of his years in power over the shredded country he left behind.

But keep in mind, his notoriety was manufactured largely outside of Serbia, outside of the larger Yugoslav frame, by adversaries who became enemies slavering over his final defeats and rejoicing in his incarceration.

"Butcher of the Balkans!" (who was it that coined that ludicrous epithet reminiscent of World War I or World War II propaganda?) "He was a monster!" trumpeted Richard Holbrooke adding, "Sometimes monsters make the biggest impact on history. Hitler, Stalin. And such is the case with this gentleman."

Note the sly addition of "this gentleman" - because Holbrooke, the failed diplomat, had not merely shaken the putatively bloody hand of the monster, he had also smoked fine cigars and drunk excellent whisky with him, again and again.

Wesley Clark, the failed general - the U.S. Army retired him after his troubled stint as NATO commander - faintly echoed Holbrooke calling Milosevic a "petty Hitler."

Why such preposterous exaggeration? Because it provided a venomous rationale justifying the United States and its allies to subject Milosevic's Serbia first to severe sanctions and then to bombs, rockets and uranium-laced munitions. Of parallel importance, it elevated Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton, the Holbrookes and the Clarks to the status of giant-killers.

No wonder that the Hague Tribunal's chief prosecutor bemoaned the death of Milosevic. Without such a star-quality defendant in her dock, Carla del Ponte would have a hard time generating attention and publicity for what for many if not most has become a tiresome expenditure of resources and time. Amid the Milosevic post-mortem frenzy and with the logic of a Hollywood producer, she told anyone who would listen that it was now more important than ever to bring the fugitive General Ratko Mladic and his political collaborator Radovan Karadzic to trial.

The first time I reported about Milosevic was in autumn 1987 when he politicked his way to the top of the Serbian Communist party and began to manipulate the media through his adjutants. A Belgrade colleague told me how Milosevic had brutally threatened Azem Vlasi, the Kosovo leader, using vulgarities about the Albanian's mother. Vlasi replied: "I do not say that about your mother, but I do not forget what you said about my mother." As soon as he could Milosevic had Vlasi, the one Albanian who might have preserved Kosovo for Yugoslavia, thrown in jail.

In 1988 I sought an interview with Milosevic. I got only as far as Mihailo Crnobrnja, at the time his adviser on economic policy, who said he had a strong impression Milosevic was striving to assume the mantle of Tito. "That is his ambition," Crnobrnja emphasized.

In following years I asked six times for an interview with Milosevic. He never replied. The only time I encountered him was in January 1993 when I followed Cyrus Vance, the international mediator, to the Federal Executive Building in New Belgrade. Milosevic shook hands with us journalists, but he declined to answer questions.

Another snapshot from 1993: I was strolling on a Washington street with P.J. Nichols, a State Department Yugoslavia specialist and one of the principal architects of the punishing economic sanctions instituted against Serbia. We talked about the Yugoslav wars.

All at once, his eyes glistening with missionary zeal, Nichols put a hand on my elbow and declared: "I have a vision! A vision of a worker from Rakovica, who grabs a pistol and goes up and shoots Milosevic!" I shook my head: "You've got that wrong, P.J. The workers in Rakovica are some of Milosevic's strongest supporters!"

Now in looking back on the astounding career of a provincial politician who now ranks as one of the 20th century's leading villains, I remind myself of what he was and what he wasn't.

Milosevic did conduct himself as a petty despot.

His actions turned Serbia into a kind of prison.

By action here and inaction there he fostered massive corruption at the state level and below, some of which is still flourishing.

He also left Serbia behind in a condition of economic and political weakness unmatched since the Ottoman conquest and occupation.

But he did not himself start four Balkan wars.

He did not strive for a "Greater Serbia."

He did not play a part in the massacres around Srebrenica.

He did not mastermind the expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo.

Nor could the Hague prosecution, with all the time and all the resources at its disposal, have proven any of those charges.

So what will the judgment of history be on Slobodan Milosevic?

It took Sidney B. Fay, an American historian, a decade after the end of World War I to demonstrate exhaustively and definitively that Germany did not by itself precipitate World War I, with his The Origins of The World War. But that was much too late to prevent crippling reparations and other punitive actions by the victorious entente powers, or their deadly impact on postwar German politics.

But I suspect it will take historians much, much longer to redress the current one-sided version of the true causes of the wars of Yugoslavia and the real nature of Slobodan Milosevic's part in them.

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David Binder (born 1931) was a correspondent for The New York Times from 1961 until 2004. He specialized in coverage of central and eastern Europe, based in Berlin, Belgrade and Bonn. The current piece was published in Belgrade's Politika  on March 22, 2006.

Requiem For Milosevic

http://www.coastalpost.com/06/04/24.html

 

Coastal Post Online

 

April, 2006

 

Requiem For Milosevic
By Edward W. Miller

 

"I'll be the judge and I'll be the jury," said cunning old Fury. "I'll try the whole case and condemn you to death." (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) Lewis Carroll, 1865

"Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it... I am truly convinced that... Socialism ... being a progressive and just democratic society, should not allow people to be divided in the national and religious respect." (Milosovic speech made in Kosovo in 1989)

On March 13th, 2006 ( NY Times) Slobovan Milosevic was found dead in his prison cell in the Hague. After suffering during his four years in prison from high blood pressure, Milosevic had recently asked the Court's permission to seek medical treatment in Moscow where his son and wife were living.. She had been facing possible indictment by the Serbian government. The Hague Court's Chief Justice declined Milosevic's request. An autopsy performed in the Netherlands determined his death to be from coronary disease though some had accused the authorities of murdering him.
Milosevic's body was flown from the Netherlands to Belgrade, where, as Daniel Williams noted : (Washington Post 16 Mar) "The trip into the city of his flag-draped coffin provided signs that Milosevic still inspires some measure of adulation. Several hundred mourners lined part of the road and tossed carnations at the hearse. When the vehicle reached the St. Sava Hospital morgue, supporters waved the red flags of his political party, some clutching photos of the former leader." His coffin was placed inside Belgrade's Museum of the Revolution for two days of public viewing, where on March 18 well over 50,000 Serbs massed on the central square here ...in the public wake, representing, in this nation's deep divide, either his final victory or one last embarrassment for Serbia at his hands. (New York Times, Mar 19) The following day he was buried at his own residential compound in Pozarevac, his home town 50 miles east of Belgrade. The government rejected burial in a section of Belgrade's central cemetery called the Lane of the Greats.

Just as Gaius Julius Caesar, Rome's general during her Gallic wars, paraded the captured Versingetorix, brave leader of the revolting Gauls, in chains before the Roman populace before executing him in 45 BC, just so, Clinton and our Western media paraded Milosevic, as the Serb's criminal, before a misinformed public before he was murdered in the Hague prison. A routine coronary bypass, easily available in Moscow might have added years to the life of this man who died at age 62. To many of his countrymen, Milosevic was a hero, a tough politician who fought a defensive battle against those Western countries which had been tearing apart his beloved Yugoslav Federation for their colonial economic gain.

Twice elected president of the Serbian Republics, and once President of Yugoslavia, Milosevic during his last years in office was increasingly demonized by Western media while he resisted the dismemberment of his Yugoslavia, the only country in Europe which would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector economy. A campaign of disinformation and villification provided the media cover under which NATO politically and militarily destroyed the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia and then decimated the Kosovo, a Yugoslav economy, leaving millions homeless, cities in ruins, factories and refineries smoking environmental hazards and highways and rivers (the Danube) obstructed and useless. The 78 days of intense NATO bombing, in 1999 destroyed Serbia's economic infrastructure, laying bare its remaining government-owned and private businesses to the predatory jackals of international commerce to seize at rock-bottom prices. The Western-controlled election which followed the military devastation left Milosevic only marginally defeated but a run-off election, demanded by Yugoslavia's Constitutional Court never took place. It was canceled by NATO.

Much of the intrigue associated with the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation was hidden from the public, however, Jared Israel and other investigative political writers from the USA, Canada and the Netherlands (see http://emperors-clothes.com) had earlier reported that Senator Biden, with Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gebard, confirmed during the July 1999 Senate hearings on Yugoslavia, that: "The US pays and controls the so-called 'independent democratic' opposition."... "In the two years leading up to the Kosovo crisis, we spent $16.5 million in support of Serbian democratization... Gebhard's millions had "funded or even created political parties, radio stations, even trade unions." The Senate had previously voted $105 million to the Yugoslav opposition. Jared, et al, noted: "If any hostile foreign power did that in the USA, their local agents would be thrown in jail."

Clinton's top advisor also testified that the US distributed money in Yugoslavia via the National Endowment for Democracy, which calls itself "non-governmental" but is actually funded by Congress, and does openly what our CIA does under cover, recruiting peace and democracy activists, and "independent economists." During those Senate hearings, Senator Biden said: "... We are kicking the living hell out of Milosevic. There ain't no alternative left... My dream is to visit Milosevic in prison."

Jared's investigative group added: "These (Serbian) people were wined and dined and paid well. With fellowships, scholarships, and internships, they were made to feel they were tomorrow's leaders

in the American Empire."
Recruited reporters were overnight transformed into "independent journalists" who took over newspapers, radio, TV stations, and TV shows. Small underground print shops and distribution networks were set up. The international financier and crook, George Soros, using his Open Society Institute, had spent millions, both working with the CIA and funding "independent" media and other organizations in Yugoslavia. Almost a year before the Serbian election, leaders of OTPOR, a US-funded student resistance movement, attended a seminar on "Non-Violent Resistance" at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest, Hungary, some 12 miles across the border from Serbia where, American pollster Doug Schoen briefed the students on strategies for toppling Milosevic and in the months following, US-funded consultants "played a crucial role in virtually every facet of the anti-Milosevic drive, running tracking polls, and training thousands of opposition activists."

US taxpayers paid for 5000 cans of spray paint to scrawl anti-Milosevic slogans across Serbia, and 2.5 million paper stickers to paste on walls across the country, with the slogan: "GOTOV JE" (he's finished) and a clenched fist. Over three tons of these stickers were plastered across Serbia. As one, Serbian pollster noted: "The brand to sell was Kostunica. The brand to beat was Milosevic." Retired US Army colonel Robert Helvey briefed OTPOR students on non-violent civilian actions, organizing strikes, communication, undermining a regime's authority and overcoming personal fears. Eventually, OTPOR trained over 70,000 "activists."

Had Yugoslavia been a totalitarian state, the US strategy would not have worked, but Milosevic's free society gave western backers their all-important opening.

Before the NATO bombing, Yugoslavia had 101 radio and TV stations, most independent. Belgrade alone had 14 daily newspapers. Even rival Albanian groups sold opposition papers on Belgrade streets On voting day, polling places across Yugoslavia were monitored not only by foreign experts, but by student activists trained by OTPOR. The media declared Kostonika "winner" by a slender margin, and thousands of demonstrators surged through the streets of Belgrade.

However, when Belgrade's Constitutional Court ordered a run-off election, the Western powers, using OTPOR and trained activists brought to Belgrade by the DOS party, created riots, protesting any run-off. Police fired tear-gas as the crowd stormed the federal parliament, smashing windows and destroying files and computers, and setting fire to office equipment, even destroying that Serbian Television station RTS previously bombed by NATO.

NATO then declared Kostonika "winner" and canceled the runoff election." US-trained activists carried out a three-day reign of terror against Milosevic's Socialist (SPS) Party. Members were threatened and physically beaten, SPS offices broken into and destroyed across Serbia, and SPS-radio and TV stations were seized. Thus the US and Germany, supported by other NATO countries, first subjected democratic-socialist Yugoslavia, to 78 days of fierce NATO bombing, and then politically seized power in a carefully rigged election.

In the midst of this NATO savagery, on October 2nd, 2000 Milosevic via the media addressed his people in an effort to outline for them the West's subversive campaign to destroy his country. Exerpts are as follows:

"Honored citizens.. I'd like to explain my views on the political situation in our country... As you know, efforts have been underway for a whole decade to put the whole Balkan Peninsula under the control of certain Western powers. A part of the job was accomplished by establishing puppet governments in some countries... transforming them into countries with limited sovereignty or no sovereignty at all. Because we resisted, we have been subjected to all the pressures that can be applied to people in today's world... There has been a group amongst us which, under the guise of being pro-democratic, has in fact represented the interests of the governments attacking Yugoslavia. The group calls itself the "Democratic Opposition of Serbia" (DOS)... represents the armies and governments which recently waged war against Yugoslavia... With the establishment of an administration... installed by NATO, Yugoslavia would be quickly dismembered...

All governments controlled by foreign powers speedily become impoverished in a way that destroys all hope... a great division into a poor majority and a rich minority... national humiliation, state fragmentation and social misery... lead to forms of social pathology... crime would be the first. One of the obvious consequences of takeover is the loss of national identity... the greatest defeat a nation can know... The leaders of this (DOS) are trying to stop production, all work, all activity. Using money that is being shipped into the country, they are bribing some, blackmailing or harassing others, organizing strikes, unrest and violence. I consider it my duty to warn the citizens of our country about the consequences of the activities financed and supported by NATO."

While our media was hiding from Americans their government's pre-emptive campaign to destroy the Yugoslav Federation and criminalize its leaders, a few investigative journalists reported Washington's activity in detail.

Writer Michael Parenti (www.tenc.net 05/22/2000 ) wrote: "For the better part of a decade, the US public has been bombarded with a media campaign to demonize the Serbian people and their elected leaders. During that time, the US government has pursued a goal of breaking up Yugoslavia into a cluster of small, weak, dependent, free-market principalities. Yugoslavia was the only country in Europe that would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector economy... it still is charting a course not in keeping with the New World Order. "

From the Jordan Times (12/04/2000) Alexander Schlevogt reported: "The war over Yugoslavia was fought not only inside the country, but also on a global front, through the international public opinion... the strategy proved successful. During the whole string of events that lead to the toppling of the legitimate president, America used its flagship propaganda mouthpiece, CNN, to broadcast manipulated information to a global audience. In addition, television stations together with American coercion, most governments and people spoke with the same voice (and picture)... CNN manufactured and told a one-sided propaganda tale... conveying the impression that the whole people in Yugoslavia not only opposed the president, but deeply despised him." The whole intent behind Washington's ten-year Balkan adventurism had been to first disassemble that Federation of Yugoslavian States (structured by Tito toward the end of WWII ..), and then present these small once-socialist countries on the silver-platter of "democratization" to feed the rapacious appetites of international business, the IMF and the World Bank."

The process had its beginnings shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 when political groups in both Washington and Berlin visualized the Balkan States as potential targets for first, military, and then economic exploitation. At Berlin's Brandenberg Gate on October 12, 1994, President Clinton referred to Germany's then-Chancellor, Helmut Kohl as "my principal partner in Europe." To create military backing for this colonization of the Balkans,

Clinton peddled that straw tiger, NATO across Europe to the border of Russian, while the arms industry lobbied our Senate for NATO expansion. Giant Lockheed-Martin in 1996 offered a $2.3 million campaign fund contribution. Meanwhile, arms manufacturers, Saab/British Aerospace, Boeing/McDonnell

Douglas, and others, envisioning a central European arms market, spent millions on "voter education" in the projected NATO countries, thus violating local media laws regarding foreign contributions (The Nation, March 16, 1998). Early in 1998, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 16/2 to extend NATO membership to Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, followed by Senate approval in April of that year.

With minimal media coverage in the US, the Balkan countries were violently separated from one another as the West employed nationalist Trudjman in Croatia and Izetbegovic in Bosnia-Hertzegovinia to assist in "ethnic cleansing" of their Serb populations. Over 350,000 Serbian farmers were killed or expelled from their farms in eastern Croatia alone. Our CIA offered arms and military assistance (air cover), and dismantled the Serbian military and police communications systems, while stirring up anti Serb feelings in both countries.

Protestant Germany, along with the Vatican, had secretly armed the Roman Catholic Croats, while working politically to separate, first Slovenia and then Croatia from the Yugoslav Federation. Our media constantly demonized Slobodan Milosevic, as he tried in vain both to protect his Serbs and hold his Yugoslav Federation together.

In Bosnia-Herzegovenia, our CIA even brought in thousands of its old Muslim mujahedin fighters from Afghanistan to help drive the Serbs out of their homes. Both the US and Germany using the UN and NATO, as well as compliant members of the EU to shield their activities, secretly supported ethnic cleansing of the Serbs from these states while both demonizing Milosevic and reporting Serb efforts to defend their lives and homes as "Serbian Terrorism."

CNN and other media reported Bosnia Serbs "raped anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 Muslim women." Michael Parenti noted the Helsinki Watch could find no credible supporting evidence of these "atrocities."

As NATO bombs rained down on Yugoslavia and Kosovo, the anti-Milosevic and anti-Serb media campaign expanded exponentially. In the now infamous Racak incident, our ex-El Salvador ambassador William Walker, escorted foreign reporters to the "execution massacre of 45 Kosovo Albanians in a mass grave." However, foreign forensic experts brought in at Serb request discovered the bodies had been assembled at the "grave" from some distance, that rifle shell casings were missing and only one body had been shot in the head. European news reported these victims as killed in the crossfire actually filmed earlier by an Associated Press TV crew. So much for CNN.

The anti-Milosevic campaign continued up to his death. The US with NATO assistance had set up a pseudo "International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia" to indict Serbs accused of crimes genocide. Milosevic was the NATO target.

As Black and writer Edward S. Herman pointed out: " On May 27, 1993 in the midst of the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia, the US "International Criminal Tribunal's chief prosecutor, Louise Arbour, announced the indictment of Serb president Slobovan Milosevic and four associates for war crimes, as a "public relations coup to justify the NATO policies and help permit the bombing to continue." This pseudo International Tribunal was set up by the UN Security Council in the early 1990s "to serve the Balkan policy ends of its dominant members, especially the United States." ("Z" Magazine Feb. 2000) Toronto lawyer Christopher Black, specialist in International Law, stated this court in the Hague was illegal, and was instigated and funded by private US corporations and NATO. Black said that though the UN Security Council tried to legitimize it, the Council lacked the credentials to do so, since International Tribunals, could, under the UN Charter, only be established by the UN General Assembly, not the Security Council. The Hague, court's chief prosecutor, Carla D el Ponte, in an interview on 12 March 2006, in the Italian newspaper La Republica said: "Perhaps he did commit suicide. He could have done it as a last act of defiance towards us."

Manufacturing a crime to justify military intervention has become the custom in Washington. Noam Chomsky called it "the principle of retrospective justification," while political writer Diana Johnstone prefers "making the crime fit the punishment," saying, "In any case, the object is to present our military adventurism in such a way as to hide both intent and process, thus achieving tacit support from an uninformed public while avoiding such politically-embarrassing backlash as Washington suffered during the Viet Nam war. This smoke-and-mirrors approach to our little wars requires extensive planning." Johnstone* pointed out: "NATO's land is a gated community whose armed forces are being prepared to intervene worldwide, at the bidding of Washington, to defend members' interests..." adding: "Clinton has voiced a "new principle of international relations: the destruction or displacement of peoples within states can justify international intervention." Thus Washington excused NATO's brutal destruction of Yugoslavia and Kosovo as "humanitarian intervention."

Americans had hoped that destroying a people to save them from some politician or political system, the so-called My-lai syndrome had been buried with the Viet Nam war. Not so." (* see her book on the Balkan wars: FOOL'S CRUSADE)

In many ways, the Clinton -Kohl war against the Yugoslav Federation was a rehearsal for the Bush Jr. assaults on both Afghanistan and Iraq. Slobovan Milosevic was the Clinton-Kohl sacrificial victim, Saddam is Bush's.

Slobovan Milosevic, a talented businessman, lawyer and politician, during four years in the Hague Court defended himself and his socialist regime skillfully, frustrating both his prosecutors and the judge. He gave his life in defense of his people and their choice of the socialist form of democracy. He deserves our admiration. As for Americans, will we ever learn to recognize these fascist wars, designed by our military-industrial complex, and stop them in their tracks?