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All brasscheck.com dispatches on the US-led
attack on Yugoslavia are available, complete
with index, at http://www.brasscheck.com/yugoslavia
Please inform your friends, colleagues, and 
others who you think might care.
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May 17, 1999

Three numbers we rarely hear mentioned:

* Number of Serbs killed in concentration
camps by Nazi-allied Croatians during WW II: 
Over 1,000,000
* Total number of people, including KLA
and KLA supporters, killed in military
actions during the Kosovo civil war in the 
year preceding the US-lead NATO invasion: 
2,000 (US State Department)
* Number of civilians killed by NATO bombing
since March 24, 1999: 
1,000 (approximate) and growing. See: 
http://www.counterpunch.org/bodycount.html
for casualty list

=====================================================

But we'll probably find some *some* day...

The utter lack of hard evidence of Yugoslavian
government sponsored atrocties - which is not
the same as saying there have been none - 
was finally acknowledged Sunday NATO Secretary-General 
Javier Solana.

(Reuters) "NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said Sunday he
expected to learn ``dramatic facts'' surrounding alleged 
atrocities in Kosovo once international troops had escorted 
refugees home."

How do you like the spin on that? Didn't we start this 
noble war to stop known atrocities? Now we have to wait until 
after the war to find out *if* there were any? This is NATO
speaking now, not the German Foreign Affairs Office,
or Sentar Inhofe, or Regis Debray, or "Serb propaganda."

Currently, there's only one source of atrocity in Yugoslavia
that is beyond question:

(AP) ``There have been perhaps hundreds of innocent casualties as 
a result of NATO action,''  (US) Albright and Cook wrote. ``We 
deeply regret that. ... But in a conflict as intense as this, it 
is impossible to eliminate such casualties.''

Yugoslavian government spokesmen are claiming, credibly I think,
that NATO  bombing is making their further withdrawl from Kosovo 
impossible. And now the *second* convoy of Albanians attempting to
return to their homes in Kosovo has been attacked by NATO planes.

In the second, most recent case, Korisa village, in which 
over 80 refugees were killed, NATO first publicly cast doubt 
on the story by suggesting the deaths were caused by
Serb artilery: "``I would urge all of you to treat with 
the most  high degree of skepticism possible reporting by Serb 
television in general and with specific reference to this 
incident,'' the State Department's James Rubin told reporters." 

When a French journalist found evidence of the remains
of NATO weaponry on the scene, NATO then admitted to the 
bombing, but declared that the 500 refugees and their farm 
equipment was within a "legitimate target" area.

(Acording to this logic, NATO's strategy now includes 
bombing areas that they say the Yugoslavs are shelling
and the Yugoslavs are shelling their own positions.) 

Now, after a day of aggressive spin doctoring, Secretary 
of State Cohen had this to say about the matter on
a General Electric-owned Sunday news program:

``For the Serbs to lament publicly about the deaths of 
these refugees is almost tantamount to Adolf Eichmann 
complaining about Allied forces bombing the crematoriums,'' 
he said.

However, like Mr. Cohen, NATO Secretary-General 
Javier Solana, has no evidence of Yugoslavian government
atrocities to offer either.

Let's look at this: Lacking *any* evidence, Cohen, a chief
spokesman for the US, is perfectly comfortable - in order
to justify killing civilians - to equate the children and 
grandchildren of Nazi-Croat death camp victims with the 
very same people who arranged for their murder. 

How much lower can the individuals responsible for
this war sink? 

=====

On the still-grounded Apache attack helicopters: 
24 were sent over. 2 have already crashed in training. 

The mountains of Yugoslavia are not the easy sand flats 
of Iraq. And the Yugoslavian army - the grandsons
of the farmers who bloodied Hitler's armies - will 
probably make short work of any that don't crash of 
their own accord. It's too embarrassing for the 
Pentagon and their vendors (GE makes the Apache's
engine) to admit that the billions of dollars spent
building these things produced a weapon that can only shoot 
at undefended Iraqi positions and conduct urban warfare 
exercises in US cities. So they sit in Albania until "the
time is right."

May that time never come. 

=====

INSTANT REPLAY

March 13, 1999: "No doubt we'll soon be shown a 
pseudo-technical explanatory diagram in the New York 
Times that "explains everything" (about the Chinese
Embassy bombing.) - Brasscheck

> You can see it on page 6 of the "Week in Review"
section of the Sunday New York Times, March 16, 
1999. It explained nothing.