June 25, 1999

The war's results

The problem: A terrorist insurgency funded by drug money
created a heavy handed response from Yugoslavia's
central government

The US solution: Kill up to 2,000 civilians and injure thousands
more, create $30 billion+ in infrastructure damage, work
with and support the terrorists while driving all civil
authorities out of the province. Then insert a few thousand
foreign troops as "peacekeepers" and let the terrorists
run wild. Deduct the costs from the US Social Security fund.
Violate the War Powers Act. Declare a humanitarian
victory.

What follows are a few of the results of the US led assault
on Yugoslavia this spring. The New York Times and the AP are
now beginning to report the obvious after acting as cheerleaders
for the war.

My comments noted with *

KLA CHIEFS KILLING OFF THEIR RIVALS

By Chris Hedges
New York Times News Service
June 25, 1999

The senior commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army,
which has signed an agreement with NATO to disarm,
carried out assassinations, arrests and purges within
their ranks to thwart potential rivals, say current
and former commanders in the rebel army and some
Western diplomats.

The campaign, in which as many as a half-dozen top
rebel commanders were shot dead, was directed by Hashim
Thaci* and two of his lieutenants, Azem Syla and Xhavit
Haliti, these officials said. Thaci denied through a
spokesman that he was responsible for any killings.

* You mean that nice boy who appeared in the Times
a few days ago as a budding statesman? I'm sure the
shooting deaths of six of his rivals in the past
few days was a coincidence.

Although the United States has long been wary of the KLA,
the rebel group has become the main ethnic Albanian power
in Kosovo.

* Long been wary? Even the Times can't believe this.
And how did the KLA became the main power in Kosovo?
Could it be that bombing the civil authorities
and driving them out of the province had something
to do with it?

Rebel commanders supplied NATO with target information
during the bombing campaign.* Now, after the war, the
United States and other NATO powers have effectively made
partners of Thaci and the KLA in the rebuilding of Kosovo.
The agreement NATO signed with Thaci, for example, envisions
turning the KLA into a civilian police force and leaves
open the possibility that the KLA could become a provisional
army modeled on the National Guard in the United States.**

* I guess the US wasn't so wary after all.

** Sounds so wholesome, doesn't it? Too bad Norman Rockwell
isn't alive to paint black uniformed KLA police walking
down Main Street in Pristina.


WORLD WILL HAVE TO FEED KOSOVO

By Donna Bryson
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, June 24, 1999; 5:06 p.m. EDT

CERNUSA, Yugoslavia (AP)

The world will have to feed Kosovo this summer and
on into the winter, because the devastation and disruption
of war has made it impossible for its people to help
themselves...

The flights of people into the hills, firefights across
farmland and other disruptions* meant plantings were missed
or delayed. Babbitt's United States Agency for International
Development estimated in early June that there would be next
to no Kosovo wheat crop this year. The region harvests an
average of 300,000 tons of wheat in a normal year.

* Does random NATO bombing of everything but military targets
count as a disruption? Amazing the contortions the AP goes
through to avoid stating the obvious. I doubt even Pravda
under Stalin was any more dishonest in the service of
power.

World Food Program spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume said
Thursday that aerial surveys over the last week revealed
that only 30 percent of Kosovo's arable land had been planted.
It was too late in the year to plant any more, and at any rate
the threat of land mines* was keeping farmers out of their fields,
she said.

* And NATO cluster bombs which are by far the more serious problem

In Kosovo, 60 percent of the population depends on agriculture
for its living.*

* Another food self-sufficient region of the world destroyed by
American ingenuity. Add US agribusiness to the long list of
beneficiaries of the war.

- A few points about this AP article:

1) Apparently the "world food experts" never heard of a
thing called winter wheat which will be ready to harvest
this summer because it was planted in the fall - before
NATO went on its humanitarian rampage.
2) It is *not* too late to plant "any more" though it is
pretty late for spring wheat and other grain crops.
3) If 30% of the arable land was planted, how does that translate
into "next to no Kosovo wheat crop?"
4) It is not only the Kosovars who will face a food shortfall,
so will Yugoslavia and all the other countries which
depend on the region's surplus.
5) Sloppy reporting aside, the problem is serious and
it started, and could have been predicted, the day the first
bomb fell. Reporting it now as if it was just "discovered"
by aerial photos has to be some kind of sick joke.

The LA Times, one of the few US papers that made an
honest effort to report the facts of the conflict, ran
a story today with this headline which says it all:

Ethnic Cleaning: Part Two
http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/ASECTION/t000057036.html

It's about the widespread murders of Serbians, Gypsies,
other ethnic minorities, as well as "uncooperative Albanians"
in Kosovo by KLA members. The KLA always said it wanted an
ethnically pure state in Kosovo, and it looks like, thanks
to the Clinton Administration, they're going to get one,
not to mention a secure base from which to administer their
heroin trading enterprise, Europe's largest.

And the citizens of the United States paid for it while
their newspapers and TV news programs carefully tutored
them as to why this immoral, illegal, irrational slaughter
of innocents was all for a good cause.

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"Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker,
it breeds contempt of law; it invites every man to become a
law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the
administration of the criminal law, the end justifies the
means - to declare that the government may commit crimes
in order to secure the conviction of a private citizen - would
bring terrible retribution."

- Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, 1928