To l'menexe

I understand your point, but let first of all not underestamate how powerfull the internet can be, and yes i think media should have made a bigger covorage about it.I can't speak about American media since i don't life there, but i do know that the Dutch media took some time to mention it.Although not enough in my opinion.
I still think as an alternative the internet is a start and can be a powerfull start as well.

For instance i knew about the demonstration in Italy also through the internet when it was happening, and was able to sign protests which i normaly could not have done.

Emina

U.S. taxpayers faced with mounting Kosovo war costs

SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
6/10/99 Lisa Hoffman

U.S. taxpayers faced with mounting Kosovo war costs
Not only does Operation Allied Force rank as the longest sustained U.S. combat operation since the Vietnam War, it also is
shaping up to be the most costly to American taxpayers in a quarter century.

While neither NATO nor the Pentagon has provided an accounting of the cost of the nearly 11 weeks of air strikes against
Yugoslav Serbian forces, outside analysts peg the U.S. government's price tag as approaching $3 billion. That amounts to
peanuts next to the cost of Operations Desert Shield and Storm against Iraq in 1990 and 1991, which reached more than $14
billion.

But because the Air Force was reimbursed more than $12 billion from grateful Persian Gulf nations, the actual out-of-pocket
bill was only a bit more than $2 billion.

Now that NATO is poised to end its air strikes and begin a peacekeeping ground operation in Kosovo, the ledger books will
begin to record an entirely new category of costs that could set the United States back an additional $3 billion during the first
year.

Also about to come to the fore is the extent of reconstruction in war-ravaged Kosovo, the Yugoslav province so devastated
that an estimated 80 percent of its homes and other structures have been destroyed.

Initial estimates by the European Union show that $30 billion will be required for rebuilding and providing food and medicine,
with the bulk of that going to Kosovo. A portion would be doled out in Albania and Macedonia -- Kosovo's Balkan neighbors
that have borne the burden of fleeing ethnic Albanian refugees.

At least 60 percent of that amount will be paid by the EU, with the rest coming from the International Monetary Fund, World
Bank and other such organizations. America is expected to pitch in as well, but because U.S. forces carried the load during the
air strikes, the U.S. tab will be relatively small, the White House says.

The EU has held out the carrot of reconstruction aid to Serbia as well, although European leaders have pledged not to help
there so long as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is still in power. President Clinton and the Senate have endorsed that
policy.

Certain to show up on the U.S. tab for the Kosovo intervention are a host of costs for such items as fuel, the deployment of
more than 700 warplanes, hazard pay for airmen and women, and big-ticket precision weapons, like the $1 million-a-copy
cruise missiles.

So far, during the first 76 days of the air campaign, these are some of the costs incurred, according to NATO; the Pentagon;
the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense think tank in Washington; and private economists: $250 million
for 24 Army Apache attack helicopters, which the United States deployed in April only to leave them sitting at Task Force
Hawk in Albania ever since. Most of that cost was for the hundreds of C-17 transport flights on which Apache equipment and
crew were brought in from Germany, as well as for building the camp and conducting training missions. Now, the Army says, it
costs about $2.8 million a day to sustain the troops and machines, which could finally see duty accompanying U.S.
peacekeepers into Kosovo.

$430 million for Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles and $180 million for air-launched cruise missiles, used mostly in the
early stages of the air strikes.

$340 million for the more than 34,000 sorties by U.S. warplanes.

Once the peacekeeping mission begins, perhaps as early as this weekend, the Army will be picking up most of the tab. The
Pentagon has estimated that could reach $3 billion for the first of what are expected to be several years of peacekeeping in
Kosovo.

Based on America's ongoing experience in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where 6,000 soldiers remain, about 50 percent of the costs
will be for housing, food and equipment maintenance. Ten percent will go toward deploying the 7,000 U.S. troops and their
weapons from Germany and the United States. Other costs will include special training, repair or replacement of materiel, and
hazardous duty pay.

Last month, Congress voted to provide about $5 billion in "emergency supplemental" funds to pay for America's participation in
the NATO air strikes and for at least three months of peacekeeping thereafter.

Leave it to Bill Clinton to (a) declare on March 24 that one of the war's primary missions was "to deter an even bloodier
offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo"; (b) use utterly inadequate force for weeks while Serbs murdered thousands of
ethnic Albanians, forced 855,000 Kosovo Albanians to flee their province and internally displaced hundreds and hundreds of
thousands of others; (c) "negotiate" with a recently indicted war criminal by deleting, for his benefit, the one provision from a
prewar peace proposal -- the prospect of a referendum in the near future on Kosovo's independence -- that encouraged
Kosovars to endorse it; (d) explain to his friend that his personal moral redemption project has succeeded, even as his
negotiators are offering indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic the opportunity to keep Kosovo as a Serbian province for
the indefinite future.

So Bill Clinton felt "almost cheated." Winston Churchill once said, "Enter upon your inheritance, accept your
responsibilities." When it came time for Bill Clinton to accept his responsibilities, his only concern was to avoid the draft and, in
his words, to still "maintain my political viability." After using the good offices of an ROTC recruiter to avoid being drafted,
young Bill Clinton, after receiving a high number in the draft lottery, wrote to the recruiter, telling him how he and his friends
"loath[ed] the military." On the very bomb-soaked ground where Churchill's Britain experienced its "finest hour" during
Germany's air blitz, young Bill Clinton proudly admitted to the recruiter that he had "written and spoken and marched against
the war," having gone "to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations." How "Churchillian."

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat," Churchill told the House of Commons when he became prime
minister during the dark days in May 1940. Bill Clinton, as if it weren't known already, has little to offer but a completely
overblown concern about his own legacy.

Dark Victory



The Kosovo settlement negotiated by the G-8 countries is cause for relief but not celebration. If the peace holds,
it will end Milosevic's criminal displacement and murder of the Albanian Kosovars, and NATO's indefensible
bombing of Serbia. Washington paints this settlement as a vindication of its air war and Balkan strategy. But only
through gross revision of fact and history can the Clinton Administration and NATO claim a triumph, let alone a
positive precedent for humanitarian intervention.

Start with the goal advertised by President Clinton himself as moral justification for the war. "Our mission is clear,"
he declared on March 24: To "deter" a Serbian offensive against the Kosovars "and, if necessary, to seriously
damage the Serbian military's capacity to harm the people of Kosovo." Instead, the provocative withdrawal of
humanitarian observers and NATO's bombing enabled Milosevic to accelerate the Kosovar expulsions radically.
Now, under the G-8 agreement, the Kosovars are worse off than they were with Rambouillet, which granted a
referendum on self-determination after three years. The new arrangement confers only a vague promise of
"substantial autonomy," and Yugoslavia retains sovereignty over Kosovo indefinitely. Even NATO's promise to
see the return of Kosovars by winter appears hollow: The UN's refugee coordinator now says it will be
"impossible" to return most Kosovars by then. NATO's strategy sacrificed those it claimed to help.

It was at Rambouillet that NATO first revealed what turned out to be its goal throughout the war: to assert
unilaterally military authority over Serbia while systematically excluding the UN. Belgrade never objected to UN
peacekeepers on Kosovo soil. The downward slide to war began with NATO's insistence on its stand-alone
Kosovo force independent of the UN and, in particular, with the alliance's demand to deploy troops anywhere in
the Serbian statelet as well as contested Kosovo. The air war was launched with no UN authority and in
contravention of the UN Charter. Washington and NATO continued this game through the final negotiations,
demanding that Serbia admit troops prior to Security Council authorization. The one consistent aspect of
Washington's Kosovo strategy has been to relegate the UN to the sidelines and assert NATO's right to wage war.
It was Russia and Germany that finally forced the war back into the UN arena. Although the UN remains gravely,
if not mortally, wounded, recent talk of a new European Union military, and divisions in the alliance over Kosovo
strategy, thankfully suggest that the appetite for such NATO adventures has been dampened for quite a while.

There is a bill, both financial and political, to be paid for this war. The first seventy-one days of bombing cost the
United States alone $2.6 billion, and that's not counting the deplorable shift in military-budget priorities, for which
this war is cited as Exhibit A. The pyrrhic nature of the war lies in the longer-term implications. It fueled
anti-American anger in Russia, China and other countries, with negative consequences for disarmament, economic
reform and democratization. Then there is the horrendous cost to refugees--not only Albanians but 500,000 ethnic
Serb deportees from Croatia and Bosnia mired in desperate poverty in Belgrade and other urban centers. Albania
and Macedonia struggle to maintain stability under pressure of both refugees and pan-Albanian nationalism. Add
to that volatile mix the KLA, whose leaders publicly endorse the accord but whose rank-and-file fighters may be
as difficult to win over to peace as any other nationalist guerrilla army. There is talk in some US circles of denying
aid to Serbia while Milosevic remains in power, which would result in continued destabilization of the region. The
Administration envisions the Balkans freed of ethnic hatreds, but the violence of the past months--or its
continuation by means of economic strangulation--will only feed the cycle of retribution.

The Administration portrays Kosovo as a success for the "Clinton doctrine," summarized as "limited force for
limited goals." Given the results of the bombing, a more accurate translation would be: "Shoot first, ask questions
later." Was it necessary to go to war to get an agreement that is more favorable to Belgrade than the one at
Rambouillet? What goal was served by an air campaign that killed an estimated 1,200 civilians and more than
5,000 Serbian soldiers--including hundreds in carpet-bombing after the agreement had already been
reached--while actually enhancing Milosevic's campaign of expulsion? Let us hope the Kosovo peace holds. But
do not be deceived by the triumphalist rhetoric from Washington. The Kosovo war is a resounding defeat for the
aspirations of the Kosovars, for the cause of human rights, for the entire southern Balkans, whose people will
spend decades picking up the pieces from Milosevic's criminal clearances and NATO's careless, cowardly and
destructive war.

The White House said Friday night it was pleased after Russia's foreign minister said the movement of Russian troops into Kosovo was "unfortunate" and that they would leave immediately. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said, "It was an unfortunate mistake and the troops will be withdrawn immediately." "Presidential spokesman Joe Lockhart said "We're pleased that they've agreed to rectify the situation. The constructive talks toward determining Russia's role in this peacekeeping force continue with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott in Moscow." President Clinton was informed shortly after Russian troops were seen on television rolling tanks down the main street of Pristina, Lockhart said. Hours earlier, Clinton said in an interview on PBS television that he foresaw no major problems from the unexpected movement of Russian troops through Yugoslavia and toward Kosovo, in advance of a coordinated NATO entry into the battered province.
Clinton and others in his administration had said any problems could be worked out, and Clinton himself said he and others had been assured throughout Friday that the Russian forces were simply pre-positioning for entry. "Clearly there's some confusion within the Russian government and they will be sorting out within their government how this happened, just as we will work with them on how we proceed from here regarding arrangements for the peacekeeping force," one Clinton administration official said, requesting anonymity. "If they follow through and the troops leave immediately, then we understand that mistakes do happen; if that doesn't happen, then obviously it's a different situation."

Is it possible that the Russian army has degraded so much it doesn't obey its leaders?

Is it possible that the Russians are trying to make points with the Serbians left in Pristina?

Or, is it possible that the Russians have a pact with Serbia? Could they have conspired with Milosevic to sign the peace treaty and stop the bombing long enough to allow them time to move in Russian forces, thereby changing the equation, by adding the possibility of Russian conflict with NATO. This could conceivably create a stalemate with the Albanian refugees afraid to return home.

Now,imagine that NATO said "Get out of Kosovo now, or we will not hesitate to blow your ass off the map."

I'm just thinking out loud, (well, in type anyway), so this is just speculation.

But who knows for sure?

Here is a good one. LOL

Yugoslav President and Supreme Commander of the Yugoslav Army Slobodan Milosevic Addressing Citizens
We Have an Invincible Army
President of FR Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic addressed the Yugoslav citizens yesterday:

- Honored citizens, the aggression is over. Peace has overwhelmed the violence. Dear citizens, I wish you a happy peace!

At this moment, our first thoughts should be dedicated to heroes who gave their lives defending their fatherland, fighting for freedom and dignity of their people. Their full names will be announced. But, at this moment, I want to inform you that in this war that lasted exactly 11 weeks, from March 24th until today, 462 YA soldiers and 114 MUP officers. We will never be able to repay our debt to them. Our whole nation took part in this war: from the babies in hospitals and patients in the intensive care, to the soldiers in trenches, Air Defense units and border guards. Nobody will forget the heroic deeds of the defenders of bridges, citizens, defenders of factories, squares, their towns, jobs, country, and their people. Our nation is a hero, this may be the best conclusion to this war.

Sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country is guaranteed by G8 and the UN. This guarantee is included in the draft of the Resolution. Territorial integrity of the country is unquestionable. We have endured and defended our country, because we have stated the entire problem to the UN and it will be solved in accordance with the UN Charter. By going to the UN, we did not only defend our country, but we made the UN, which wasn't operative 80 days before the aggression, became active again. It is our contribution to the efforts of the freedom-loving world, and to the tendencies to create a multipolar world and not to accept the creation of the world ruled by a power coming from one center. I believe that this contribution to history will be enormous and that heroism of our people defying a much bigger and stronger enemy will mark the end of the 20th century.

We have shown that we have an invincible army, and I am certain, the best army in the world. When I say army, I mean it in a wider sense. By that I mean the army, police and all defence units.

The people were never so united in history as in this war, and we never had less cowards who fled the country to wait for the end of the war in a safe place

To l'emenexe

I did see extensive coverage of this demonstration by at least two major American newspapers. Unfortunately, I removed these files already, as I get hundreds of postings of articles around the world on this subject each day. Sorry for that!
But at least in the written media there was ateention for it. I guess TV is selective on 'what looks good' more.

Zoja

To Guido.

It's good you warned me, otherwise I would not have been prepared to run for the toilet fast! Lucky that there are many Serbian people who don't believe a word he says!

Zoja

PS You get your mail, soon!

Serbs May Have Torched Border Village
01:38 p.m Jun 11, 1999 Eastern

TIRANA (Reuters) - A Kosovo village close to the border with
Albania was on fire Friday afternoon, apparently set ablaze by
departing Serbian forces, and shells continued to hit Albanian
villages at midday, international observers said.

Andrea Angeli, a spokesman for the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Tirana, said its
observers had seen the village of Gorozhup in flames during
the afternoon.

``Our monitors could clearly see it from the Morina border
crossing,'' he told Reuters.

Asked if it appeared that Serb forces had set fire to Gorozhup,
Angeli said: ``That's what we believe. There are no ethnic
Albanians left there.''

Angeli, who earlier reported that Serbian shells had hit
Albanian villages during the night, said renewed shelling had
taken place around midday Friday in the villages of Letaj,
Dobrune and Vlahan.

Serb forces began withdrawing from Kosovo Wednesday,
paving the way for NATO to suspend its 10-week bombing
campaign under an international peace plan.

Fighting on the Albanian border had intensified in the past
week as Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas, with support
from NATO bombers, tried to break through Serb defenses.

Asked if KLA forces had returned fire in the latest incidents,
Angeli replied: ``We have no reports of exchanges of fire.''

LATimes, Friday, June 11, 1999

DISPATCH FROM KOSOVO

Gaunt Faces of Prisoners Tell Tale of Deprivation

Pristina: As Serbian forces leave, freed ethnic Albanians, looking
weary and hungry, say little as they trudge home.

By PAUL WATSON, Times Staff Writer

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia--Free after 45 days in prison as suspected guerrilla fighters, 110
gaunt-faced and exhausted ethnic Albanian men walked silently on Thursday
through the heart of this provincial capital.
A few of them winced in pain as they leaned on the shoulders of fellow
prisoners after a 10-mile trek north from the town of Lipljan, where they
had been locked up in the local prison.
Unlike hundreds of other Kosovo Albanian men who crossed into
neighboring countries in recent weeks after Serbian police opened their
cell doors, these freed prisoners were already on their way home.
The men, most of whom were of fighting age, all are from Podujevo, a
20-mile walk north of Pristina, one of them said. They were being allowed
to return just as Serbs formed military convoys in the Podujevo area,
formerly the base of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army's most
hard-line commander, and began to withdraw.
Most of the ethnic Albanians had shaved heads and looked like their
Serbian jailers had fed them very little during more than six weeks of
imprisonment.
Several carried plastic bags of small bunches of green onions,
apparently their only meal before the last leg home to Podujevo, a
northern Kosovo town from which Serbian forces withdrew earlier Thursday.
One prisoner said they planned to spend the night along the road near
Pristina before continuing their journey home.
They struggled to walk in small groups along both sides of Pristina's
main street about 5:30 p.m., past Serbian police in camouflage uniforms
who carried assault rifles.
The freed prisoners were still too frightened to speak in any detail.
But their hollow cheeks and tired eyes left little doubt that they had
suffered badly when Serbian police jailed them after the first month of
NATO's air war against Yugoslavia.
Such ethnic Albanian men recently freed from jails in Kosovo are a
small fraction of the thousands of fighting-age men who are unaccounted
for in the province.
Some freed prisoners who arrived as refugees in neighboring countries
said they were imprisoned without charge after police pulled them out
from columns of ethnic Albanians ordered from their homes.
With peacekeeping troops heavily dominated by NATO forces about to
move in, there is no longer any reason for Serbian authorities to detain
suspected guerrilla fighters. Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic, commander of
Yugoslav army troops in Kosovo, considers guerrillas of the Kosovo
Liberation Army to be the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's problem
now.
Lazarevic predicted Thursday that the KLA would eventually begin
attacking the peacekeepers.
Senior KLA commanders have promised to disarm once the peacekeeping
troops take full control of Kosovo. But the rebels also insist that the
overwhelming majority of Kosovo Albanians want independence from
Yugoslavia, a move that NATO rejects.
In the first stage of the Serbian security forces' retreat from
Kosovo, a convoy of about 85 army trucks, a few antiaircraft guns and at
least one mobile surface-to-air missile launcher headed north just after
noon Thursday.
Serbian military officials in northern Kosovo, where the convoy was
spotted rolling past hundreds of gutted ethnic Albanian farmhouses and
shops, said it had come from the Podujevo area.
Thick gray smoke was rising from three houses on the edge of Podujevo,
apparently from fires set the night before, when Serbian generals
formally accepted NATO's terms for a pullout.
A convoy of 47 military ambulances and buses loaded with stretchers
and other field hospital equipment waited to leave Podujevo. The streets
were deserted except for a few police.
Serbian security forces drove out most of the local ethnic Albanian
population in the early days of NATO's air war, which began March 24, and
then forced the local KLA commander, a law graduate who fought under the
name Remi, from his headquarters in a farmhouse outside Podujevo. It is
unclear what happened to Remi.
Serbian police allowed thousands of displaced Kosovo Albanians, many
of them fighting-age men, to return to the Podujevo area several weeks
ago.
In recent weeks, KLA attacks became more frequent. KLA guerrillas have
fired on Serbian security force and civilian vehicles on the main road
near Podujevo as recently as last weekend.
When two foreign journalists walked along one side street in Podujevo
on Thursday, dozens of ethnic Albanian men and boys began to emerge from
behind locked doors in several homes.
No one had ordered them to stay inside, one man said. And no one
expected the KLA to enter the city as the Serbs withdrew, added another.
They were waiting for NATO.
About 15 miles away in Kosovska Mitrovica, which was badly damaged by
looting, arson and relentless NATO bombing, a convoy of 15 Serbian police
vehicles withdrew about 3 p.m.
A couple of the trucks were pulling what appeared to be small
antiaircraft guns covered under canvas. A large number of police remained
in the city, but they plan to withdraw in stages during the next 10 days,
an officer said.
Musa Furati, an ethnic Albanian man, sat barefoot in warmup pants and
a T-shirt on a hillside to watch the Serbian police leave.
Furati, 36, chose to stay with his wife and two young children in
their mixed neighborhood of Serbs, ethnic Albanians, ethnic Turks and
Gypsies, even after Serbian police ordered others to leave.
"We have been helping each other," Furati said. "I've been going to
the city each day since the bombing began. Some of my friends have been
wondering how I had the courage to go, but I just went and I didn't have
any problems."
Smoke was rising from a hill on the city's southern edge, and
occasional gunshots crackled in Kosovska Mitrovica itself, but Furati
said he wasn't worried about new clashes breaking out as the police left.
"Incidents can only happen when the people who left come back and and
find their fridges or TVs are gone," Furati said. "I'm afraid that could
lead to some incidents."

Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved

The Washington Post

Tribunal Hopes the Mounties Always Get
Their Man
By Nora Boustany

Friday, June 11, 1999; Page A16

And now the serious work begins, because the people who have suffered
deserve justice. An elite forensic crime-scene examination team of
Canadian Mounties is being sent to assist the U.N. war crimes tribunal in
its investigation of alleged crimes against humanity in Kosovo, the
Canadian Embassy here announced yesterday. Canada is in the final stages
of staffing the team, which will accompany the international peacekeeping
force entering Kosovo.

"This is meant to strengthen the cases of torture and killing that refugees
have talked about; we have an enormous amount of anecdotal evidence
and photographic evidence, and now we will establish scientific evidence
to support the claims of the tribunal," said Paul Frazer, the embassy's
minister for public affairs.

The U.N. Security Council resolution agreed upon Wednesday guarantees
that the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia will have
freedom of movement in Kosovo. The team would go in with officials
working for the chief prosecutor of the tribunal.

"The idea is to be part of the first wave of activity; if you wait too long,
evidence could be tampered with. The challenge here is to get to sites
before they are destroyed or tampered with," Frazer said.

The Canadian team, which will spend a month in Kosovo, will include
police investigators, pathologists, photographers and ballistics and mapping
experts drawn primarily from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, an
embassy statement said. "Their mission will be to gather forensic and other
evidence from the scenes of alleged atrocities, to ensure the integrity of the
evidence for possible future [tribunal] prosecutions."

"They are part of what is becoming more and more of a core area of
Canada's contribution to efforts to build peace," said Frazer. In Haiti,
Canada brought in Mounties to help establish civilian police units to restore
order after a military dictatorship was toppled in 1994. "This is a new
aspect of peace building in the world, and it flows from [External Affairs
Minister] Lloyd Axworthy's approach to what he calls human security -- in
essence to create an environment that is free of violence, where people will
be able to pursue their lives free from threat and within a healthy
economy," he said.

Canada also has promised intelligence support in addition to the more than
$1.9 million in special contributions it has made to the tribunal since it was
set up by the Security Council in 1993. This includes assistance for such
operations as the exhumation of bodies from mass graves and the Rules of
the Road program, which ensures that arrests of suspected war criminals
by local authorities are consistent with international legal standards.

"So much of the conflict is not between countries but very much rooted
within the countries. . . . Restoring a degree of normalcy is to demonstrate
to these communities that justice will be brought to bear and that what
Canada and others have stated within NATO is an attempt to determine
what crimes were committed in a detailed sense," Frazer said.

Defense Tango

There is more to U.S.-Argentine relations than the seductions of tango,
wine and pampas-fed beef. Argentine Defense Minister Jorge Dominguez
met with Defense Secretary William S. Cohen yesterday and later attended
a briefing on the Kosovo pacification process at the Pentagon, the
Argentine Embassy said.

Argentina is the eighth-largest contributor of peacekeepers around the
world -- and No. 1 in Latin America -- with troops in Bosnia, Cyprus,
Africa and on the border between Kuwait and Iraq, an embassy official
said. "There is some possibility that Argentina could offer troops to the
Kosovo peace effort," the official added.

On Jan. 6, 1998, President Clinton designated Argentina as the first major
non-NATO ally in Latin America. For several years, this status had been
limited to Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan and South Korea.

The benefits of such status are largely symbolic, implying a close working
relationship between a country's defense forces and its American
counterparts. It involves U.S.-funded military training in the United States
and the assignment of American trainers to military academies in Argentina.

Major non-NATO allies are eligible for priority delivery of excess defense
equipment; the stockpiling of American defense materials; the purchase of
depleted-uranium antitank ammunition; participation in cooperative
research and development programs; and, for those that qualified as of
March 31, 1995, participation in the Defense Export Loan Guarantee
program, which backs up private loans for commercial defense exports.

Even before gaining major non-NATO ally status, Argentina was offered
more excess defense gear from the United States than any other country in
Latin America and the Caribbean in 1996 and 1997.

PEACE IS A GOOD FIRST STEP.
But it is only the first step.

Good has defeated evil.
To complete the work we must insist on Justice.
Do it - for those that have been eternally silenced
and for those too weakened to help themselves,
and for those too eager for revenge.

Let's hope and pray
for strength and DETERMINATION
for Justice Arbour and her crew.

Hopefuly the "Tribunal Penal International
pour l'ex-Yougoslavie"
will soon start accumulating - and sharing
with the world (INCLUDING SERBS)
the evidence of Serb barbarism and attrocities.

We must bring criminals to justice.
Crime and punishment - a simple concept.

Yet we all know what to expect from Serb-lovers.
They will deny everything ....
They will say it is all fabricated ....
.... it is all conspiracy - it is all Hollywood.
Serb-lovers on this board have even questioned the Holocaust.

Think and say whatever you wish.
I will use my freedom to INSIST on Justice for all
and Punishment of criminals.

Uh oh. I see the British brought in the Ghurkas. WOOOOEEEEEEE man, dey bad dudes. They make the US Army look like girl scouts!

Editorial
June 11, 1999


Lessons from a very bad war

Ten years from now, the vast majority of Americans will not remember that this country engaged in a war with the
Yugoslavian Serbs. The United States-led NATO mission will be lost to history, like so many other undeclared and
unnecessary military adventures in remote countries that even Bill Clinton admits are hard to find on a map.

But perhaps the United States might learn a lesson or two from what surely was one of the most strategically inept,
obscenely expensive and ultimately harmful geopolitical endeavors since Mad Anthony Wayne's ill-fated invasion
of Canada.

Ostensibly launched to protect the Kosovar Albanians, the 11-week NATO bombing mission ended with 860,000
Kosovars displaced to refugee camps. Hundreds of thousands of additional ethnic Albanians are hiding in the hills
of their homeland, having been forced to abandon their home villages by Serb thugs and NATO bombs.

Even NATO officials admit that, if the war had not been fought, the overwhelming majority of the Kosovars would
still be in their homes. This is not to say that the Kosovars would not have been endangered by Slobodan
Milosevic's army and the Serb paramilitary forces that have terrorized ethnic minorities. But it is to say that the
bombing mission did much more harm than good.

The more-harm-than-good scenario plays out, as well, in Yugoslavia itself, where Milosevic's shaky grip on power
was strengthened by the NATO assault. It plays out on the streets of Belgrade and other Yugoslav cities, where
billions will have to be spent to rebuild a civilian infrastructure that was virtually obliterated, and where families
must struggle to overcome the grief of loved ones lost to the nightly bombings. It plays out in Montenegro, where a
reformist government is under threat because of the Western allegiances it displayed during the war. It plays out in
U.S.-Russian relations, which are at the shakiest point in years. It plays out in a bloated U.S. military budget, into
which billions of dollars were shifted at the height of an undeclared war.

This war should not have been fought.

And it need not have been fought.

The peace plan that has been negotiated is a tolerable one, but it is no different from the agreement that could have
been achieved had Clinton and Britain's Tony Blair begun by seeking a truly international response to the Kosovo
conundrum. Had Clinton and Blair gone first to the United Nations Security Council -- marshalling the intelligence
and moral authority that was squandered in the war effort -- they could well have gotten the same commitment to
create an international peacekeeping force that now is in place.

The lessons of the struggle over Bosnia, which was resolved by working with the United Nations, should have been
employed before this ill-planned war was launched. Instead, Clinton and Blair cast their lot with the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, an expensive old-boys' club that had never fought a war until the bombs began to fall on
Belgrade.

NATO has proven that it has no place in the post-Cold War world, and this war has made a powerful case for the
United States to exit the organization. This country's interests lie with the United Nations, not with incompetent
European war gamers.

But the real lesson of the Kosovo war has nothing to do with Europe.

The real lesson of this war is the lesson of all recent U.S. military excursions: When this country follows its
emotions into the civil wars of far-off lands, it almost always makes a mistake. And when it does so without clear
congressional authorization, it guarantees that Americans will ultimately ask: Why are we killing people without
even declaring war on them?

It is not the right or the responsibility of presidents or the Pentagon to decide where America will fight wars. That is
the job of the Congress. And if Congress had done its job this time, the Kosovar Albanians would be better off,
thousands of Serbs would be alive, and America would have more money for schools, Medicare, Social Security and
all the other programs that suffer when money is squandered on military adventurism.

A BARBAROUS WORD FOR BARBAROUS ACT

A number of people are saying that what NATO has been
doing shouldn't be called "war". The word "war" suggests
nations fighting each other. In this case, a group of the richest
and best-armed nations on earth, led by the greatest military
power in history, have ganged up to beat the hell out of one
small, surrounded country which never harmed any of them
and couldn't possibly defend itself. Day after day, the great
powers destroy the little country's factories, bridges, power
stations, leaving men, women and children, old and young,
infirm or healthy, without light or running water. Then the
bombers start in on residential areas and hospitals. Bit by bit,
destroying a whole country. If the victim offers to give in, the
big powers bomb some more, reitering that "all they
understand is force".

Insult is added to injury. Cartoonists and pundits invent a
fictional version of the target country to hold up to public
scorn, ridicule and hatred. Political leaders, spotlighted
spokesmen and highly paid opinion-makers escalate the
verbal abuse, comparing the population of the victim country
to Nazis and suggesting that they must be conquered,
punished, occupied and taught how to behave by the superior
civilized governments that are bombing them. The bombs
even destroy the victim country's means of communication
with the outside world, so that neither their pain nor their
wounds, neither their tears nor their courage are visible or
audible to their torturers. Yes, that's the word: torture. Make
a country suffer, in darkness and silence, until it gives in.
Meanwhile, strut around on the world stage congratulating
yourselves on your success, while planning further ways to
demonstrate what happens to little countries that don't behave
properly.

Is this war, or is this torture? Here's a suggestion for a word
to designate this abject use of military might: "warture". It's a
barbarous word, for a barbarous practice. But even the
perpetrators might like to pick it up. It could fit right in with
current projects to dump the restraints of national and
international law. Congress is supposed to declare war, but it
was never required, and could never be expected, to declare
warture. Warture is something the President does on his own,
an obscene practice for those enjoying the deepest sort of
corruption of power, the total insensibility toward those they
destroy.

The word has one disadvantage. It wouldn't be easy to
translate into other languages. But in the brave new NATO
world order of warture, no other language than English is
really needed.