🚀 go-pugleaf

http://www.eagleforum.org/column/1999/nov99/99-11-24.html

Eagle Forum November 24, 1999

The Truth Leaks Out About Kosovo

By Phyllis Schlafly

The embarrassing truth is starting to come out that the Clinton
Administration lied to us about Kosovo atrocities which were supposed to
justify the bombing of Yugoslavia. In five months of investigation and
exhumation of the dead in Kosovo, United Nations war crimes
investigators have found only 2,108 bodies.

Before the bombing, Clinton and Defense Secretary William Cohen
repeatedly tossed out figures of 100,000 dead, and the State Department
even claimed that up to 500,000 Kosovars were feared dead. Clinton
claimed that his bombing prevented Milosevic from "deliberate,
systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide."

The chief prosecutor for the UN war crimes tribunal, Carla Del Ponte,
can confirm only the 2,108 figure. That's what she reported to the UN
Security Council.

Pathologist Emilio Perez Pujol, who led a Spanish forensic team looking
for bodies, found only 187, mostly in individual graves. He calculated
that "the final figure of dead in Kosovo will be 2,500 at the most. This
includes lots of strange deaths that can't be blamed on anyone in
particular."

The British, who seem to be more interested in getting to the truth than
Congress, are pressuring Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to answer claims
that Tony Blair's government misled the public over the scale of deaths
in order to justify NATO's bombing of Belgrade. Alice Mahon, the Labor
MP who chairs the Balkans committee, said that the Kosovo deaths were
tragic but did not justify the killing of Belgrade civilians by NATO's
bombing.

Lacking a constitutional or national security basis for his Yugoslav
adventure, Clinton relied wholly on the humanitarian argument. That
rationale has fallen apart because the numbers of Milosevic's crimes in
Kososo were so grossly inflated, the indiscriminate damage done by the
Clinton/NATO bombing raids was so vast, and all the people he said he
was helping are far worse off than before the bombing started.

The Clinton/NATO bombing was carried on for 78 days with total disregard
for human life. The bombs killed thousands of innocent civilians and
even destroyed hospitals and schools.

The Clinton/NATO bombing decimated Yugoslavia's economic infrastructure
and created an environmental nightmare. Not only are water and power
systems destroyed, but the lifeline of the region, the Danube River, is
polluted and largely impassable because of destroyed bridges.

Repeated air strikes on the Serbian town of Pancevo enveloped the area
in clouds of black smoke and flames for ten days and unleashed tons of
chemicals into the air, water and soil. The fish, produce and water are
all contaminated.

What was advertised as an air war against Yugoslavia's military
capabilities was really a war directed against the Serbian people.
Dropping cluster bombs from 15,000 feet and firing missiles from many
miles away guaranteed "mistakes" and "collateral damage" and prove that
the targets were civilian as well as military.

U.S. Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Michael Short admitted that the goal
was to break the will of the Serbs and make them so miserable that they
would force Milosevic to pull out of Kosovo. Estimates of the cost to
rebuild the damage range up to $100 billion, but the costs in human
misery are incalculable.

The situation in Kosovo, the province Clinton was supposed to be
protecting, is even worse. The danger from unexploded British and
American cluster bombs and mines is at alarming levels, according to
international aid agencies.

Before the bombing began, there was no humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. It
was only after the U.S. and NATO air strikes began that the Serbs
started to expel Albanians from Kosovo.

The NATO "peacekeeping" force in Kosovo is completely unable to restrain
the revenge-seeking Albanians who are beating and murdering the Serbs
(even targeting grandmothers) and burning their homes and churches. More
Serb civilians have been slaughtered in Kosovo than ethnic Albanians
before the bombing began.

The daily violence continues even though there are now more NATO troops
in Kosovo than Serbs. According to Human Rights Watch, 164,000 Serb
civilians have been driven out of Kosovo.

The Clinton-Albright policy is based on the absurd fantasy that America
and NATO can force the Serbs and Albanians to live together in a
multiethnic society. Neither side wants that, and the attempt to impose
our will means that U.S. troops will play the costly roles of global cop
and social worker indefinitely.

The only people happy about the Yugoslavia debacle are the globalists
who want America to be perpetually engaged in foreign conflicts. In a
speech to the Canadian Parliament, Czech leader Vaclav Havel praised the
Yugoslav war as "an important precedent for the future," saying that
"state sovereignty must inevitably dissolve" and nation-states will be
transformed into "civil administrative units."

When Clinton's National Security Adviser Sandy Berger spoke to the
Council on Foreign Relations on October 21, he described Clinton's
foreign policy as grounded in the policy of "engagement." America will
now be "engaged" in Yugoslavia for the rest of our lives.

Phyllis Schlafly column 11-24-99 

-- 
"The clarity of Keyes reasoning
resonates in his rhetoric.
The country was founded on the
assumption that we are endowed
by our Creator with certain
rights that cannot be taken away.
Once we start taking them away we
have torn up the social contract.
As Nietzsche exclaimed, "It is
all untrue, anything goes."

But Keyes admonishes us: "The equal
dignity of each human person comes,
as our Declaration says, from the
Creator and not from us. If we
intend to keep the 'body and soul'
of this Republic together, we must
protect the life of the child in
the womb from invasion by the
practice of abortion, because
abortion kills in principle
the peace among us all."

But there is a larger point to be
grasped here. Once we concede to the
government the power to take away any
of these rights, they are all up for
grabs. As Keyes put it, "If we grant
to one another the right to do what
is wrong, in the end we will grant
to government the right to take away
all the rights we have. For government
will quickly become merely rule by the
strongest group among us, once we have
decisively accepted the view that
human dignity comes from the choice of
whoever happens to have physical
control of another person."  - Edward Zehr,
'A SCOUNDREL'S LEGACY - Politics After Clinton'
http://etherzone.com/zehr112299.html

http://www.imagemuse.com/