🚀 go-pugleaf

Florida Times-Union
editorial KOSOVO: Facts impede Clinton's spin
( Read the next to the last paragraph)

For the administration, the facts are obstructing a good story.

After U.S. and NATO bombers began the destruction of Yugoslavia, to
force its government to accept President Clinton's peace plan for
Kosovo, ethnic Albanian refugees began telling tales of mass murders by
their Serb enemies.

>From that moment on, Clinton and his allies insisted the war was not about imposing his will; rather, it was about stopping a ''holocaust.'' About 100,000 Albanians had been killed, they said, with many buried in mass graves.

Not only did that give the war effort credibility, it took attention
away from the deaths of many innocent Serb civilians at the hands of
NATO bombers.

Once the war was won, international forensic teams rushed to Kosovo so
they could document the atrocities.

Quietly, the toll was revised from 100,000 to 10,000, and even that
could be an exaggeration. Only 2,108 bodies have been found.

U.S. and NATO officials, for example, had reported during the war that
the bodies of 1,000 Albanians had been stuffed in a Trepca mine. The
total number of bodies found there: zero.

Another report was that 350 had been killed by the Serbs near the town
of Pec. Five bodies were found.

What's more, there has been no analysis of whether the victims were
Albanian or Serb - or whether they were civilians or military people.

The London Sunday Times says many of the victims died during the
fighting or from U.S.-NATO bombs. Neither would qualify as Serb
atrocities.

Ethnic Albanians routinely beat, kill and maim Serbs in Kosovo. NATO
pretends not to notice and this week began handing power over to the
Kosovo Liberation Army, which is behind the thuggery.

Serbs are fleeing for their lives; at least 63 percent of Kosovo's Serb
population has left. Paradoxically, the war accomplished ethnic
cleansing - the thing that Clinton said it was supposed to stop.

Albanians are trying their best to drive the few remaining Serbs out.

U.N. peacekeepers are outnumbered. When they try to step in and save a
Serb life, often they pay a terrible price.

Friday, the day after a U.S. soldier was killed by a land mine, two
American peacekeepers tried to stop a mob of Albanians who were stoning
some Serbs. The mob turned on them, and they suffered serious head
injuries.

This may be what the administration considers to be soldiers suffering
and dying for a noble cause. But it more accurately reflects the
consequences of foreign policy driven by domestic politics. 

-- 

http://www.imagemuse.com/

Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese