SIT-4-10; April 10, 1999

In this Issue: Kosovo- Reason, Fanaticism, Remembering

NOTE: Since Yugoslavia remains strangled by international sanctions that impede even the import of vital medicines, I have been asked to recommend another charity which will help in this emergency:

International Orthodox Christian Charities

711 W. 40th Street,Suite 306, Baltimore, MD 21211

Tel. (410)243-9820 Fax. (410)243-9824

Contact: Alex Rondos.

On Reinforcements and Propaganda

About Mr. Yeltsin and those hints of re-targeting NATO cities by Russian missiles, Mr. Yeltsin is frail and the Russian Duma has a large bloc trying to impeach him. Mr. Primakov, the Prime Minister and former KGB general, calls the shots in Moscow. As a member of the 6-nation "Contact Group" attempting to negotiate the resumption of civil government in Kosovo, Russia continues to try to seek a way out of the current bombing crisis and should, along with Beijing, be taken seriously. Key UN figures are stepping in to the controversy, Kofi Annan as mediator, UNICEF's Carol Bellamy as partisan --more on her below.

It is time to find a solution to put an end to the Kosovo tragedy, but it appears we remain a few days away from that as reputations of people and organizations remain at stake: pride is in play. The longer this plays out, the greater the damage. Yugoslavia has pushed the limit of international law in suppressing the KLA, but if we look seriously at alleged war crimes, we will have to also factor in the crimes committed by Croatia and Bosnia if law and history are to be served.

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim."

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

- Harvard Professor George Santayana, (1863-1952); The Life of Reason (1905-06), vol. 1, Reason in Common Sense

General Clark is calling in more US attack aircraft from around the world, but mercifully, over Belgrade's Easter Weekend, there is heavy cloud cover and laser-guided munitions cannot be dropped. NATO is redoubling its efforts to bomb its way back into credibility and it is not working. Clark will get 24 more F-16 fighters armed with HARM anti-radar missiles, four more tank-busting A-10 Thunderbolt attack aircraft, six radar-jamming EA-6B Prowlers, 39 KC-135 and two KC-10 refueling tanker aircraft and seven C130 transports. Now the Yugoslav army is dispersing into smaller targets while the US commits more aircraft. We escalate our scale against lower value targets. Hmmm· F-16s against two guys in a foxhole. Logic check.

In Washington, Mme Albright's reputation is now in tatters; in other capitals, editorialists are not being at all restrained about their impatience with the State Department's policy and the Pentagon's insiders also mock her bomb-happy team as the "Albright raiders" (an archive on Mme Albright will be posted later today in the usual folder).

The clamor, by ill-informed and half-educated "laptop commandos" for a ground campaign continues, but Colonel David Hackworth took the simple step of asking some recruiters about enlistments. Nobody is signing up for this one and we who know terrain, logistics, force requirements and other critical elements know a ground campaign is a non-starter. Further, President Kligorov of Macedonia has reiterated in an interview with the Turkish paper Hurriyet. ``We won't allow NATO to use our territory for a potential attack against Yugoslavia,'' Kligorav explained the limits of NATO's mandate. ``The status of NATO troops on our soil is that of a peace-keeping force.'

Simply put, the United States has more urgent commitments and interests with Korea and Iraq; it has too few forces for a serious war with Yugoslavia, there are no masses of patriotic youth enlisting, there is no permission to build up an invasion force from Macedonia or Greece --which provides the seaports and roads to Macedonia and the terrain and logistics are both nightmarish. Finally, the "domino theory" that argues that if NATO does not stop the violence of Yugoslav forces in Kosovo that this will spill over throughout the Balkans is a "false cause" argument that is 180 degrees from the truth. It is the KLA and the Greater Albania movement which aspire to carve away large parts of Serbia, the Sandzak, Montenegro, Macedonia and Greece; it is Albania which threatens its neighbors, not Serbia.

PROPAGANDA: Now as to the propaganda war being waged by the KLA, Albanian-Americans, NATO and others, just keep remembering that Aeschylus warned us 2500 years ago that "In war, truth is the first casualty." And we know that "a lie, repeated often enough, becomes the truth."

- Adolph Hitler; Mein Kampf

It was interesting that this morning, in describing a new Yugoslav police law promulgated by the Milosevic regime on April 4, Jamie Shea confirmed that Belgrade had further tightened its laws against hate speech and ethno-religious intolerence. I have tried to stress publicly that Belgrade proves itself the most tolerant and pluralistic society in Central Europe --it is the country where gypsies are best treated, and the Roma are furious at the second-class treatment they have been getting from the NGOs in Kosovo. In Friday's New York Times, Steven Erlanger reported the experiences of 76-year old Auschwitz survivor Aca Singer a leader of Belgrade's Jewish community of 2000 --bombed by NATO during Passover. There are also those 100,000 Albanians and 60,000 Croatians still in Belgrade, still unmolested, as well.

Sali Berisha, leader of Albania at the time of that pyramid-scheme collapse and chaos of 1996 is the real leader of the "Greater Albania" movement and is supplier of the KLA from his farm near Tropoje, as Chris Hedges of the New York Times reported in its June 10, 1998 issue. Berisha controls northern Albania. Christiane Amanpour likes, from time to time, to interview English-speaking women named Berisha, from whom come the most florid tales of genocidal behavior. The Berishas were also prominent in the village of Rogovo which the Yugoslav Police attacked on January 25.

The pro-KLA elements are trying to shop another "rape camp" story today and even Jamie Shea, chastened by reporters' reactions to his previous sallies into propaganda spinning, has to downplay that. This gives the feminists of NOW another chance to play military consultants on the news channels. Though it is not well known in America yet, tales of rape camps were wildly fabricated and exaggerated in both the Croatian and Bosnian wars and all but a few random events have proved out untrue. I can also lay hands on videotape or local acquaintances to debunk the most lurid concentration camp tales from Bosnia, while more archival evidence stacks up on how propaganda was fabricated in both the Bosnian and Croat wars.

The point is that we've been hearing this propaganda stuff and nonsense since Sherman marched through Georgia in 1864 and the Huns rampaged over little Belgium in 1914. Having been labeled a "baby-raper," as a Vietnam veteran by the Clintonistas all my adult life, I am delighted to help debunk some of this nonsense this time. The facts are sad and awful enough.

Thanks to SIRIUS associate researcher Michael B, I know have hours of archive videotape from FoxNews with the propaganda spin and the real video images and more is coming. So here's what I can say with certitude thus far:

1. The KLA marches in the old Nazi goose-step, as evidenced by tape shot during the March 8 rally at Prekaz; they are not stupid enough to have adopted a fascist salute, but were dumb enough to march like their SS Skanderbeg Division forebears.
2. Though in small shots and interviews of refugees crossing the border, KLA supporters repeatedly alleged that the young men had been separated and marched off to "an unknown fate," wide angle shots in the refugee camps show large numbers of these "missing men" everywhere, numbers approaching the normal population distribution. A front page photo in the Tuesday, April 5, New York Times shows a crowd of hundreds, virtually all male and with military aged men everywhere in the crowd. Still they repeat the disinformation: on the ground in Macedonia, Charlie Gibson of Good Morning America tried to shop this angle the other morning and a few minutes later two young men strolled by his shoulder.

But the KLA did dragoon men from the Albanian border near the Berisha farm and one hears as-yet unsubstantiated reports that some non-Albanian experts are attempting, up near the border, to train a large KLA force (50-85,000) in a compressed 30-day schedule. If true these new guerrilla levies would be ready about the time the Apache helicopters are operational.

3. Exceptions continue to pop up as essayists around the world delve into the footage and background facts. Today, when refugees crossed into Macedonia for the first time in four days, Reuters' Dina Kyriakidou confirmed: " The refugees were of all ages, including men of military age. Exhausted, dishevelled and dirty after days in the open, the group was sent by bus to Macedonia's largest refugee centre, Stankovic, which the government said had 38,000 people as of Friday."

Logic Games: It is another false cause argument (post hoc, ergo propter hoc- or "the rooster taking credit for the dawn" as Clintonians like to explain) that Mr. Milosevic is the author of the mess in Kosovo. As the SIRIUS Background Issues archives prove, it was Albanian nationalists in Kosovo and elsewhere who oppressed Serbs and other minorities in the 1970s and 1980s, and a strong-willed leader maneuvered his way into office to pick up the pieces created by a weak Federal government.

But Serbs and American skeptics should know that it is a false cause argument to label this NATO bombing campaign as a "Wag the Dog" coverup of something as trivial as the Monica-gate scandal. No my friends and readers, the money trail takes this back long before Mr. Clinton's arrival on the Global stage and this anti-Yugoslav hate campaign was being prepared in the 1970s and 1980s by Croat, Bosnian and Albanian interests, many with fascist links from World War II. Therein lies a potentially graceful way out for Mr. Clinton, saving part of his legacy, as we have all been duped for years. The US and Europe can provide the aid necessary for relief in Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo, and Albanian-American nationalists would serve their long-term interests better by a focus on improving Albania itself, rather than on supporting the radical irredentist drive to refashion Balkan boundaries.

Postscript: This issue is respectfully dedicated to all the innocent people who have died in the ongoing Kosovo tragedy; on the Orthodox Easter, let us pray for their souls. It is also dedicated in loving gratitude to two gentlemen who profoundly influenced me over the years, Vincenc Stare of Long Island City, NY (died April 9, 1997), and Frederick Truelove of Freedom, New Hampshire (died April 9, 1999).

© Copyright 1999 by Benjamin Works - SIRIUS www.siri-us.com