SIT 4-20; Tuesday, April 20, 1999

In this Issue: Kosovo & The Spin Cycle; Apaches, Chemical Nightmares, Blockades

Note to readers: Colonel David Hackworth and I will appear together on "The Crier Report" on Wednesday night (April 21) between 10 and 11PM Eastern Time. It will be worth seeing.

Correction: Two readers noticed I had erroneously associated "Arkan" with the "White Eagles." His group, is, of course, "The Tigers," and I knew that, but was writing too fast. Website text is corrected.

Remington, working with war correspondent Richard Harding Davis, had illustrated an alleged incident where lissome American maidens were strip-searched by Spanish officials aboard the steamer Olivete. In 1898 you did not need to invent rape camp stories to outrage newspaper readers to the point of war. Times have changed and propaganda changes with them.

In the Croatian and Bosnian wars of 1991-95, rape camps were invented and debunked but not sufficiently enough so as to prevent another iteration of these transparent fabrications. In the daily spin cycle as we approach the 50^th Anniversary NATO powwow at week's end, I anticipate even more strident braggadocio, braying and bombast with increasingly lurid fabricated atrocity claims. Keep your eye on the briefing photos, they serve as distractions too.

If I were to speculate as nakedly as these politicians, diplomats and officers do, I would not be allowed on air and nobody would read these reports. And the allegations they make! And the name-calling!

The Spin Cycle:

The New York Times observed Tuesday that all the NATO bombing of "lines of communications" has not prevented the Yugoslav armed forces from adding several thousand troops to Kosovo. Supplies flow as well, particularly when rainy weather reduces the effectiveness of NATO air patrols. NATO also confirms that Milosevic has developed a "surge capability" to force out refugees or hold them back, depending on weather, combat action and other factors. Clearly the bombing has provoked the refugee flood it was designed to prevent, and it cannot prevent ground reinforcements; so NATO spun the reinforcements themselves as proof that the Yugoslav forces cannot defeat the KLA guerrillas.

I think the troops are there to help control the ground as the US Army's AH-64D Apache Longbow gunships approach their first combat deployment this weekend; their entry will change the air-ground battle into a low-altitude game of cat and mouse from a high-altitude "fly-swatting." The Apache pilots are well prepared for an environment filled with shoulder-fired heat-seekers as well as radar-guided SA-6 batteries, but the Yugoslav forces are aware of how Apaches work rough terrain; they will avoid presenting juicy targets. War is stimulus-response, action-reaction, parry-riposte, a constant adjustment to changing realities.

In today's spin cycle Robin Cook recycled in a misleading way some events from January and February. Then Tony Blair, appearing with Javier Solana, tried to talk up an allegation that the Serb rampagers were massacring doctors and nurses. Later, Jamie Shea had lurid details of a new rape camp. After that, William Cohen, his credibility rapidly shriveling, hyped the lurid threat that Yugoslavia might resort to chemical, biological and nuclear-contamination weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)--as if! In "North Star" one of those dreadful Lillian Hellman propaganda movies of World War II, Nazi doctors pumped blood out of innocent Russian children until they were bled to death. Today, we are told, Yugoslav Army doctors are forcibly drawing blood from Albanians --that's in the same cycle where Blair says the Serbs are butchering doctors and nurses. This is too rich a mix of new allegations for one spin cycle.

Mme Albright is now muttering about "regime change," just as the Clinton team has been muttering since "Desert Fox" about regime change in Baghdad, but she also admitted that the sole sticking point remains the shape, nature and power of an "international security presence" in Kosovo.

Talking-heads have been speculating about WMDs for days on various network panels, so now Mr. Cohen can allege there is a serious threat that Yugoslavia will lash out with terror weapons. After all, one of NATOs newly defined missions is control of WMD proliferation and WMD scares have worked so well with Saddam. And in a gratuitous detail, new refugees spoke of the Yugoslav forces using tear gas to force people out of their homes. But do not expect Yugoslavia to lash out this way, they are civilized and a signatory of the relevant conventions. And it is NATO bombs creating toxic messes in Yugoslavia, not the other way around.

In fact, NATO bombing has not helped at any level; strategic bombing has unleashed poisonous gases at Pancevo and elsewhere, oil spills and generated toxic waste plumes, destroyed vacuum cleaner and cigarette production, while blocking the Danube shipping channel and now helping the river to be fouled with chemical poisons. Meanwhile, tactical bombing has stimulated refugee flows, killed innocent refugees while neither stopping Yugoslav forces or their supplies. Chemical spills will frighten Germany's Green Party and other environmentalists, so perhaps Mr. Cohen's attempt to play the WMD card is an effort to prop up Mr. Schroeder's Social Democrat-Green coalition government as the Bundestag moves back into their old Berlin Capitol.

Showing Pictures: Somebody pointed out that in the latest "mass grave" exhibit, that the trees in the before photo appear to be full-leaved, indicating the shot was taken as early as last summer. Looking again at the rather poor-quality reproduction in the New York Times, that observation appears to be correct. I have a copy from the Internet, but it gets very fuzzy when enlarged. It does appear to me that there are too many leaves on the trees in the before photo.

People who own computers with "Photoshop" and other similar packages know how to doctor imagery and know by instinct how much propaganda lying, spinning, exaggerating and all is going on in the daily briefings. Reconnaissance imagery is taken by cameras-sensors that always include a date-time-location verification. These data are cropped out of these photos presented to the Press at briefings. Reporters should insist that the "date-time" group appear on photos for verification.

Here is an important point: in this nasty civil war people are dying and being buried. Now, some are getting killed by NATO bombs, as well as by KLA-Yugoslav cross-fires. It is also clear that imagery is being selected to support a wildly inflammatory propaganda campaign, where the allegations of genocidal atrocities come entirely from KLA supporters among the refugee flood.

NATO speaks of 43 "mass graves" around Kosovo --an area of 4400 square miles-- and has shown us two, containing just under 250 individual graves. Because the two "before" photos shown in briefings and in the media have apparent flaws, it calls into question just when the graves were dug at these sites. It is also clear that in its narratives of genocidal mania on the ground, NATO is recycling pre-bombing sites among the more recent ones. Obviously, they count graves at Prekaz, Srbica, Racak, Rogovo (alluded to by Robin Cook today in a deliberate misrepresentation of events documented by the OSCE observers at the time), and other sites dating back to March 1998.

An American friend wrote me the other day suggesting that in denying existence of "mass graves" I had gone too far and slipped "into denial." He missed my intent. I believe the graves are real and that many have died in the fighting of the last 5 weeks and bombing of the last four weeks. I simply dispute the Orwellian label "mass grave" when applied to these individual interments. It is a lurid propaganda embellishment where the facts are tragic enough. I also wonder about the "before" photos.

At these briefings we are only getting what we are wanted to get in terms of evidence. Only seeing what the NATO gang wants us to see. We know that the media reported 2000 dead before this round of fighting began, though official figures were still around 1000 dead or slightly less. We know hundreds must have died in the last four weeks, but are asked by KLA partisans and by NATO to fear that as many as 100,000 young men are missing-massacred, but are not presented with aerial imagery to support those insinuations.

With only 43 "mass grave sites" in 4400 square miles, that's one site per hundred square miles. If the largest two contain 244 graves, and the only other one mentioned has 40, how many new dead can there be in the other 40 sites? Let's say there are 100 in each --that makes about 4300 dead since March 1998. NATO briefers and KLA supporters allege vastly more, but the photographic evidence and gaps in the story indicate a lower number.

Burned Villages: As to the 400 burned villages, when officials talk about that they show precious little evidence. At the British briefing, a photo of a burning village was shown, highlighting one burning house on the outskirts that was tagged and featured in a blow-up. But the rest of the village did not appear to be burning. Were the eyewash experts diverting our eyes from the bigger picture? I have also seen videotape discussing burning villages where only one outlying house was actually on fire.

At various times last year the KLA would set fire to tires, to Serb homes or something and create the appearance of a burning village. Tire smoke makes a great black pall that makes things appear awful. Last week on his bus` tour into Kosovo, NY Times reporter Steven Erlanger reported the Yugoslav forces were burning tires and sawdust to create smoke plumes to camouflage bridges. This technique may be in use in villages as well.

Muddy Ground at Tirana: Late in 1995 when US forces camped along the Sava River in order to build a pontoon bridge across into Bosnia, the commanders somehow chose to make camp along a low bank of the river. Storms came, the river flooded and the troops were considerably inconvenienced as they moved back up-slope to higher ground.

It appears another commander chose low ground, this time for the base camp and heli-pad for the incoming Apache helicopters. But rains in the last three days or so has turned that low field into a muddy mess; so gravel is being brought in to improve drainage. Then perforated steel plate ("PSP") must be laid for the helicopter landing pads and maintenance bays.

Blockade Anybody? You wonder about NATO discussing whether or not to perfect a naval blockade of Montenegro to ensure oil cargoes do not flow into Yugoslavia; but Russian tankers also sail up the Danube. The Danube cargo route is blocked above Belgrade, vastly constipating the Central European economy all the way to Ravensburg, Germany. I received one report --I cannot substantiate it-- that Gen. Clark actually wanted to bomb a Russian tanker if it sought to deliver a cargo either up the Danube or into Kotor Bay. More prudent minds prevail and NATO talks of getting neighboring states to concur in a voluntary embargo. Declaring a blockade is an act of war under the 1856 Convention of Paris and other international law. For NATO to bomb a Russian or other neutral tanker or barge would be analogous to German U-boats attacking America's neutral shipping in the two world wars, and would be as inflammatory as the Japanese attack on the US Naval gunboat Panay, in China, if not more so.

More interesting to me is that if Russia really gets mad, it can shut down oil-gas pipelines into Western Europe to express its displeasure with NATO sanctions on Yugoslavia. The signal could start as a "malfunction" in a warning shot. Stock markets will not like such a threat. The NATO Powers ought to look at that prospect more seriously as they try to push this bombing campaign beyond reason in order to salvage individuals' and governments' reputations.

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