SIT-REP 5-25; Tuesday, May 25, 1999

Notes to Readers: It has been too long since my last letter, but SIRIUS is in the process of joining forces with "Soldiers For The Truth," a "501 (c) 3" not-for-profit educational institute Details will be forthcoming .

The www.siri-us.com website has been reorganized to make back issues and archives easier to pick through. Archives are being up-dated and a new one, incorporating recent articles on conditions in Kosovo by Steven Erlanger and Paul Watson, "Kosovo-Atrocities.html" has been added.

In this Issue: The Money Trail; Morals and Values?

The art of propaganda and "spin" is to make you think that a "Monique" is not the pig you behold; but there she is before your eyes. "Dress things up" any way they want to, but NATO's US-impelled Air War against Yugoslavia is not a crusade for "our values" and "our morals," it is only naked aggression perpetrated to pursue a political, not diplomatic, agenda. Today Mr. Clinton has the problems of Kosovo, Iraq and the Chinese Espionage-Campaign Finance to spin his way out of.

Anticipating the release of the Cox Report's findings, I looked back through my China-Espionage file, which I archived on the internet in March. Though I am tempted to consider whether the timing of the start of "Operation Allied Force" was partly to deflect attention away from the relationship between alleged Chinese Espionage and the demonstrated illegal fundraising, I can only think that perhaps it was a secondary element. Mme Albright had committed her name to the Rambouillet stupidity and American politicians across the spectrum had committed to the campaign money over the two-plus decades that led up to this war. On the other side, the Belgrade government had also committed itself to handling each successive crisis with ham-fistedness, allowing its opponents to gain the upper hand in every propaganda dispute.

SIRIUS has now obtained sample Albanian American PAC campaign contribution records dating back to 1988 and has found a site that can take the FEC records back to 1980. The data base can be searched by PAC, by pollitician or by contributor; "Berisha," for instance. Summaries of the lists of recipients will be posted in the website archives shortly. Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut has been a beneficiary of Albanian largesse for some years, as have Bob Dole, Jesse Helms, and Congressmen Tom Lantos, Benjamin Gillman, Eliot Engel and others on both sides of the aisle.

The amounts identified so far are not enormous, but they do form a pattern. American politicians are innocent regarding foreign affairs, so leading them astray is not a difficult matter; it takes time rather than large sums of money.

Check for yourself at The"Public Disclosure, Inc." site: http://www.tray.com/fecinfo/

Other sites are at www.fec.gov and www.opensecrets.org. My thanks to Joe Cafasso of "Broken Arrow," to Staci McDaniel of the Reporter's Resource Center, as well as to other readers who were aware of one or more of these sites.

MORALS & VALUES? - Part I

Today is Day-63 of the bombing of Yugoslavia by the United States, masquerading as NATO. Through the curious counting methods of the 1973 Presidential War Powers Act, though, Mr. Clinton has until midnight tonight to justify his continued use of US Armed Forces to Congress. Though it is widely understood that the War Powers Act is "more honored in the breach than in the observance" (-Hamlet), some 25 Congressmen intend to raise the issue on Tuesday.

They should raise Holy Hell, but Yugoslavia has been so successfully vilified for so long that there is scant political support for Congress attempting to adhere to the Constitution and to International Law. And, if successful, the NATO War on Yugoslavia will establish a precedent that will be potentially troubling in the future.

But NATO has turned vicious and malicious, since the Serbs and Yugoslavs will not cave in: now NATO attacks the electrical power transmission equipment directly, instead of using BLU-114 graphite filament bombs against transmission lines. NATO explained that the electrical power grid is part of Milosevic's "command and control system," but last time I checked, command and control was accomplished using telephone and radio, not power lines. Obviously the grid can power some of that, but radars, for instance, run on their own portable generators, not off the national power grid.

Equally reprehensible, NATO appears to be attacking --or crippling through lack of electricity-- the municipal water pumping stations, reducing the supply in Belgrade and other major cities to as low as 10% of normal. So much for Mr. Clinton's assertions that NATO was making war against Milosevic, not the people.

In the West, humanitarian NGO and UN professionals are in a growing quandary, as NATO shows even less restraint against the Yugoslav people than Belgrade observed in most of its operations against the KLA's civil war between March 1998 and the commencement of NATO bombing 62 days ago. Even Louise Arbour, prosecutor of the International War Crimes Tribunal-Yugoslavia wonders about "proportionality."

Let's review the targets and damage of the last 10 days or so, beginning with the bombing of the Chinese Embassy. The Swedish residence was damaged when bombs hit a nearby hospital --another illegal target. Ambassadorial residences of Switzerland, India and others were damaged the following night by the pressure wave from an exploding fuel dump nearby. It then became clear that NATO had struck the prison in Istok, Kosovo, on two consecutive days, killing at least 19 guards and prisoners. Now, Belgrade asserts some 100 have been killed during raids on prisons in Kosovo.

My correspondents in Yugoslavia now fear they will lose telephone-internet service as well as water and electrical power. Still, though some reservists from southern Serbia have left their duty stations, most of Yugoslavia remains determined to hold on to Kosovo.

RESERVISTS: That raises the matter of calling up territorial reservist units in wartime; an issue germane to the US as well as to the Yugoslav armed forces. Our regular armed forces are built with people from all over the country, but our reserve units are localized. When you call up a battalion or brigade, it comes from one locality and immediately effects family finances, local economies and general morale "back home." Yugoslavia appears to need to calibrate its reserve unit policies better in order to more evenly share-distribute the sacrifices.

It is best to look assiduously after morale where they "keep the home fires burning." Congress, here, seeks to ameliorate any economic effects on families by a "slush fund" to assure bills get paid. But Yugoslavia is broke.

The Yugoslav 7^th Reserve Brigade was mobilized for over 40 days, and wives and mothers didn't know where their menfolk were or how they were. The dependents began some demonstrations and about 1000 men returned An independent newspaper, Vijesti, described the weekend protests in southern Serbia as ``dramatic,'' and reported that the largest demonstration took place in Krusevac, where discontent with the Kosovo conflict first surfaced a week ago. Smaller rallies were also reported in the towns of Aleksandrovac and Raska.

Here's another effect --"the Sullivan Brothers effect" where casualties fall disproportionately on one town, as reserve units come under fire (the five Sullivan Brothers were killed aboard USS Juneau during a naval battle off Guadalcanal in 1942). A fourth town, Prokuplje, was also due to stage a protest on Monday after the bodies of 11 local soldiers slain in Kosovo were returned to their families on Saturday, Vijesti said.

MISSING MEN: Almost 1,000 of the "missing" Albanian men showed up at the Macedonian border and immediately began gratifying the Press with wild tales of barbaric treatment --beatings and torture-- at the hands of their Serb jailers. But their bodies were uniformly lacking any visible signs of beatings; no bruises, fresh scars, broken noses, black eyes or swollen joints to corroborate the tales they told. Curiously, only UPI reported that an additional 7000 "missing" men showed up on the Albanian border on Sunday (see archive Kosovo-Atrocities.html). With NATO now bombing Kosovo's jails, perhaps Beograd would be prudent to order more prisoners to be delivered to the border. Just before the two "releases" of the thousand, the US State Department and NATO began asserting that the total of missing men had been more than doubled overnight, from 100,000 to some 225,000. The clans Hoxha, Berisha, Thaqi, Kalmendi and Krasniqi predominate in the propaganda quotes, sound-bites, etc.

THE KLA TODAY: NATO bombs did not spare the KLA itself in the last week; 5 or 7 died in the mistaken attack on the barracks at Kosare over the weekend. The KLA had captured it some weeks ago as part of the set up for the "meat grinder" battle on the border I have mentioned in the last couple of reports. That border fight continues and some estimate that as many as 6000 KLA fighters are inside Kosovo again; though fighting deep in the province is apparently scattered, sporadic and mounted by very tiny bands of guerillas. Supplies of ammunition, food, even reliable weapons are irregular.

Analysts estimate that the KLA now has as many as 25-30,000 in the field or in training, but that still is a very modest number of "freedom fighters," given that there were alleged to be 2 million Albanians in Kosovo, alone, not to mention 3.5 million in Albania itself and some 7 million Albanians world-wide. The KLA training is minimal and they have not shown an ability to maintain unit cohesion much above a small platoon level; these men are gangsters, not soldiers.

This leads back to Ann Richards' point about "Monique." Appended to this report is a curious article from the London Times of Tuesday, May 18, indicating Sali Berisha's appreciation of the KLA's serious limitations --and Berisha would know better than most. It is appended to this report. Berisha now supports Rugova over the KLA military command. Who can make sense of the politics of Kosovo secessionism, the KlA and even Al bania itself? All Mme Albright's cosmetic arts cannot make-over this chaotic messiness.

You can try all you want, but the Geg-Shqiptere (the latter word meaning "people of the mountains" the real Albanian name for themselves) tribes and clans of Albania and Kosovo have only an incipient civic sense, at best; they have few "social centers of gravity," which were emerging among the urban Albanians in Pristina and Prizren. But these emerging senses were co-opted by ideologues and the secessionist movement. Now, with the stampede into Macedonia and Albania, that civitas is further damaged. The Shqiptere are hardly ready for the 20^th century, much less the New Millenium.

"You can dress them up, but you cannot take them out." I suppose that secretly NATO leaders must be aware of what's to come if they have to relocate large populations of newly displaced Albanians in our western cities; more mafiosi, more heroin and cocaine dealers and more crime. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported last week that within 24 hours of the first group of refugees arriving there, one young man raped a translator, in a crime that relief workers tried to hush up. No wonder NATO is so anxious to get the refugees back into Kosovo by Winter!

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

THE TIMES (UK) May 18 1999

Berisha scorns 'incompetent' KLA guerrillas

FROM TOM WALKER IN TIRANA

SALI BERISHA, the former Albanian president, has depicted the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as an incompetent collection of rival gangs, poorly equipped and trained, and riven by feuding. He claimed that the socialist-led Government of Albania was profiting from arms racketeering in northern Albania at the KLA's expense and he urged that the guerrillas be reorganised with the help of Nato and the Albanian Army.

Mr Berisha, whose power has been greatly diminished during the past two years, refused to recognise the KLA's new government for Kosovo, and instead urged Albanians to back the pacifist Ibrahim Rugova, whose influence is also waning rapidly.

KLA officials in Tirana were angered by his comments and said that he was bent on dividing the guerrilla group with the help of his old ally, the Swiss-based physician and Kosovan dissident Bujar Bukoshi. The KLA said that like Mr Rugova, both Mr Berisha and Mr Bukoshi were so far removed from those fighting the war that they had lost the respect of most Kosovo Albanians.

Western diplomats in Tirana typified Mr Berisha as a troublemaker, and one senior source questioned the West's continued backing of Mr Rugova, whose credibility has been severely dented by his meetings with President Milosevic of Yugoslavia.

Nato sources said they believed that Mr Rugova may make his first visit to refugee camps this week, possibly in conjunction with Tony Blair's trip to northern Albania, scheduled for today. The diplomats said it could be Mr Rugova's last chance for a political revival. Mr Berisha admitted ruefully that he was unlikely to meet Mr Blair.

"The KLA should fight for national dignity," he said. "They will not free Kosovo - Nato will do that - but dignity is vital. But what is our Government doing? Thousands of young soldiers are coming from all over the West and are having two weeks' training with really unskilled people. The Albanian Government, which is more interested in trafficking, is the root of all their problems."

Mr Berisha, a former cardiologist, said Nato should plan a full-scale invasion of Yugoslavia. "I am for entering from all sides, and freeing the country from the Milosevic regime," he said.

Most controversially, he alleged that the KLA had killed Mr Rugova's deputy in the Democratic League for Kosovo, Fehmi Agani. The KLA and Western diplomats said the claim was preposterous.