Entries Tagged 'military' ↓

Originally posted on 2.0: The Blogmocracy

US Government Wasted Billions in Rebuilding Iraq
h/t: NoThreat2U

By Kim Gamel, AP

KHAN BANI SAAD, Iraq — A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children’s hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets

As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.

That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.

Read it all.

What a waste!

We need to rebuild America, and we can do it only by restraining our spending, by cutting the deficit, by deregulating, and by lowering taxes.

“Foreign aid” is one place where we need to stop spending money. I do not mean that we should merely “cut” spending, I mean that we should stop entirely. That also means not a penny more for QUANGOs or NGOs such as USAID.

Nation-building = EPIC FAIL

Presidents in both parties like to use the often illusory and temporary benefits that the US government provides for overseas beneficiaries as a PR move and sometimes a backdrop for photo ops. Too bad nobody ever asks the American people whether we want or can afford to spend this money.

The amount of waste, graft, and simple incompetence taking place place on government projects overseas tends to be even higher than that which takes place on the same type of government project at home. One reason is that distance is always and everywhere the enemy of accountability. The other reason is that the US has so often been trying to modernize Islamic countries, which is inherently impossible to do without eliminating Islam. This is one area where I do fault George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice. Due to their backgrounds in the oil industry, and due to their indoctrination in the fraudulent Wilsonian ideology, neither one of them is intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually capable of comprehending the threat that is Islam.

Money sent to Islamic nations is not received with gratitude. It is interpreted either as an attempt at manipulation on the part of the Judaeo-Christian West, or as a form of jizya and a sign of weakness and dhimmitude.

Any US government spending overseas costs us heavily at home. We cannot afford it; more often than not, it is counterproductive; and the sooner we put an end to it, the better.

GWB and the Republican Party have paid the price for these fruitless attempts at ‘nation-building’.

The exchange of comments that appeared on a prior thread on 2.0: The Blogmocracy, regarding this very issue, underline my point:

1389AD wrote:

Speranza wrote:

Rodan wrote:

@ 1389AD:
Bush has a Progressive Pro-Islamic Wilsonian foreign policy. He really believed they would love Democracy.

Islam and democarcy are not compatible.

Islam and anything other than Islam (with the proven historical exception of Nazism) are not compatible.

(Visit this link to read the other comments.)

What to do?

Our politicians must be taught the lesson that ‘nation-building’ is always and everywhere doomed to fail. But that will happen if, and only if, people like ourselves hold their feet to the fire.

If you are an American, I ask that you write, call, or better yet, VISIT the offices of your US Senators and your US Representative. Tell them NO more tax dollars should go to foreign aid or nation-building, and that the money should go instead toward deficit and tax reduction. If you visit their district offices, you will usually be able to talk with a staffer. That’s just fine – the staffers relay constituent concerns to the legislator, and your message will get through.

Originally published at 2.0: The Blogmocracy.

by 1389AD

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. – Ephesians 6:12 (King James Version)

In General Casey obscures the pellucid air of Aspen, Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch gets it almost completely right. After roundly condemning George Casey for his dhimmitude under the guise of “diversity,” he proceeds to question America’s entire vision of what we are up against. And rightly so:

Former Vice President Cheney famously said that this would be a “Long War.”

And now General Casey, and those behind and above him, say that at the very least, this war in Afghanistan alone may go on for another five or ten years. And hearing this, we may ask ourselves where else will this war, fought this way, be taken – will it go to Somalia, or to Yemen? Will these be the next Stations of the National Cross we are collectively made to bear, because those who rule over us do not know, and do not want to know, and may even not know that they do not know, what is necessary if a sensible policy of managing the war of self-defense against all those who take the duty and doctrine of Jihad seriously can be constructed and applied?

That war of self-defense is not a “Long War.” It is not a war that might go on for “five” or maybe “ten” more years, in Afghanistan or anywhere else, and then be over with.. It is a permanent war, a war without end, because the doctrine of Jihad is a permanent, and central, not tangential, part of Islam. The duty to engage, directly or indirectly, in Jihad – which should not be thought of only as involving terrorism or other forms of violence – does not disappear. It did not disappear in the century-and-a-half, from roughly 1800 to 1950, when Muslims were so obviously weak that those who wanted to engage in Jihad simply could not. But now things have unalterably changed: the OPEC trillions (more than 13 trillion dollars since 1973 alone to the Muslim members of OPEC), with more piling up every year, and the millions of Muslims foolishly allowed in, through the casually criminal negligence of political and media elites, to the countries of Western Europe. All this, and then the exploitation of Western technology that is useful in the dissemination of the message of Islam, both to Muslims (some of whom might heretofore have been unaware of the full message of Islam, but can remain so now only with difficulty) and to non-Muslims who might be seduced by the siren-song of whatever melody (e.g., “social justice”) that Muslims conducting Da’wa might wish to underhum.

Far from being “realistic” in their supposedly “glum” assessments, Cheney with his “Long War” and General Casey with his “five or ten more years in Afghanistan” are actually misleading themselves, and us. For they are refusing to grasp the nature of the war. They are thinking in terms that do not make sense. To wit: It might take us “five or ten years” to stamp out Al Qaeda, and the Taliban, in both its Afghani and Pakistani versions, and then, supposedly, we will have our “victory,” we will have “won.” But no “victory” in the conventional sense is possible. And there is to be no “winning” but only, rather, the minimizing of the threat and the conceivable damage, from Muslims. Why? Because there is no sell-by date to the doctrine and duty of Jihad. It goes on forever. And when anyone tells you, with a sober mien that is supposed to convey the message that “I’m not naïve, I’m a grim realist, I know this is going to be a long hard slog and it might take five years, ten years, twenty years, in Af-Pak and the Horn of Africa,” you should not think to yourself that at long last someone has dared to tell the truth, someone in authority is leveling with you…

Fitzgerald then pokes some well-deserved holes into the unalloyed madness and idiocy that passes for long-term strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan:

And a second part of the Aspen speech by George Casey also merits attention: “Casey highlighted job, education and economic growth as essential to success in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

This is what we are so drearily familiar with, the idea that we should do with Muslim lands what we did with the countries of Western Europe after World War II with the Marshall Plan (indeed, Al-Jaafari and others in Iraq have more than once called for a “New Marshall Plan” for Iraq, in which the United States taxpayers foot the bill; “Marshall Plan” is a phrase strangely familiar to many Arabs and Muslims). We have an official unemployment rate of nearly 10% in this country (and more, if one counts those who have given up looking for work, and still more, if one counts all the greatly under-employed). We have a collapsing educational system. We do not have economic growth. But Casey, and those for whom Casey also speaks, thinks that Americans should pay for “jobs and education and economic growth” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Never mind that Iraq has the second or possibly first largest reserves of oil in the world, and thanks to the United States had its entire debt of nearly $100 billion cancelled by the Western nations (but notice that the Arab creditors did not cancel what was owed to them), and will be raking in hundreds of billions. Never mind that “education” may make an enemy more formidable, not less, and if “education” never questions the teachings of Islam, but merely makes Muslims more dangerous because better educated, why is this something we should encourage?

After facing all of this horror head-on, Fitzgerald reaches a conclusion that is far rosier than his own evidence warrants:

Is there time for Obama to begin to see things differently, and to get rid of the brennans and bring on board the ship of state, now a dangerously listing Narrenschiff or S. S. Naufragium, others, less ignorant and less self-deceived? Yes. There is time. But only just.

No, there is no time, simply because Obama is not one of us; he is among our enemies. He sympathizes with the jihadis and he will continue to do everything he can to ensure that they win.

Read the rest.

Originally published at 2.0: The Blogmocracy.

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. – Matthew 24:6 (King James Version)

In his new article, The Immorality of the Moral High Ground, Sultan Knish explains why Israel and the West keeps losing, and the jihadis keep winning. It’s because we have been manipulated into trying to claim the moral high ground in a struggle that leaves no room for morality. The eventual result is capitulation to evil.

We can’t win the War on Terror so long as we hold to liberal definitions of the Moral High Ground. We can’t even begin to really fight it. What’s worse, is that not only does this warped understanding of morality result in more American deaths, it results in more deaths of both fighters and civilians on the enemy side. Because where the soldier understand that the most moral way to win a war is, quickly. The bleeding heart liberal thinks that the most moral way to win a war is, never. To a liberal if we must fight a war, we should do it with our hands tied behind our backs, and after a decade of senseless bloodshed, we’ll finally come to realize that war is a bad thing.

As the Biblical quotation reminds us, war has always been, and always will be, part of the earthly human condition. Violent conflict is a part of the fallen nature of mankind, which is the very thing that the “progressives” attempt to deny by insisting that they can perfect mankind by perfecting the structure of society. This is why the efforts of so many people to prevent war, or to legislate rules for fighting war, serve only to worsen it when it inevitably happens.

Putting liberals in charge of determining what soldiers can do in a war is like putting die hard big government advocates in charge of privatizing the government. Not only will they see that the whole thing fails, they’ll make sure that it fails as painfully and horribly as possible in order to serve as a lesson to any future government that might flirt with any similar notion. They did it with the War on Terror, intimidating military interrogators with threats of legal action and exposure, while helping the terrorists realize that all they need to do is claim torture in order to be set free. They did it brilliantly in Iraq, subverting the reconstruction in the aftermath of a successful war, from within, until the entire thing collapsed into squabbling factions. They did it on Iran, feeding false claims that there was no nuclear program long enough for Bush to leave office.

But of course, the liberals never apply the same moral standards to our enemies.

Why? Because they want our enemies to win, that’s why.

Why does Israel have a terrorist problem, and not Jordan, which has the same Arab population that Israel does? It’s not simply because Israel is mostly Jewish and Jordan is mostly Muslim, though that is a contributing factor. A primary focus of Islamists is to take over countries with majority Muslim populations in order to build the Caliphate. The reason is because in 1970 when the terrorists began hijacking planes and declared that a part of Jordan belonged to them, King Hussein sent in the army. He didn’t kill a mere 52 Palestinian Arab terrorists, as Israel did in Jenin. Or a mere 107 in Deir Yassin. Not even the 800 or so killed in fighting between Arabs in Sabra and Shatilla. No, according to Arafat, King Hussein’s troops killed an estimated 25,000 Palestinian Arabs.

This wasn’t some sort of unique event by Middle Eastern standards. When the Islamists tried to stage an uprising in Hama, Syrian troops killed somewhere between 20,000 to 40,000 people. When Arafat sided with Saddam during the Gulf War, Kuwait expelled 400,000 Palestinian Arabs. Why did they do it? Because by 1990, Kuwait had some 564,000 native Arabs, and some 450,000 Palestinian Arabs. So the Kuwaitis began bombing Palestinian Arab neighborhoods, top officials boasted about “cleansing” Palestinian Arabs from Kuwait, and tanks and troops were sent into Palestinian Arab neighborhoods, setting up checkpoints, killing, imprisoning and torturing thousands. There were plenty of atrocities that got brief mentions in the media, before the Palestinian Arabs were gone from Kuwait, and everyone moved on.

Just to grasp the sheer scale of the double standard here, in the same year that the Bush Administration was pressuring Israel to negotiate with the PLO in the name of human rights, President H.W. Bush gave a blank check to the Kuwaiti royal family to do anything they wanted to the Palestinian Arabs in their country. He told the Kuwaiti ambassador, “The war wasn’t fought about democracy in Kuwait” and justified everything the royals were doing, saying, “I think we’re expecting a little much if we’re asking the people in Kuwait to take kindly to those that had spied on their countrymen that were left there, that had brutalized families there, and things of that nature.” The Kuwaiti government newspaper Sawt Al Kuwait, featured Bush’s comments under the headline, “We Would Be Asking a Lot, If We Asked Them to Show Mercy.”

And that just about says it all. The same Western governments which think it’s asking a lot to expect Muslims to show mercy, make those demands of Israel all the time. They make those demands of their own forces, while never expecting Muslims to show mercy.

Sultan Knish explains what we must do instead:

…In the same way, stamping out the first terrorist attacks will save you from engaging in a prolonged struggle. That means doing it with decisive finality. This is a simple truth that every Middle Eastern country, but Israel understands. And a simple fact that every Muslim country understands, but the United States does not. Throw a dart at any major Muslim nation, and you find repression, mass graves and even genocide. Indonesia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Turkey– it never ends. There’s a very simple reason for that. In Islam, force is the only real morality.

Mohammed is not the Prophet of Islam because he offended the Meccans and got killed for it. He’s the prophet of a worldwide religion, because he killed everyone in his path. And then his followers killed everyone in their path. And then their followers went on doing the same d— thing for over a thousand years, right into the present day– where Muslims are still killing and making war on everyone who isn’t a Muslim, and refuses to become one. Islam has only one real revelation, death. But it has to be death with a purpose. The purpose is the triumph of Islam. If victory is possible, then the Islamists have plenty of volunteers to die, because they believe in the Islamic paradise and its 72 virgins. If on the other hand, the Islamists get stomped into the dirt, their religious credibility runs at an all time low. When victory is impossible, Islam withers and goes into the long sleep of cultural hibernation to awaken in a more permissive time.

There’s only one way to defeat terrorists. To fight them without any more restraint than they impose on themselves. Under such conditions, superior force and technology makes the victory of the civilized side inevitable, and creates an incentive for the uncivilized side to become civilized, or pay the price. The Moral High Ground, the whole idea that restraint toward those who would kill you is the essence of morality, is one of the most perniciously self-destructive ideas ever coined. It is suicide with a slogan. The Moral High Ground is not moral and it is not the high ground, it is the way by which civilians go to their death over the cliff of their own warped ideals.

There is only one Moral High Ground that that can defeat, the moral high ground of standing up for civilization, against those who would drown it in the ichor of their own hate, the stench of their own greed, the lust of their own power and the blood of their endless murders. It is not moral to let your family be murdered, rather than harm the murderers. He who slays those who kill his loves ones, stands on the true moral high ground. The only true Moral High Ground that there is.

Read the rest.

Sadly, it is not only the dhimmis in the Obama administration (and in the administration of every US president since Reagan left office) who are to blame for our current predicament. It’s the fact that the US has let itself be fooled by the leftist elite, not only in Washington DC, but also the Ivy League, the think tanks, the NGOs, the Hollywood left, and the rest of the mainstream media. As Sultan Knish also mentions, Israel has its own left that exerts a pernicious influence, to the detriment of Israel’s security and survival. And as Gates of Vienna tells us every day, the same is true in the EU.

Perhaps most of all to blame is the UN and all of its pomps and all of its works. As I personally tried to warn everyone over a decade ago, Israel would be next in line to suffer the condemnation that was visited upon the Serbs for daring to defend themselves against the jihadi onslaught. And so it was.

There is no joy in pointing out that I was right, after it is too late to mitigate the damage. At least for me, to say “I told you so” is not so much a temptation, as Thomas Fleming once warned, to the sin of pride, but to that of despair.

By 1389

It’s time to stir the pot some more

My last post on the brouhaha at Grouchy Conservative Pundits (GCP) was harshly worded indeed, but nonetheless it was not harshly worded enough. I haven’t rattled enough cages yet. Until I start getting some hate mail, enraged comments in all kinds of languages, and maybe even some juicy death threats, I never know if I’m getting my message out, rather than just preaching to the choir.

Lots of people talk about respect…

Talk is cheap. If you’re going to play that game with me, you’ll have to ante up. I believe in giving respect ONLY where respect is due. People who want my respect have to earn it, and they cannot earn it by spewing flagrant and undeserved disrespect toward me and others, as did “Mike C.” and “Rayra” on GCP.

Intellect alone is not deserving of respect; it depends on what people do with it. I have known many people far more intelligent than those two, and who behave far better.

Current or former military service (assuming these people are who they say they are, and I have my doubts) in and of itself is not enough to earn my respect either; there are just as many despicable people among the military and former military as there are everywhere else. I had a recent ex-boss of that description; he was, and is, a crook who treated me like dirt and then got rid of me by transferring me to another position where I would not be paid as much as my contract specified, simply because I didn’t play along with his chicanery in manipulating department budgets. That ex-boss was one more example of the fact that the most consistently untrustworthy people out there are the ones who always talk the loudest about “having someone else’s back.” Yeah, right…with a knife between the ribs.

As far as military personnel are concerned, don’t even get me started on those US military who willingly took part in the bombing of the Serbs during the Kosovo War, or who failed (and still fail) to protect the lives, property, and freedom of the Serbs in occupied Kosovo. Every officer involved should have resigned their commissions. Those who failed to resign have genocide on their consciences, though I doubt that any of them will ever admit it.

Is he or isn’t he? Only his gardener knows for sure

As I said, I cannot determine for sure whether or not “Rayra” is a plant. It’s just as likely that “Rayra” is merely a deeply angry, confused, frightened, and mentally and emotionally unstable individual who is too impulsive to think anything through, can never admit being wrong about anything, sees no reason to learn to control his temper, has no respect for women or anybody he considers to be weaker than himself, has no interest in where anybody else is coming from, and lashes out blindly at anybody or anything that he sees as a threat to his ego or to his self-centered world view. Or he could simply be an outright psychopath; I’ve had the misfortune to be acquainted with a few of those too.

For obvious reasons, I would never WANT somebody like “Rayra” even to claim to be on my side. He is more a danger to his friends, such as they are, than to his enemies.

But whether “Rayra” is actually a plant isn’t the most important concern here. The point is that, whether “Rayra” intends it or not, his intemperate and misguided remarks further the interests of expanding the corrupt and tyrannical use of federal government power.

Why do so many people hate Russia?

As I mentioned in my earlier post, a truly irrational hatred of Russia is rife on GCP, and anybody who says a word in favor of Russia becomes a target. I have reason to believe that Russia is not only far less of a “despotism” than the US, but also it runs the country in the interest of its own citizens, its economy is growing instead of collapsing, it respects Christianity, and its leaders are loyal to their own country. Russia is nothing like its portrayal in the mainstream media.

We are acquainted with an American expat who has lived near Moscow for many years, and we get some information about what is going on in Russia from the inside. Also, one of our friends is an amateur astronomer who travels all over the world whenever there is an eclipse. He’s a rock-solid conservative Republican and has been so for many decades. He went to Russia the last time there was an eclipse there, and he liked it so much that he seriously considered blowing off the eclipse-viewing to spend more time traveling in Russia and meeting Russians.

No, I don’t agree with everything that the Russian government does, just as I will never agree with everything that any government does. We live in a fallen world and all governments are fallible. But I can well understand why, at this stage, Russia is a rival of the US and not an ally. Yes, Russia COULD have been an ally, but Americans blew the opportunity through our own selfishness and ambition. The carpetbaggers that came over to Russia from Harvard and the liberal think-tanks after the Berlin Wall came down inflicted incredible damage; they are the ones to blame for letting the oligarchs and gangsters take hold for as long as they did. Since that time, Putin and Medvedev have made considerable inroads against the oligarchs and gangsters. They’ve also instituted a flat tax that is not excessively high, they collect it even-handedly, and unlike the US, they don’t double-tax Russian citizens earning money overseas. If they’ve had to play rough against the Chechen jihadis and the media whores and NGOs that support the jihadis, then good for them.

I understand that many people continue to harbor suspicion and hatred against Russia as a result of the heritage of the Cold War. I myself was as ardent a supporter of the US during the Cold War as anybody could be. However, in the present day, such hatred against Russia is counterproductive and it sinks to the level of irrational bigotry. I haven’t observed the same degree of opprobrium leveled at China, our other Cold War enemy, even though China is much less free than Russia, China is not primarily a Christian country, China is more of a rival to us than Russia is, and the remnants of communism persist much more strongly there.

Pot, meet kettle

I would no more condemn Putin for having been in the KGB in the distant past, than I would condemn George H. W. Bush for having headed the CIA, which has done little to protect us, and much to get us into needless trouble. At least Putin is a Christian who has repented of whatever wrongdoing he has committed in that regard. Can you imagine an American president ever repenting of anything? I sure can’t. I doubt that we’ve had a real Christian president since Ronald Reagan, despite numerous photo-ops intended to prove the contrary.

Anybody can see that we have an even bigger mess in the US. What inroads has our federal government made against the Latin-American drug gangs, the SEIU, George Soros and his circle of oligarchs, the traitors at the New York Times and CNN, the traitors in the State Department, the commies in our universities, the crooks who run Detroit and Chicago, and last but not least, the jihadis that infest every corner of the US?

Shooting the messenger

Of course, it sent many people on GCP into fits of outrage to hear me say that Russia, despite its current rivalry with the US, has been cleaning up its internal messes, while the US has been sinking into an abyss. Their response was to shoot the messenger.

And why do so many people hate the Serbs?

There is plenty of evidence that they hate the Serbs over at GCP. This is ironic, considering that GCP was founded by people banned from Little Green Footballs, and considering that I was banned from Little Green Footballs for supporting the Serbs. Their antipathy toward the Serbs also serves to explain some of their hatred toward Russia, simply because the Russians have made some efforts to help the Serbs.

The US government, along with NATO and the EU, is still doing everything it can to destroy the economy and livelihood and what little remains of the sovereignty and culture of the Serbs, in order to help the jihadis to create a stronghold in the Balkans. And that includes the US military. I don’t even want to think about how many people on GCP might have been personally involved in one way or another. That’s between them and their Maker.

This foreign policy is not merely stupid, it sinks to the level of treason. The whole purpose of throwing the Serbs under the bus is to curry favor with the Saudis and other Muslim oil-producing nations. A lot of good that has done us! We would have done better just to colonize them and take over and de-Islamize the Middle East just as we once de-Nazified western Europe. As anybody could have predicted, like every other bunch of totalitarians, the jihadis are inherently evil and they will always bite the hands that feed them, which is what led to 9-11.

Does that statement surprise you? In case you don’t know, Osama bin Laden travels on a Bosnian Muslim passport granted to him by the late Alija Izetbegovic, who was literally a Nazi. It is not appropriate to invoke Godwin’s Law here, because we’re talking about an actual Nazi of the Third Reich. Notice that I do not call Izetbegovic an ex-Nazi, in that he was a lifelong unrepentant Nazi who recruited for Hitler as a young man. And the US government sided with Izetbegovic in the Bosnian War.

This collaboration with the jihadis in the Balkans has been going on ever since Reagan left office. I have grave doubts about the moral worth of the American people for consistently electing governments that support our enemies in this way. How am I supposed to be loyal to a government that is collaborating with our enemies? If I had been in Norway during the Second World War, should I have been loyal to Vidkun Quisling?

I harbor a faint hope that enough people in some state, somewhere in the US, will see the light in time to secede from a Quisling federal government that is deliberately laying us open to our enemies, so that at least some part of the US will be salvaged. If the turnaround doesn’t happen very soon, long before the 2012 election, it will be too late, and the America that we thought we knew will exist in name only.

Some will insist on remaining under the US federal government no matter what, so that their livelihood (and maybe their lives) will be bled away to support a socialist/jihadi federal tyranny that has chosen to represent not “American exceptionalism” or the “city on a hill” but the worst of all possible worlds. That’s their choice, but let them not claim their willful blindness as moral superiority.

Each bullet point below is a separate link:

• The Balkan Problem, Part 1
  

  Several times on Blogmocracy, the actions of the Serbs in the FYRs (former Yugoslav Republics) have come up for discussion. What is lacking in these discussions is the background, history, and ethnic tension that underlies the actions. This post will attempt to clarify how a culture of Serbian Orthodox Christians can end up as war criminals. What drives civilized men to massacre? This is part one in a series. Next, Did the US and NATO pick the wrong side in the Yugoslavian Wars?

  Read more at the above link.

• The Balkan Problem, Part 2a: Did the US and NATO pick the wrong side in the Yugoslavian Wars?
• The Balkan Problem, Part 2b: Who Are the KLA?
• The Balkan Problem, Part 3: Revisiting Srebrenica

Blog admin 1389 received the following article from Stella Jatras.

Justice seems as far away now as it was then.

“Since Mitrovica is in the news, I’m sending this out again for those who might not have read it. – Stella”

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/jatras4.html

Other Side of an Ugly Story

by Stella L. Jatras
Special to Antiwar.com
9/6/00

I have followed with great interest the events in Kosovo this past year and I was particularly intrigued by both accounts written by Officer Vincent duCellier that were published in the Washington Times. Officer duCellier, a former Maryland police officer, has selflessly volunteered his time and separation from his family to command the prison in Mitrovica, Kosovo. The first article appeared as a touching letter written to his wife titled, “Lessons of a lifetime,” dated as a 3 August editorial. The second article published in The Metropolitan Section of the Times is dated 21 August and titled, “‘We are the police’ in war-torn Kosovo, Maryland cop learns the value of America from volunteer mission,” and was almost identical to the first article, which aroused my curiosity as to why the Washington Times would give second coverage to identical reports in so short a time. This is in response to Officer duCellier’s observations as a police officer commanding the Mitrovica prison in Kosovo.

Officer duCellier alluded many times in both letters to the “hatred that is clearly evident between Serbians and Albanians.” However, what appears to have made the greatest impression on him, and perhaps exposes his pro-Albanian sentiments, was the tragic fate of a young 16-year old Albanian boy who was totally paralyzed on the right side as the result of a beating by the Serbian police a year earlier, which left him with only limited use of his left side. Officer duCellier writes, “He is Albanian. This was his crime, and so the Serbian police under [Slobodan] Milosevic broke his neck.” I certainly do not defend this act of cruelty, but Officer duCellier neglected to relate even one of the incidents where Serbs were the victims.

A FEW EXAMPLES OF THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY

Unfortunately, there are many tragic stories such as the one told by Officer duCellier. As an example, the tragic death of the Bulgarian staffer working for the U.N. civilian mission in Kosovo who was shot and killed after his first day on the job. (AP, U.N. Official killed in Kosovo). The AP writes: “According to Inspector Gilles Moreau of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, now serving with the UN in Pristina, a group of ethnic Albanian youths followed him and asked him what the time was. When Krumov replied in Serbian, the youths began to kick and punch him. A large crowed gathered, separating Krumov from his colleagues. “‘All of a sudden, a shot was heard, the crowd dispersed and the body of Mr. Krumov was on the ground, lifeless,’ said Inspector Moreau. Krumov had been shot in the head.”

And what was this young man’s crime, I would like to ask Officer duCellier? The Guardian of 13 October 1999 writes that “Mr. Krumov, a Bulgarian, was killed because he spoke a simple phrase in Serbian.” I repeat: “He spoke a simple phrase in Serbian.”

Another example of injustice was done to a Serbian man and his two sons who spent over a year in prison [was it in Officer duCellier's prison?] after having been accused of killing an ethnic Albanian. The Washington Times reported on 9 August that a “Serbian man, two sons acquitted, slaying case seen as test of Kosovo justice for minorities.” [LOL. "Kosovo justice for minorities?"]. An Associated Press article on 21 July writes, “the murder trial of a Serb man and his two sons, accused of killing an ethnic Albanian in a shootout in Kosovo, took a dramatic turn Friday when the trial judge said American troops confirmed they killed two people at the scene that day. Judge Patrice De Charette said the admission was contained in a 103-page report submitted by U.S. authorities Friday to the court trying Mirolub ‘Mirko’ Momcilovic, 60 and his sons Jugoslav, 32, and Boban, 25.” Is this what Officer duCellier considers to be justice by keeping innocent Serbian men in prison for over a year before being released?

Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi, the U.S. soldier who received a life sentence without parole for killing an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl while on peacekeeping duty in Kosovo, bragged to his fellow soldiers that he was going to pin this one on the Serbs. If the Sergeant had not taken along one of his buddies while in the process of dumping his young victim’s body in a field, innocent Serbs would be rotting in jail for the rest of their lives at this very moment and Sgt. Ronghi would be walking around scot free to perhaps rape and murder another young girl and blaming it on Serbs, and why not? After all, the name of the game is, “blame it on the Serbs!” when considering the Serbs have been accused of other atrocities for which they were not guilty.

Sgt. Ronghi was not dragged before the dock at the International Criminal Court (ICC) as is done to Serbs who, unknowingly have been secretly declared as war criminals and kidnaped under some of the most bizarre circumstances such as kicking down the door of a Kosovo Serbian medical center and yanking the patient from his hospital bed at 2:45 a.m. A military spokesman said that the man had been wounded by a British KFOR soldier during rioting in the Serbian enclave of Gracanica, just south of the provincial capital, after a grenade attack on a Serb market there. Father Sava of Decani Monastery, emphasized that he did not wish to address whether the patient should have been arrested or not but he condemned the manner in which this was done, calling it “unprecedented and unacceptable” and added, “We cannot tolerate this anymore! This kind of behavior on the part of British KFOR show us that the international forces are an occupying force, not peacekeeping forces acting in accordance with the UN Resolution.”

Another assault by ethnic Albanians on Serbs was reported by Associated Press on 5 December 1999 when an American Professor from Berkeley was murdered. AP reported, “NATO peacekeepers and U.N. police only realized later what had happened: A crowd of ethnic Albanians had pulled [Professor] Basic, his 51-year old wife and her 74-year-old mother from the car, flipped it over and set it on fire. The mob kicked, punched and pummeled them. Basic was shot. Firecrackers were jammed in the mouths of the terrified women. Basic died en route to the hospital. The two women suffered critical injuries and remain hospitalized in the Serbian city of Nis.” The Associated Press also reported that “His [Professor Basic] face looked as if it had been dragged across gravel. The medic who was present began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but couldn’t hear Basic’s breathing over the crowed’s shouting. He ripped open the man’s shirt. That’s when he saw the bullet’s entry wound.”

But why am I not surprised at the Gestapo method of apprehending those bearing the Scarlet Letter “S” for Serb? Didn’t this sort of Nazi-type thuggery happen in the wee hours of the morning when storm troopers broke into the home where young Elian Gonzales was being protected by his Cuban Miami family from being returned to “Papa Castro?” Were Bosnia and Kosovo merely rehearsals for what occurred on that early morning raid in Florida?

I would like to ask Officer duCellier, are the KLA/Albanian thugs who committed these atrocities in his prison, or in any other prison for that matter? When incidents of this sort occur, most ethnic Albanians are questioned and then released without spending any time behind bars, unlike Serbs who are detained in prisons even after they have been proven innocent. The question should then be raised, where was the outrage from Professor Basic’s congressman and senators over his violent death and the brutality displayed against his family? Did that act of Albanian barbarity not warrant some condemnation?

R. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post Foreign Service reported on 12 June, 2000, “The killer stood ankle-deep in the mud of a stream bed on Sunday night two weeks ago and poked his AK-47 through a metal fence covered with camouflaging vegetation. He was close enough to get a clear view of 4-year-old Milos Petrovic and four Serbian men milling in front of the tiny grocery in this Kosovo village. Milos had come for an ice cream cone with his uncle, but his presence was no deterrent to the gunman who fired 21 shots at the group and then fled along the stream. Milos’ head was nearly gone, and two of the men also died quickly. U.S. troops flew the others by helicopter to a base camp for surgery.” The report continues:

“The dead were among the more than 500 people who have been slain in Kosovo since NATO peacekeeping troops and U.N. officials arrived here one year ago to begin reconstructing this war-ravaged, ethnically riven Serbian province. In the last five weeks alone, more than 55 other serious, ethnically motivated crimes have been committed against Kosovo’s minority Serbian population.” Very recently, two hand grenades were thrown at a group of people in the Serb area of Kosovo, wounding ten Serbian children ranging from the ages of five to 15. Are any of the Albanian terrorists who committed these atrocities languishing in Officer duCellier’s prison?

NATO TERRORISM RESULTS IN AMPUTATIONS FOR INNOCENT CIVILIANS

Acts of brutality by NATO’s use of stun guns against the Serbian population resulted in the amputation of limbs. As reported in the Associated Press of 16 March, 2000, “Seizing control of a key bridge in a first step to reunite this ethnically divided city, NATO peacekeepers clashed Wednesday with angry Serbs in a confrontation during which two people lost limbs to stun grenades.” It continues: “At least 15 Serbs and an undetermined number of peacekeepers and journalists were injured. Nine of the injured were hospitalized, said Dr. Radomir Jankovic, a chief surgeon at the Serb-controlled hospital. A mother of three and a diabetic man each had one foot amputated because of injuries suffered when stun grenades fired by French peacekeepers exploded near them, Jankovic said.” Have charges been brought against the French peacekeepers for inflicting such pain and suffering on their Serbian victims? Agence France Presse reported that “a 70-year-old Serbian woman was dragged out of her house after being savagely beaten by unidentified assailants, the UN’s refugee agency in Kosovo said on Friday. The agency seized on the attack as an example of the ‘horrific lack of community initiative’ demonstrated by the overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian community in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren when it came to dealing with hate crimes. The woman was attacked in her Prizen home before her assailants dragged her outside and left her in the street.” AFP reported from Pristina on 27 August that “a Kosovo Serbian child was killed and three others seriously injured when a car hit them Sunday, UN police spokesman Richard Graham told AFB. A car leaving the scene was stopped by KFOR peacekeeping troops and two Kosovo Albanian men were arrested by UN police in relation to the incident,” and in another case, Fr. Sava reported that on the same day the Serbian child was killed, a 75-year-old Serb from Crkvena vodica was also killed by a machine gun fire from an unindentified car which immediately disappeared in direction of Albanian dominated Obilic.

As Patrick J. Buchanan says, “What is goin’ on here?”

Again, I would like to ask Officer duCellier, have any of these Albanian thugs been jailed and brought to justice? What was the Serbian child run down by a car, or the machine-gun death of the 75-year-old Serb guilty of other than being Serbs?

Jerry Seper of the Washington Times wrote on 4 May 1999, “KLA rebels train in terrorists camps, Bin Laden offers financing, too.” During the first two months of KFOR’s occupation, more churches were destroyed by America’s buddies, the KLA mafia, than under 500 years of the Ottoman Empire, and the destruction of Serbian holy sites continues while Congress remains silent unlike their passionate display of condemnation on the floor of the House of atrocities allegedly committed by Serbs. It seems our good Congressmen couldn’t get on the floor fast enough to denounce alleged Serb atrocities. While all traces of Serbian churches and monasteries are being eradicated, the United Arab Emirates’ defense minister has offered to build 50 mosques in Kosovo at his own expense. (Reuters, 20 August).

I cannot stress frequently enough and strongly enough that the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has somehow been magically morphed into the peaceful Kosovo Protection Force, was armed and trained in Osama bin Laden’s camps and are engaged in sex slavery, (“Sex slave trade thrives among Kosovo troops,” London Times, 5 February 2000), prostitution, (“Kosovo’s Flesh Trade, the San Francisco Chronicle, July 24, 2000), kidnaping, murder and drugs (“Albanian drug dealers and trafficers are flourishing in post-war Kosovo,” by Imer Mushkola in Pristina, 23 May, 00). This is the nature of the KLA beast, and now that they have almost succeeded in ridding themselves of the Serbs, Roma, Jews and non-Albanians, they have already begun to kill their own. And after they have rid themselves of unwanted ethnic Albanians, who’s left to target? You guessed it – American GIs. Isn’t it comforting to know that our politicians and media have made a pact with these thugs on behalf of the American people? Christopher Lane and Benjamin Schwartz of the Washington Post say, “We were Suckers for the KLA,” but were we? I think not. We have known all along exactly what our agenda was – to rid the world of those pesky Serbs and to take over their assets.

In an incredible report, the Washington Times of August 22, World Section headlines, “Violence against minorities no longer stuns Kosovo.” It goes on to say, “Violence against minority groups is so common place it appears to be regarded as normal, often met with a resigned shrug of the shoulders from U.N. police officers and members of the NATO-led Kosovo Force (Kfor) peacekeeping.” The “civilized” community was more than willing to accept some retribution, some form of revenge by ethnic Albanians against the minorities who were left in Kosovo, as though two wrongs DO make a right, but the question should be asked over and over again, revenge for what? Retribution for what? And for how long? More and more reports are finally beginning to surface that there were no mass graves in Kosovo, nor was there a genocide and that rumors of atrocities committed by Serbs had been greatly exaggerated. The BBC World Service reported on 17 June, 2000 of the huge arms find in Kosovo and writes that K-For British-led peacekeepers in Kosovo have uncovered the largest store of illegal arms found since fighting ended in the province a year ago. Six tons of arms have so far been removed from the bunkers. “You’ve got enough here to start a small war,” said British Major Simon Marr. AP further substantiated ownership of the cache of weapons when it wrote, “NATO said Friday that a huge cache of weapons including mortars, mines and machine guns found last week belonged to the Kosovo liberation Army.” Are these arms violators serving time? Not in Officer duCellier’s prison, I would venture to guess.

Am I to assume that as a “volunteer,” Officer duCellier is not being financially rewarded other than having the satisfaction of helping to keep order in a prison in Kosovo? Is it compassion alone that he feels the need to extend his services in Kosovo until September of 2001? If so, he is certainly to be commended for his humanitarian desire to bring law and order to a lawless nation, one created by NATO and our politicians. Or is it possible that there is a $$$$ factor which enters the picture? Officer duCellier states that there are “36 International Police Officers on my staff and 65 detainees in the jail. The detainees are mostly Serbians [a little over half, he states] accused of various war crimes such as mass murder, [apparently, charges of killing just ONE ethnic Albanian is considered to be "mass murder," such as in the case of the Serbian father and sons], genocide and arson top the list. They each profess to be innocent. The Roma here face similar charges, while the Albanians are charged with minor theft, weapons possession and attempted murder.” “Minor theft? Weapons possession and attempted murder?” It appears that KLA/ethnic Albanians who commit atrocities such as raping a Serbian nun while Kosovar rebels looted her monastery after NATO troops refused a mother superior’s plea for protection, or “Grannies” who have been targeted for special horrors, such as decapitation, drowning in bathtubs, stabbing or raped, [their crime of being Serbs], are considered to be lesser crimes than those allegedly committed by Serbs accused of “mass murder,” [mass graves that have been proven to be non-existent?] Or “genocide,” yet the Wall Street Journal reported, “War in Kosovo was Cruel, Bitter, Savage; Genocide It Wasn’t,” (31 December 1999). Could it be that Serbs in Officer duCellier’s prison are accused of war crimes that do not exist?

Bob Djurdjevic’s Truth in Media (TiM) reported on 14 August that “Hashim Thaci, the Kosovo Albanian terrorist-in chief and (thus) Madeleine Albright’s good pal, attended a gala luncheon on Monday (Aug. 14) at the Democratic Party convention in Los Angeles. A TiM source who was also there said that when Albright and Bill Clinton showed up, “before they spoke, Thaci went up to Albright, had a brief talk, and then kissed twice on the cheeks.” It was during her last visit to Kosovo that Madeleine Albright was greeted with kisses from Thaci, after he had just executed six of his officers. It appears that Senator Lieberman shares views of Madam Albright, for it was he who said, “The United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles…Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values.” (Washington Post, April 28, 1999).

By now, we have all heard the joke of how the war in the Balkans began. During a meeting of Madeleine Albright with the all-male NATO ministers, she asked the question, “Well gentleman, do we make love or do we make war?” Of course, the answer was unanimously for war.

And what a lovely war it is, Officer duCellier. Money and all.

As a career military officer’s wife, Stella Jatras has traveled widely and has lived in many foreign countries where she not only learned about other cultures but became very knowledgeable regarding world affairs and world politics. Stella Jatras lived in Moscow for two years where her husband, George, was the Senior Air Attaché), and while there, worked in the Political Section of the US Embassy. Stella has also lived in Germany, Greece and Saudi Arabia. Her travels took her to over twenty countries. She is the author of the “Open Letter to General Michael Short,” which antiwar.com carried on 11/3/99, “From Camp Swampy to Camp Bondsteel!” on 4/6/00, and “Srebrenica – Code Word to Silence Critics of US Policy in the Balkans” on 7/31/00.

H/T: Herbert Sobel:

A C-141A Starlifter had been delayed for takeoff for over an hour at Thule Air Force Base, Greenland, because its sewage container had not been pumped out. An Airman meandered up to the aircraft with the containment pump, fiddled around for a while, then got ready to leave.

The young Captain who was the aircraft commander confronted the Airman, and stated, “You have caused me to be two hours late for my takeoff. I’ll see that you are not only reprimanded, but punished as well!”

The young Airman smiled and said, “Sir, with all due respect, I have no stripes, I’m stationed at Thule, Greenland, it’s 20 degrees below zero, and I’m pumping s*** out of an airplane. Just what kind of punishment did you have in mind?”

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn pointed out: once the authorities take everything away from a person, he is free all over again.

Desperate Unemployed Software Engineer Attacks IRS Office Building

By now, many readers will have heard the news story about pilot Joseph Stack having crashed a small plane into the IRS office building in Austin Texas (for details, see Fox News, Pilot Crashes Into Texas Building in Apparent Anti-IRS Suicide.)

The Inevitable Media Reaction

Whenever anything like this happens, the same kinds of articles tend to appear in the media and on blogs. There are the articles that, often with a self-righteous tone, wax eloquent about the horrific nature of the act, the despicable character of the attacker, and (often) the pristine innocence of the victims. Given that the victims in this event were IRS employees, little has been said about them in the media.

Then there are those other articles that sympathize with the attacker’s motives, ideology, or political stance, but condemn the attacker’s use of violence. Here again, I haven’t seen much of that this time around. Joseph Stack’s manifesto encompassed such a mixed bag of grievances, accusations, and quotations that it is impossible to tell where in the political spectrum he was coming from. I suspect that he himself had no clear idea.

Finally, there are articles calling out for more and more government legislation, regulation, or law enforcement to prevent any similar incidents from occuring in the future. In this instance, there were acknowledgements that it is all but impossible to prevent this type of suicide attack, but no amount of reasoning or common sense ever seems to stop the flood of demands for draconian repressive measures.

The “Powers That Be” Knew Something Like This Was Bound To Happen

No matter where you live in the world, you know that the worldwide economy has been bad for over two years, and there is no improvement in sight. The rot started in the US, largely due to actions on the part of the US government and various corrupt oligarchs, such as George Soros. The collapse and supposed “bailout” were engineered by various corrupt politicians and financiers to take money out of our pockets and put it into their own. Everything done by the US Congress and the Obama administration has served only to deepen the depression. From here, the economic rot has spread worldwide; two notable examples are Iceland and Greece.

Then there’s the issue of the U.S. economy having been hollowed out by outsourcing, offshoring, and the H-1b visa program. This has had a particularly devastating effect on the American middle class in general, and the American IT worker in particular.

Even with the real unemployment rate in many areas of the US matching or exceeding that of the 1930s Great Depression, it is truly scandalous that the H-1b program remains in effect. This insures that any effort on the part of American IT workers to get jobs, or to retrain themselves for future jobs in the industry, are doomed to come to naught.

The H-1b program never had anything to do with aiding the competitiveness of US firms in global markets; that ship sailed away years ago. Instead, the H-1b program is simply a testimony to the power of multinational technology megabusinesses to deceive, corrupt, and intimidate US elected officials. (Please see IT Business Edge: AFL-CIO Report Takes Critical Look at H-1B Visa Program for more on this issue.)

How is this relevant to the story? The attacker, Joseph Stack, was an unemployed IT worker who was also bedeviled by a long battle with the IRS and, apparently, ensuing difficulties with his home life. I would like to point out that the overwhelming majority of people faced with such situations never “go postal” or resort to any form of violence. But the US government has enough statistics and historical data at its disposal to know that, whenever a large group of people is pushed too far into desperation, a tiny percentage of them will go over the edge.

Let me make it clear that I am NOT claiming that anybody connected with the US government knew ahead of time that this particular individual, Joseph Stack, would do what he did. I said no such thing, nor did I mean to imply it. But I do intend to say that the US government knew that it was only a matter of time before someone whose life had been destroyed by government policies would commit a high-profile violent act.

The “Powers That Be” Could Have Prevented It Without Repressive Measures

The US Congress and the Obama administration could cut unemployment significantly just by eliminating the H-1b program, but they do not. Part of the reason why H-1b remains in effect is simply because the Obama administration not only is thoroughly corrupt, but also is engaged in a covert war to disempower, plunder, and eventually eliminate most of the US middle class. In other words, the Obama administration is not going to do anything to help out a segment of the population that does not provide the Democrat party with significant political or financial support.

But that’s not the only reason. Whenever anyone who is not part of the administration’s political support base reacts to oppression by becoming violent, this violent act provides those in power with a convenient excuse both to discredit their political opponents and to increase government control by cracking down on everybody by any means available.

If Violence Is Not The Answer, What Is?

Supposed “democratic election” or no, recent polls in the US have made it clear that neither the Obama administration nor the US Congress enjoy the consent of the governed, in any sense of the word. The US economy remains in free fall with no recovery in sight, and with the levels of debt and irresponsible spending being what they are, little possibility of recovery in the lifetime of anybody old enough to read this blog. Glenn Beck proclaimed that we don’t need a revolution; we’ve already had one. He is correct that we don’t need a “revolution” in that sense, but incorrect that we have already had one. The American Revolution in 1776 was not really a revolution in the usual sense, but a war of secession. What we need now is not revolution, but secession, and not just one secession, but perhaps fifty of them. And if enough people understand what they want, secession need not involve bloodshed.

Keep watching this blog for more about secession.

Here we go again, this time with the “Pentagon Shooter”

Michelle Malkin has the story here: About the Pentagon shooter – Update: Stop playing games, MSM. John Patrick Bedell was a registered Democrat