Bill Clinton’s Bastard Army: Iconic Images, On Trial, Follow the Money

Article originally published in the New English Review

By Ares Demertzis (Feb. 2009)

I: A Brief Synopsis.

Part 1:
- (i) Covert Exploits; Encouraging Islamic Jihad.
- (ii) Catholic Croatia; Operation Storm.
- (iii) Rambouillet
Part 2:
- (iv) The “Air Campaign.”
- (v) The Catholic Croatians.
- (vi) The Muslims
Part 3:
- (vii) Genocide
- (viii) Disinformation & Misinformation.
- (ix) The Breadline Massacre, The Market Massacres & Racak
Part 4:
- (x) Iconic Images.
- (xi) On Trial.
- (xii) Follow the Money

II: Links, plus

Czechoslovak Documentary (Video):
“Stolen Kosovo.”
International Criminal Tribunal (Video):
“Milosevic On Trial.”
“The Hague Tribunal”
“Slobodan Milosevic vs. New World Order”

(x) Iconic Images.

“One picture is worth a thousand words” is the clichéd but accurate proverb that more than adequately describes the media driven conflicts of the last half of the twentieth century.

During the Viet Nam war, Associated Press photographer Nick Ut was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his image of a naked nine year old, Phan Thi Kim Phuc running from a napalm attack. The caption provided by the American press originally reported that it was an American air strike. That was incorrect, leading subsequently to a grudging correction holding the South Vietnamese air force (VNAF)accountable. Eddie Adams photographed General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnamese national police commander, executing a Viet Cong prisoner on a Saigon street and galvanized American public opinion against the war.

General Loan justified his action because: “These guys kill a lot of our people, and I think Buddha will forgive me.”

During the Second Intifada, Muhammad Jamal al-Durrah, a young Palestinian boy was videotaped cowering behind a concrete cylinder as Israeli Defense Forces pitilessly murdered him. The scenes were aired around the world, appalling viewers; the boy became a martyr in the Arab world and an international symbol of Israeli aggression. The Israeli army hurriedly communicated that “the shots were apparently fired by Israeli soldiers” and issued an apology, expressing sorrow and calling the episode “heartrending” in the wake of intense condemnation. However, the entire incident was staged by a reporter for French public television station “France 2.”

During the Lebanese conflict with Israel, the Reuters news agency consistently released manipulated, false images. Their journalists also created events with the cooperation of Hezballah; Reuters nevertheless submitted these images for global release as authentic, spontaneous events.

The Serbian conflict also proved to be vulnerable to the manipulated deceptions of elite media. Samantha Powers, in her Pulitzer Prize winning “A Problem from Hell,” confessed that U.S. diplomats “needed help from American reporters, editorial boards, and advocacy groups.”

The British Independent Television Network, on August 6, 1992, aired the indispensable iconic image designed to inflame worldwide public outrage against Serbia. An emaciated man, Fikret Alic, was standing timidly behind a tall barbed wire fence at a Serb “concentration camp” in Trnopolje. Except that it wasn´t a concentration camp, but a transit camp, and the barbed wire was not a corral, being visually manipulated to create the false impression that he was detained in an enclosed space. Fikret Alic was recovering from a long illness and was specifically chosen by the cameraman whose voice can be heard over the image in the original footage indicating that “the thin one, on the left” should approach the camera.

“They (the journalists) were fully aware this image would shock the world,” said Thomas Deichmann, known for his writing on the Bosnian war accusing journalists of fabricating evidence. (Video: “Milosevic On Trial”). Nonetheless the ICTY judges of war crimes at The Hague found that, contrary to the visually documented claims and the physical evidence, Trnopolje was indeed a camp where Muslims were “undoubtedly” imprisoned and where many were beaten, tortured, raped and killed by their Serb guards.”

George Kenney, US State Department, Desk Officer for Yugoslavia: “It was absolutely false, and was very, very misleading. It´s a shame that afterward…people who told that (real) story, they were punished. A magazine in the U.K. was shut down with a libel suit…Columbia Journalism Review had requested an article from me…eventually the editor said: this story is too complicated for us, and we don´t want to get involved. It went against mainstream opinion.” (Video: “Milosevic On Trial”).

(xi) On Trial.

Twelve years after publishing “The Wasteland of Historical Reality,” Croatian President Franjo Tudjman´s paean extolling the concept of genocide, six years after President Clinton´s devastating “Operation Storm,” ethnically cleansed Serbs from Croatia, two years after President Clinton´s murder of innocent civilians by American bombing attacks, finally, on April Fool’s Day, 2001, Slobodan Milosevic was arrested in Serbia without charges, and on June 28 of that year illegally, without any extradition formality, presented as a kidnapped prisoner to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

“The ICTY opened the prosecution in February 2002 after a year of preparation. At that time, the ICTY and the media presented the Milosevic case as “the trial of the century.” Within the first month, however, Milosevic had so ably handled his political and legal presentation, and had so effectively cross-examined hostile witnesses, that many reporters had to admit the case against the Serb leader was weak to non-existent. Publicity on the case was damaging NATO’s justification for the war.”

“The ICTY allowed Milosevic only 90 days to prepare his defense and was to allow only 150 days for him to present it, half the time the court took for the prosecution.

“Transparency is not of much interest to the judges (of the ICTY) either: when I asked to see the medical evidence which, they claimed, showed that Milosevic was too sick to defend himself but not so sick that the trial should be abandoned, I was told it was confidential. And when on Tuesday Milosevic pleaded that he was too sick to continue, presiding judge Patrick Robinson simply barked, ‘Are you deaf? I told you to call the next witness.’…These days we have the Neo-Cons’ war (Iraq). Back then we had the Liberals’ War (Yugoslavia). There’s continuity. The lying didn’t start with Judy Miller nor the saber-rattling with Bill Kristol.”

Slobodan Milosevic suspected the ICTY of a calculated intent to convict him with deliberate prejudice. The lead prosecutor, Geoffrey Nice, was allowed by the court to employ tactics reminiscent of Stalin´s show trials in the former Communist USSR that included secret witnesses for the prosecution, admission of hearsay evidence by the prosecution, immunity from perjury for witnesses for the prosecution, and that most repugnant prosecutorial contrivance: the suborning of witnesses for the prosecution. It bears repeating that this Tribunal was considered by the U.S. and the E.U. as a lawful proceeding being conducted in the consecrated halls of The Hague.

Slobodan Milosevic at the ICTY: “This here is obviously a colossal abuse of power to fabricate an historical forgery in which those who advocated the preservation of Yugoslavia would be charged with its destruction; those who defended the country would be accused of crimes; and those who advocated and committed secession, advocating separatism and terrorism, would be given amnesty – because they were backed by forces that wanted to establish control over the Balkans, so as to be able to use this strategic position to establish their control elsewhere.

Milosevic addressed the legitimacy of the court as follows: “This tribunal represents the most serious form of discrimination against one country and is a violation. The jurisdiction of a court and its legality has precedence over the question of authority; because if a court is not legal then the question of its authority or jurisdiction is pointless…no court can decide on its own legality. This illegal tribunal does not have the right to deprive persons before it from answering whether they are facing a legal or an illegal organ, particularly if there is a legally valid way to resolve this question (through the previously established International Court of Justice).”

On another occasion Milosevic dramatically exposed the Tribunal as part of NATO´s war strategy by attacking the covert funding of the ICTY: “Your own Article 32 of the Statutes for the Tribunal provides that expenses should be covered by the regular budget of the United Nations, but in practice the money comes from very much morbid sources, dark sources, like the Soros Foundation, other foundations, and also some Islamic countries. The bulk of the money comes from NATO itself. We should also need to recall that Soros is funding the Liberation (Muslim) Army of Kosovo (KLA).”

Among the inconsistencies in the ICTY indictment against Milosevic, several facts actually undermine the prosecution´s case: Paragraph 23 admits that it was the KLA, not the Milosevic regime, which precipitated the civil war in Kosovo: “While the wars were being conducted in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the situation in Kosovo, while tense, did not erupt into the violence and intense fighting seen in the other countries (Keep in mind that these “other countries” formed part of one country – Yugoslavia). In the mid-1990s, however, a faction of the Kosovo (Muslim) Albanians organized a group…known in English, as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). This group advocated a campaign of armed insurgency and violent resistance to the Serbian authorities. In mid-1996, the KLA began launching attacks primarily targeting Former Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and Serbian police forces. Thereafter, and throughout 1997, FRY and Serbian police forces responded with forceful operations against suspected KLA bases and supporters in Kosovo.”

“Had Western powers supported the federal state, Yugoslavia might have held together—but they did not. Instead they not only encouraged Slovenia, Croatia, and later Bosnia-Herzegovina to secede, they also insisted that the (Yugoslav) federal state not use force to prevent it. Diana Johnstone recounts a January 1991 meeting in Belgrade between the U.S. ambassador and Borisav Jovic, a Serb then serving on Yugoslavia’s collective State Presidency. “(The) United States would not accept any use of force to disarm the paramilitaries,” Jovic was told. “Only ‘peaceful’ means were acceptable to Washington.”

“The Yugoslav army was prohibited by the United States from using force to preserve the Federation, which meant that it could not prevent the Federation from being dismembered by force – a remarkable injunction against a sovereign state.”
“Similar warnings were communicated by the EC as well. We might try to imagine what the United States would look like today were the questions it faced in 1860 about its federal structure (The US Civil War), and the rights of states handled in as prejudicial a manner by much stronger foreign powers.”

Contemporary examples of sovereign governments which have carried out violent repression of secessionist or insurgent movements include Spain against the Basque ETA, France in Algeria, Britain in Northern Ireland, and Turkey against its Kurdish minority and the separatist PKK, but suppression of violent insurgent movements in order to maintain a stable and unified Yugoslavia were unacceptable to the United States and the European Union.

Paragraph 34 of the Milosevic indictment details that “towns and villages have been shelled, homes, farms and businesses burned, and personal property destroyed. As a result of these orchestrated actions, towns, villages and entire regions have been made uninhabitable for (Muslim) Kosovo Albanians.” This deceitful accusation could also provide the basis for prosecution of those responsible for the U.S./NATO bombing against Serbia, however there are no anticipated indictments of Clinton, Albright, Cohen, or General Wesley Clark by the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Dutch Government Report April 10, 2002: “In view of the US covert support to the Croats it will be interesting to see if the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague (ICTY), will seriously investigate this matter.” (Srebrenica – A Safe Area? Appendix II. Intelligence and the war in Bosnia 1992-1995: The Role of the Intelligence and Security Services. Chapter 4, Secret Arms Supplies and Other Covert Actions.)

“In a startling concession to the Milosevic defense, and in contradiction of the serial indictments of Milosevic et al. for having participated in a “joint criminal enterprise” the alleged purpose of which was to create a “new Serb-dominated state,” the “Greater Serbia” of lore, Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice asserted that “The concept that all Serbs should live in one state is different from the concept of the Greater Serbia…” (p.43225).”

“Nice acknowledged that Milosevic was motivated not by any desire to create a “Greater Serbia” but by the “pragmatic” goal of “ensuring that all the Serbs who had lived in the former Yugoslavia should be allowed – for either constitutional or other reasons – to live in the same unit.” That meant, as we know historically from his perspective, first of all that the former Yugoslavia shouldn’t be broken up.” (p. 43227).” (Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milosevic (IT-02-54-E), August 25, 2005, pp. 43225-43227.

“As best we can tell, this instance of the prosecution’s abandonment of one of the central charges against Milosevic was never reported in the English language print media.” See here (pdf p.24).

“The trial had been going badly from the point of view of the prosecution (which included the judges) for most of its incredible duration. Here is what Neil Clark, a Balkans specialist, wrote in the Guardian newspaper of London, in 2003: It is two years today that the trial of Slobodan Milosevic opened at The Hague. The chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, was triumphant as she announced the 66 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity and genocide that the former Yugoslavian president was charged with. CNN was among those who called it ‘the most important trial since Nuremburg’ as the prosecution outlined the ‘crimes of medieval savagery’ allegedly committed by the ‘butcher of Belgrade.’”

“But since those heady days, things have gone horribly wrong for Ms. Del Ponte. The charges relating to the war in Kosovo were expected to be the strongest part of her case. But not only has the prosecution signally failed to prove Milosevic’s personal responsibility for atrocities committed on the ground, the nature and extent of the atrocities themselves has also been called into question.”

“Coverage of the trial in the US was virtually non-existent, though there was a brief spotlight on what was actually going on when it was reported here that Wesley Clark’s testimony in court was subject to US censorship. Writing in the British Spectator last November John Laughland painted a trenchant portrait of the kangaroo proceedings, then four years old: Even though the former Yugoslav head of state has always pleaded his innocence, producing scores of witnesses to prove it, the trial is still not due to end until 2010. With the budget of The Hague tribunal running at nearly $300 million a year, this is doubtless a comfortable sinecure for the lawyers involved, most of whom had pretty unsuccessful careers at home. But such a long trial is by definition a travesty of justice: the Nuremberg trials lasted just over ten months, from 20 November 1945 to 30 September 1946.”

“…The trial has heard more than 100 prosecution witnesses, and not a single one has testified that Milosevic ordered war crimes. On the contrary: only last Tuesday, a Muslim captain in the Yugoslav army testified that no one in his unit had ever committed systematic harassment of (Muslim) Albanian civilians in Kosovo, and that he had never heard of any other unit doing so either. On 9 November the former head of security in the Yugoslav army, General Geza Farkas, an ethnic Hungarian, testified that all Yugoslav soldiers in Kosovo were handed a document explaining international humanitarian law, and that they were ordered to disobey any orders which violated it.”

“What has emerged from the trial to the general indifference of the world’s media is that the Serbs were subject to horrendous provocations.”

Encountering serious difficulty in making its case, and unable to produce credible evidence of Milosevic´s guilt even after accumulating a massive, unprecedented amount of testimony from witnesses, the prosecutor of the ICTY, Geoffrey Nice, found himself bizarrely obliged during the course of the trial to modify the original indictment brought against Milosevic and to include additional charges. Subsequent to the trial, in an act of most egregious cynicism by the British government, he was awarded the honor of Knights Bachelor for his services to international criminal justice.

London Times (U.K.) November 20, 2003: ”General Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander and (US) presidential hopeful, will testify next month at the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic under conditions of strict censorship and confidentiality imposed by the United States.” Washington is believed to be fearful of potentially damaging revelations about its Balkan realpolitik during the 1990s and in the Bosnian War.”

“General Clark will testify on December 15 and 16, 2003. Public galleries will be closed and the broadcast system that transmits the proceedings on the internet and on closed-circuit television will be shut down. The conditions of General Clark’s testimony include a 48-hour delay to enable the US Government to review the transcript and seek the court’s consent to censor parts on the ground of national security. Two US representatives will attend the sessions.”

“In his cross-examination of General Clark, Mr Milosevic could reveal sensitive information about the West’s diplomatic and military strategy for dealing with the crisis in the Balkans.”

President Milosevic objected to the terms of Clark’s testimony: “I don’t quite understand the position of this witness since my understanding was that he would be testifying in closed session and that you described that as a temporarily closed session, and then, in the meantime, representatives of the government of his country may be able to review the transcript, to approve some of it, to redact some of it possibly, and only then to release it to the public. I am not aware of any legal court in the world delegating its authority of this kind to any government.

This would be the first time for any such thing to happen. Of course, you consider yourself to be a legal court?”

“(Presiding Judge Sir Richard) May was very keen to limit the cross-examination. The first thing he said to President Milosevic was “Mr. Milosevic, before you begin cross-examining, you should know that there are parameters in this case beyond which you cannot go. We’ve already made an order which restricts the scope of cross-examination. I’m not going to go into the reasons for it again. It is limited to the statement which the witness has given, which means that you are restricted in a way that you are not restricted with other witnesses, because then you’re allowed to ask any relevant matters. You’re restricted in this case to the witness’s evidence. So you can give — ask him questions, of course, about what he’s said here but not about other evidence. He’s given no other evidence against you apart from the matter which General Clark has dealt with here. So your cross-examination in this case is limited. Of course you may conduct your cross-examination, but you will be stopped if you go beyond those particular bounds.”

President Milosevic: “Mr. May, just in order to clarify the basic attitude towards me in relation to this witness, is it in dispute that General Clark was in command of NATO during the war against Yugoslavia? And is it disputed that that was his most important role in everything that related to Yugoslavia? And is it in dispute that you’re not allowing me to ask him anything at all about that?” At that point President Milosevic denounced the proceedings as a farce…May said, “I also restrict your comments too.”

“President Milosevic asked him (May) again: “So I cannot ask him anything at all about the war waged by NATO against Yugoslavia. Is that what you’re saying?” And May said, “Yes.” Yes you read that right, Slobodan Milosevic was the President of Yugoslavia, and while he was the President of Yugoslavia, Wesley Clark conducted a war against Yugoslavia, and this “minor detail” was something that President Milosevic was prohibited from asking questions about.”

“Milosevic attempted to bring up the fact that Wesley Clark admitted in the November 17, 2003 issue of the New Yorker that NATO’s Kosovo war was “technically illegal” because according to Clark, “The Russians and the Chinese said they would both veto it. There was never a chance that it would be authorized.” I guess if Clark thinks that the NATO bombing was “technically illegal” then that makes him technically a war criminal, because he commanded it. Unfortunately, Milosevic couldn’t make that point because his microphone was constantly being switched off by Mr. May.

“When the cross-examination did start, Mr. May limited it to two and a half hours. As he explained to President Milosevic,”two and a half hours should be adequate to deal with the limited matters which the witness has given in evidence…Clark says he told Milosevic that if he didn’t remove the army and the police, then NATO would attack Yugoslavia…He just confirmed to the world that he, Wesley Clark, went to a sovereign state and told the head of that state that unless they removed their army and their police forces from their own territory that they would be bombed, and as we know, Yugoslavia was bombed.”

“Wesley Clark quite clearly proved that he broke international law, but he didn’t demonstrate that Milosevic did, his “evidence” was worthless to the prosecution.”

On March 11, 2006, Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his cell from an alleged heart attack. The chief prosecutor, Geoffrey Nice, in a video interview, commented wryly: “I think the conclusion of this trial was more likely to be a disaster…I think they would have got judgment eventually, I don´t know when, (and) if it would survive in the appeals…but the judgment would always have been open to various forms of attack.” Pausing, he chuckled briefly and continued: “Curiously, I know and I shouldn´t say so or even think this, I think it’s a rather satisfactory conclusion.” (Video: “Milosevic On Trial”).

“It’s hard not to feel that by dying in his cell, Slobodan Milosevic finally succeeded in his determined effort to cheat justice.” Thus the opening sentence of a New York Times editorial, Tuesday March 14 (2006). The editorial cited without comment Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations tribunal, who told an Italian interviewer that “the death of Milosevic represents for me a total defeat.”

“In fact Milosevic’s death in his cell from a heart attack spared Del Ponte and the Court (itself a drumhead tribunal set up by the United States with no proper foundation under international law or treaty) the ongoing embarrassment of a proceeding where Milosevic had made a very strong showing against the phalanx of prosecutors, hearsay witnesses and prejudiced judges marshaled against him. Until his death, “total defeat” had been the prospect facing Del Ponte, not Milosevic, though she presumably felt justifiably confident –based on their record of prejudiced rulings against Milosevic – that the judges would never let her down.”

“There are now charges and countercharges about poisons and self-medications. Milosevic’s son says his father was murdered. The embarrassed Court claims Milosevic somehow did himself in by tampering with his medicines.”

Now why would Milosevic, obviously and unmistakably winning his case, make the terminal decision to forego the prescribed medication he had been taking throughout the trial?

Indictment prepared by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark “to hold those convicted of the violations alleged accountable for their acts”: http://www.iacenter.org/warcrime/indictmt.htm

(xii) Follow the Money

Of all the American Presidents pursuing U.S. international supremacy, it was Clinton who subjected the democratic and sovereign Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to uncalled-for violence for its audacious temerity in resisting being usurped by the “Washington Consensus” into a “New World Order.” The “New World Order” terminology, incorrectly attributed to President Bush Sr., is in point of fact an expression coined by Adolph Hitler for The Third Reich, his totalitarian Socialist experiment. “Our strength lies in our intensive attacks and our barbarity…After all, who today remembers the genocide of the Armenians?”

It could be effectively argued that George W. Bush was encouraged to emulate Clinton´s successful Yugoslav regime change in Iraq by the lack of any detrimental political consequences to his predecessor from an American electorate largely ignorant of the clandestine military operations and the savagery of the remorseless “Air Campaign.” However, much like President Nixon before him, Bush lacked four indispensable political essentials: a supportive media, attractive features and a captivating charisma accompanied by convincing articulateness.

“Goals that are treated as an acceptable cost of “stability”…were articulated unabashedly and arrogantly in a Pentagon document entitled “The Defense Planning Guide.” The forty-six-page policy statement was excerpted in a prominent New York Times article on March 8, 1992. This major policy document asserts that the only possible course for the U.S. to pursue is complete world domination—militarily and politically. And it adds that no other country has the right to aspire to a role of leadership, even as a regional power.”

In 1982, a secret document, “National Security Directive #64” was signed by President Ronald Reagan; it allowed for “expanded efforts to promote ‘a quiet revolution’ to overthrow Communist governments while reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe into a market-oriented economy.” Two years later, in 1984, the Reagan Administration expressly selected Yugoslavia with “NSD #133”, “United States Policy toward Yugoslavia,” which provided for increased intervention.

Unwavering in his objective to impose rigorous capitalist ideological principles, Reagan insisted that a successful Communist state outside the Western bloc would not be tolerated. In large measure due to his relentlessly stern, albeit diplomatic and nonviolent efforts, the USSR ceased to exist in 1991, disintegrating into fifteen newly independent states.

Although benefiting from a successful economy, shortly before the death of Marshall Tito and partially due to United States maneuvering, Yugoslavia was persuaded into joining the Western International Monetary Fund (IMF) which “wreaked economic and political havoc… Slower growth, the accumulation of foreign debt and especially the cost of servicing it, as well as devaluation led to a fall in the standard of living of the average Yugoslav… The economic crisis threatened political stability … it also threatened to aggravate simmering ethnic tensions” (Covert Action Quarterly, No. 43, Winter 1992-93, p. 42.)

“Following the initial phase of (the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sponsored) macro-economic reform in 1980, industrial growth plummeted to 2.8 percent in the 1980-87 period, plunging to zero in 1987-88 and to a negative 10 percent growth rate by 1990.” (World Bank, Industrial Restructuring Study: Overview, Issues, and Strategy for Restructuring, Washington, D C, June 1991, pp. 10, 14)

“In one fell swoop, the reformers had engineered the final collapse of Yugoslavia’s federal fiscal structure and mortally wounded its federal political institutions. By cutting the financial arteries between Belgrade and the republics, the reforms fueled secessionist tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions, virtually ensuring the de facto secession of the republics.”

In Autumn 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yugoslav federal Premier Ante Markovic met in Washington with President George Bush Sr., to cap negotiations for a new financial aid package. In return for assistance, Yugoslavia agreed to even more sweeping economic reforms, including a new devalued currency, another wage freeze, sharp cuts in government spending, and the elimination of socially owned, worker-managed companies… The austerity measures had laid the basis for the recolonization of the Balkans.

The United States Congress passed the “1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act” which curtailed all financial assistance to Yugoslavia. The provisions of the Act had been casually referred to by the CIA as “a signed death warrant” for Yugoslavia. Jim Burkholder, “Humanitarian Intervention?” President Reagan´s earlier, non-violent, ideological “quiet revolution” to overthrow Communist governments was proving successful.

Unlike President Reagan, given Clinton´s tenuous credibility regarding ideology as evidenced during his “triangulating” Administration, it can be hypothetically, candidly understood that he lusted eagerly after the dismemberment of the sovereign Republic of Yugoslavia in anticipation of the substantial economic benefits to be derived from the privatization of Yugoslavia´s state owned assets. The United States and its allies had formulated an interventionist scheme to establish a puppet regime in Belgrade; however, the Socialist Milosevic government obstinately refused to submit. Like Josip Broz (Tito) before him, Milosevic favored a self-determining, non-aligned policy. For the U.S., the “One-World,” “One-Government” future was being hindered and seriously challenged by an insignificant bit-player on the world´s political stage: Slobodan Milosevic. The only viable option for the accomplishment of the neo colonialist vision was a strategy of divide and rule; the individual republics of Yugoslavia must be encouraged to secede.

The U.S. and its allies were determined to dominate the Balkans in Eastern Europe, dividing amongst themselves the mineral treasures and unexploited oil reserves in the Caucasus, Transcaucasia, the former Soviet states in southern Asia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, access to the Rhine/Danube river system, the Adriatic/Aegean, and a Black Sea route for an oil pipeline with a terminus in Turkey.

New York Times, December 5, 1995: “Retired Army General William Odom, affirmed that NATO occupation of the Balkans is part of a plan for U.S. domination of Europe and the former Soviet Union. He described the entire strategy as securing the resources of the Caspian Sea and “stabilizing, ultimately, Russia.”

R. Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, speaking to the U.S. Congress on April 17, 2007: “The cornerstone of (U.S.) policy in this region has long been the promise of integration of the Balkan countries with NATO and the European Union.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Crimes of War,” Gutman & Rieff, 1999: “America’s emergence as the sole global superpower makes a comprehensive strategy for Eurasia imperative…The task is to insure that no state or combination of states gains the ability to expel the U.S. or diminish its decisive role.”

In the words of Paddy Ashdown, International High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina, on December 9, 2003 during a conference in London to promote Bosnia to foreign investors: “The macroeconomic reforms…clear away the debris of the formerly socialist economy and open up the (country) to international markets and investment.”

Baltimore Chronicle: “What has gone totally unreported except in oil industry newsletters is the United Kingdom’s oil interests in the region of central and Eastern Europe. The leading NATO member has oil deals floating off the coast of Montenegro. In May of 1998 Medusa Oil and Gas Ltd. signed a 51-49 agreement with Jugopetrol Kotor. The agreement was for the excavation and exploration of a 1,548 square mile block of land and coast in the southern half of Montenegro. Kotor, a major port of Montenegro, is seen as a straight route to western markets. NATO has claimed its involvement in the Balkan region is based on fears that “if Kosovo unraveled then all the other states would unravel.” We never heard that if Montenegro dissolves, then this untapped source of oil is up for grabs.

The New Statesman (U.K.), December 13, 2004: “At the Davos summit of neoliberal chieftains in 1999, Blair berated Belgrade (Yugoslavia), not for its handling of Kosovo, but for its failure to embrace “economic reform” fully. In the bombing campaign that followed, it was state-owned companies, rather than military sites, that were targeted. NATO’s destruction of only 14 Yugoslav army tanks compares with its bombing of 372 centres of industry, including the Zastava car factory. “Not one foreign or privately owned factory was bombed.”

“Multinational companies are being offered ten- and 15-year leases of the (Kosovo) province’s local industries and resources, including the vast Trepca mines, some of the richest mineral deposits in the world. Overseeing this plundered, now almost ethnically pure “future democracy” (Blair), are 4,000 American troops at Camp Bondsteel, a 775-acre permanent-base imperial presence.”

Today, Germany owns 30% of industrial plants in these first two “former Yugoslav republics.” (E.H. Solano, “Media War Against the Serbs,” p.64)

“The breakup of the Yugoslav Federation meant that the many industries of Yugoslavia, including steel, auto, pharmaceuticals, chemical plants, railroads, mines, refining and processing, that had previously been owned by the whole population or by the workers in those plants have been forcibly privatized.”

Sara Flounders, International Action Center, in “Bosnia Tragedy” (1995), claimed: “U.S. involvement in the Balkans is not about helping any of the people in the region — Muslims, Croats, Serbs, or Albanians. The only interest of the Pentagon is in creating weak, dependent puppet regimes in order to dominate the entire region economically and politically. Only the giant multinational corporations will benefit.”

“Meanwhile, the show trial of Slobodan Milosevic proceeds as farce. Milosevic was a brute; he was also a banker once regarded as the west’s man who was prepared to implement “economic reforms” in keeping with IMF, World Bank and European Union demands; to his cost, he refused to surrender sovereignty.”

A distinctly singular judgment was voiced by the Democratic Party Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on April 17, 2007. It serves to expose U.S. priorities and apprehensions concerning Islam, ignoring that appeasement has always sharpened the appetite of Muslims, rather than satiating it. Congressman Tom Lantos called on “jihadists of all color and hue” to see Kosovo as “yet another example that the United States leads the way for the creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe.” If appeasement hasn´t worked for the yahood in Israel, why should it work for the kufr? What was the quid pro quo for such a manifestly suicidal decision regarding Western Civilization?

When Nixon was President, the salient advice given to Woodward and Bernstein during their Watergate investigation was to “follow the money.” That advice can be considered applicable to the puzzling, rationally inexplicable decisions of the Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations.

Prior to leaving office, Clinton started raising funds for his William J. Clinton Foundation. After years of persistently and inexplicably refusing to identify the donors, Hillary Clinton’s nomination as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration obliged the following, albeit partial and inadequate disclosure: the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia donated 10-25 million dollars; foreign governments donated directly at least 41 million; Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid and the organization Friends of Saudi Arabia and the Dubai Foundation each gave between one and five million; other Middle Eastern governments including Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei and Oman also donated between one and five million dollars. Clinton has also received remarkable compensation for his speaking fees in the Arab world.

And finally there is the enigma, the contradiction: George W. Bush, a Republican Party President considered a RINO (Republican In Name Only) by his supporters, in what seemed to be another error in judgment fashioned by a predictable ignorance, appeared to share the flawed vision of Islam held by his Democratic predecessors -“a religion of peace” – notwithstanding his actions as Commander in Chief in Afghanistan and Iraq. Seemingly thoroughly captivated by the Saudi King Abdulah, they sashayed into the scrub of his Crawford ranch holding hands – the President of the United States and an eminently wealthy former oil colleague.

President Bush stubbornly refused all appeals by an anxious Russia to reconsider the usurpation of Kosovo and its transformation into an Islamic state; he blundered into the attempted creation of a still illegitimate separate Islamic nation of Kosovo torn from the sovereign country of Serbia. At this writing, only 54 of the 192 member states of the United Nations recognize Kosovo as an independent country. This fateful gaffe created an international precedent Bush was soon to bitterly lament.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0GIIhm8OK4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnpwkIxd6bc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy1JzwpJ9ec

The West, and America in particular, is directly responsible for the present tense relationship with Russia. There is a definite, unambiguous connection between the Balkans and the Caucasus; South Ossetia and Abkhazia provide a mirror image to the clandestine aggression, overt military intervention and subsequent usurpation of Kosovo from an historical Russian political ally and devotee of an identical religion. With the swift occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the Russians appropriately countered the American cowboy President´s impudent confrontation with a Biblical response: “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”
Notwithstanding that U.S. and NATO fighter/bombers remained passive, Russian President Vladimir Putin openly warned the West he would forcefully oppose any clandestine effort at destabilizing his country – an implicit allusion to the covert Clinton subversion of Yugoslavia prior to its mutilation. The American media chose to interpret this communication as signifying a dwindling of Russian democracy; in fact, it indicated that Putin, like Milosevic before him, has no intention of being Washington´s lackey.

Pavel Felgenhauer and Nebojsa Malic, European military analysts, provide the following interpretation of Russian post-Kosovo opinion: “The people in the Russian military believe sincerely that they need to try to stop the U.S. now, before it goes on a real rampage around the world. That the U.S. is striving for world domination, no one has any doubt.”

Henry Kissinger, Newsweek, May 24, 1999: “The ill-considered war in Kosovo has undermined relations with China and Russia and put NATO at risk. The rejection of long-range strategy explains how it was possible to slide into the Kosovo conflict without adequate consideration of all its implications, especially the visceral reaction of almost all nations of the world against the new NATO doctrine of “humanitarian intervention”…No issue is more in need of rethinking than the concept of humanitarian intervention put forward as the administration’s contribution to a new approach to foreign policy. The air war in Kosovo is justified as establishing the principle that the international community – or at least NATO – will henceforth punish the transgressions of governments against their own people. But we did not do so in Algeria, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Croatia, Rwanda, the Caucasus, the Kurdish areas and many other regions…And what will be our attitude to emerging ethnic conflicts in Asia, for example in Indonesia and the Philippines? The answer often given is that we act where we are able to without undue risk, not elsewhere. But what are the criteria for this distinction? And what kind of humanism expresses its reluctance to suffer military casualties by devastating the civilian economy of its adversary for decades to come?”

“A strategy that vindicates its moral convictions only from altitudes above 15,000 feet – and in the process devastates Serbia and makes Kosovo unlivable – has already produced more refugees and casualties than any conceivable alternative mix of force and diplomacy would have. It deserves to be questioned on both political and moral grounds.”

The United States squandered an exceptional opportunity to forge a close alliance with a nation whose impressive cultural history and proud people have always been considered part of Western civilization, except for that brief and violently enforced sojourn into a political system that eliminated fifty million of its citizens in order to succeed as an oppressive political entity. In today’s capitalist Russia rock music, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds reign supreme. An American-Russian alliance would have provided the necessary resistance against an explicitly acknowledged future Islamic attempt at world hegemony; where the freedoms of the West may conceivably be obliterated in a totalitarian Muslim tsunami.

It remains doubtful that Communism as a state enforced collective political system will return to Russia, and if it should, it is extremely unlikely that the Russian government will revisit their prior abortive goal of world domination that has now been successfully appropriated by an expansionist Islam. However, the country will likely never achieve democracy in the conventional American concept of the term; their cultural traditions and history should lead them to construct a different politics of citizen participation in government, perhaps a more “Authoritarian/Egalitarianism,” if we can refrain for the time being from considering this apparently contradictory expression an oxymoron.

The West accepts and enthusiastically supports the contradictory “Communist/Capitalist” policies of an unfamiliar Chinese Oriental civilization; there should be no social/political trauma in the peaceful co-existence of a democratically mature United States with an independent Russia that has, like China before it, “stood up” – notwithstanding that Russian missiles will be provided to Iran, and symbolic mischief, such as Russian warships once again at anchor in La Habana, and a disconcerting Russian military presence in an America baiting Venezuela will continue as a justifiable rejoinder to American political short sightedness. There will be a return to the complex, insidious geopolitics of the “Cold War.” We are even now witnessing the revival of the foreign policy doctrine of that epoch which advocated strict compliance with the dictum that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Particular to this conclusion is the expressed United States concern of Russian nuclear assistance to Iran. This is a well deserved Russian reply to the arrogant, narcissistic political ignorance of our incompetent and avaricious governing elite.

Permit me to cite another proverb, with apologies for its graphic vulgarity, which refers to the currently popular, vociferous demonizing of Russia by the United States government and the American media: bear in mind that “the devil don’t take it up the arse.”