Kosovo

So What about Kosovo?

Shorts and Essays are mine unless otherwise credited. Doc...

04/01/1999: Our Armed Forces do not belong in Kosovo or anywhere else in Europe, for that matter. We have no right to interfere in the affairs of any sovereign State or Nation. The US has no constitutional right or authority, nor moral duty or obligation to act as the World's Police. Two devastating World Wars began in exactly the same manner as what is going on in Europe today. The Clinton administration, already exposed as a treasonous cabal, knows that this conflict is bound to escalate, and is deliberately provoking the escalation.

04/14/1999: Forget all the humanitarian BS you are hearing in the media. The real reason for NATO and the Council on Foreign Relations great interest in this region is essentially what's under the surface of the Kosovo region.
G O L D .

That area has the most productive gold mines in Europe. Of course, our Traitor-In-Chief is using the centuries old conflict to distract attention away from the China Espionage and Campaign Finance scandals. Can you say: "Wag The Dog III" ?

04/16/1999: I truly pity our armed forces personnel, being forced to obey a Commander in Chief who is so obviously a criminal of the most extreme magnitude. How can any serviceman in good conscience obey the directives of a proven Liar, Obstructer of Justice, Abuser of Authority, purveyor of Bribery, and undoubtedly a Rapist and a world class Traitor. If there were any real Law Enforcement men left, they should march to Washington en masse and arrest and imprison all of the criminals who have enabled this Treasonous administration to remain in power. The real reason that the UN, NATO, and the Council on Foreign Relations is so interested in Kosovo is to obtain control of the GOLD mines in the region.

05/03/1999: With a single executive order, one traitorous dictator, whose comrades bought 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for him, can command our armed forces to invade a sovereign nation and commit the very atrocities which have branded many others as "war criminals".

God help us if we do not get that Traitor-in-Chief, and those Socialist Democrats who support him, out of office, before World War III erupts in full force.

Even if we are so fortunate as to avoid open combat in our homeland, the environmental consequences of long term warfare, such as we have seen in Iraq and now in Kosovo, will be devastating.

The oil field fires set by the Iraq Army as they were forced out of Kuwait burned many years of petroleum reserves, releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, further fueling global warming. The bombing of oil refineries and storage tanks in Yugoslavia increases the "greenhouse gas" effect even more.

The systematic destruction of a nation's transportation and communication infrastructures, power systems, and industrial base is a crime of far greater magnitude than the largely false charges which have been leveled against Milosevic. He is just a leader who was trying to retain control of his nations' rich mineral resources. Maybe a little barbaric at times, but certainly no worse than a government agency which attacks, gasses and burns Branch Davidians.

05/03/1999: Subject: The Serbian Cash Register -- A Real Eye Opener

Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the July 30, 1998 issue of Workers World newspaper

--- Kosovo: 'The war is about the mines' By Sara Flounders

Wars are at root about economics, and the rapidly expanding war in Kosovo is no different. So why have millions of dollars in high-tech weapons suddenly become available to the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army by way of the U.S. and Germany?

A July 11 report by New York Times Balkans bureau chief Chris Hedges describes the KLA's new arsenal—the latest anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft weapons. These weapons are shifting the balance of power toward the KLA, which is funded fully by outside sources, mostly from the U.S. and Germany.

The KLA is "fed by recruits, money and arms from outside Serbia," Hedges confirms. It has an "inexhaustible supply line," he reports.

"Rebel soldiers, in full uniform with the red and black patch of the Kosovo Liberation Army, pull thick wads of German marks from their pockets. There are also signs that the arrival of dozens of former professional soldiers as well as some mercenaries are turning the ragtag band into a viable military force of several thousand fighters."

In fact, the KLA is primarily a mercenary army funded by the kind of shadowy sources that have long been associated with U.S. and German intelligence services. It is a contra army.

Kosovo is often portrayed in the media as an isolated mountainous region that's poor and without resources. It might seem, from these accounts, to be an area of interest only to those who live there.

The New York Times, for example, has carried dozens of such articles by Chris Hedges in the last six months. Only once, on July 8, did Hedges write about the real wealth of Kosovo—the Stari Trg mining complex. It was a tip-off that something more was at stake in this war.

Hedges' visit to the Stari Trg mining complex is an eye opener. He describes the glittering veins of lead, zinc, cadmium, gold and silver in Stari Trg. According to Hedges, "The sprawling state-owned Trepca mining complex, the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans, is worth at least $5 billion." According to the mine's director, Novak Bjelic, "The war in Kosovo is about the mines, nothing else. This is Serbia's Kuwait—the heart of Kosovo. In addition to all this, Kosovo has 17 billion tons of coal reserves."

The whole world knows and observed firsthand in the war against Iraq to what horrendous extent the Pentagon was willing to go in order to guarantee control of the oil wealth of Kuwait. But the enormous mineral wealth of Kosovo is never publicly discussed by U.S. United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, President Bill Clinton or the Pentagon generals. They speak only of "self-determination" of the Albanian population of Kosovo. Of course, they never mention what U.S.-imposed "self-determination" means.

It means colonization under the guise of "liberation," like what the U.S. did to Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines a hundred years ago.

An Internet search for reports on the mines of Kosovo—the Trepca mining complex or Stari Trg—turned up only the one article by Hedges and a small piece in the June 22 Wall Street Journal. All other mentions are in metallurgical journals. How could this vital fact be omitted from all discussion of what is at stake in Kosovo? It is comparable to describing Kuwait and the oil-rich Gulf states as barren deserts. The wealth of Kosovo is greater than the rich veins of ore in the mines.

Hedges describes the mining complex: "The Stari Trg mine, with its warehouses, is ringed with smelting plants, 17 metal treatment sites, freight yards, railroad lines, a power plant and the country's largest battery plant."

The labor power of millions of workers throughout socialist Yugoslavia built this mining complex into the powerhouse it is today. It was their wealth that was invested in developing the complex. It belongs not just to those who live in Kosovo, but to the workers of all Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav web site www.yugoslavia.com describes Trepca as the "richest lead and zinc mines in Europe." Lignite deposits in the Kosovo mines are, according to experts, sufficient for the next 13 centuries. The capacity of the lead and zinc refineries ranks third in the world.

Miners work round the clock, day and night, in six-hour shifts. According to the mine director, "In the last three years we have mined 2,538,124 tons of lead and zinc crude ore and produced 286,502 tons of lead and zinc and 139,789 tons of pure lead, zinc, cadmium, silver and gold." Although the average person watching the news in the evening has never heard of Stari Trg, it has been a prize changing hands for two thousand years.

The wealth of Stari Trg is legendary. Precious metals were mined there more than 2,000 years ago, first by the Greeks, then by the Romans.

These mines were the grand prize in the Nazi occupation of the Balkans after Germany grabbed control from the British. The mines have great industrial and military importance. The Nazis used batteries produced there to power their U-boats. Today submarine batteries are still made there. Profits from these mines are helping to keep the Yugoslav Federation afloat.

U.S. and UN sanctions imposed on Serbia and Montenegro, the two remaining republics of Yugoslavia, have taken an enormous toll. Without investment credits, loans for financing industry, imports and exports, the economy has been stifled. Inflation has weakened the currency. The mines, which once were the largest employer in the province, have also been affected.

The most important words in Hedges' article are the description of the complex as "state owned." Throughout this decade, as the capitalist market has swept over the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, socialist Yugoslavia has attempted to resist privatization of its industry and natural resources. To break this resistance, the Western imperialist countries played a major role in the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia.

This huge complex of mines, refining, power and transportation in Kosovo may well be the largest uncontested piece of wealth not yet in the hands of the big capitalists of the U.S. or Europe. The industry, natural resources and transportation of all the former Soviet republics, the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, and the secessionist republics of Yugoslavia are now being rapidly privatized. No one within the region has the wealth or connections to finance capital to buy controlling shares of these vast state-owned industries. The major Western corporations are gobbling these industries up.

While the fate of some industries is still in negotiation, the lending and credit conditions of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank require the breakup of all state-owned industries. This is true for the oil and natural gas wealth in the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea as well as the diamond mines of Siberia.

The decision on who will own or have controlling interest in the 22 mines and the many processing plants of the Trepca complex will be made by whoever wins the armed struggle raging in Kosovo. NATO domination on the ground would put U.S. corporations in the best ownership position.

Nationalist strife advances their position. Although being forced to privatize in order to survive in today's global market, Yugoslavia has tried to control the process and to propose Balkan regional development.

According to the June 22 Wall Street Journal, the Yugoslav Federation is in negotiations to sell shares in the Trepca mining complex. Forced by the economic crisis, they have been negotiating with a Greek investor — Mytilineos Holdings SA — for partial ownership.

The former manager of the mines, Byrhan Kavaja — who is now allied with the opposition to the Yugoslav government—has written to all corporations dealing in soft metals to tell them not to make agreements with the Yugoslav government. Kavaja says that once a new government is in power, all past decisions on ownership will be invalidated. The opposition will make "new agreements."

Who is likely to be the beneficiary of these agreements?

The progressive movement in the U.S. and throughout Western Europe must be at the forefront in explaining that the billions of dollars spent on the U.S./NATO occupation of the region is not in the interests of any of the people of the Balkans. Nor is it in the interests of poor and working people in the U.S. or Europe. The war is destroying all that was built through collective ownership and collaboration in the Balkans.

This war will mean higher taxes and even more cuts in social programs in the U.S and Europe. But the billions of dollars in profit will go to a few wealthy stockholders in the U.S. or in Western Europe.

05/05/1999: The Reality of Kosovo

You may have noticed that nowhere in the major media can one find a clear description of NATO's objectives in Kosovo. We hear sound bites such as "humanitarian relief", "ethnic cleansing", and occasionally "genocide" as the basis for the involvement, and vague generalities such as "compliance with NATO's terms" or "reduce his ability to wage war" (referring to Milosevic) as the goal.

Kosovo is often portrayed as an isolated mountainous region that is poor and without resources. It might seem, from these accounts, to be an area of interest only to those who live there.

The truth is that Kosovo contains some of Europe's most valuable mineral resources - the mines of Stari Trg at Trepca, near Kosovska Mitrovica, some 30 miles northwest of the Kosovo capital of Pristina. The mines are rich with lead, zinc, cadmium, gold and silver, conservatively valued at $5 billion.

Kosovo also has an estimated reserve of 17 billion tons of coal. Although the average person watching the news in the evening has never heard of Stari Trg, it has been a prize changing hands for many centuries. Precious metals were mined there more than 2,000 years ago, first by the Greeks, then by the Romans.

Quite simply, NATO wants control of the state owned Stari Trg mining complex and its vast wealth. The president and the people of Yugoslavia are merely performing their duties to defend their own national interests.

President Clinton is using Kosovo to distract media attention away from the congressional investigation into the multi faceted China scandals. It is now widely known that by means of illegal campaign contributions to the Democratic National Committee, Communist China financed much of Bill Clinton's political career. In return they received relaxation of the export controls of our best missile guidance and data encryption technologies, and administrative stonewalling of the investigation into China's espionage of our advanced nuclear warhead programs.

05/12/1999: To Bill O'Reilly (The O'Reilly Factor / Fox News Channel):
I agree with you that we have a moral obligation to defend our fellow humans from atrocities whenever possible. Destroying the infrastructure of a nation, built on the labor of generations, and murdering civilians is NOT the action of a moral people. Am I the only one who clearly sees the irony of a president who condemns the slaughter at Columbine in one breath, then turns around and murders on the average the same number of civilians EVERY DAY in Kosovo?

Illegal war --- Clinton ignores Constitution and War Powers law.

Under the Constitution, only Congress -- not the president -- has the power to declare war. And under the War Powers Act of 1973, a president may not engage American troops in hostile action for more than 60 days without specific approval from Congress.

President Clinton wages war against Yugoslavia without a declaration of war from Congress. Indeed, Congress in April voted 427-2 against a declaration of war; it voted not to approve the ongoing air campaign; and it voted decisively against sending ground troops into the Balkan theater of war.

Even so, under the War Powers law, Mr. Clinton could legally engage in hostilities for 60 days without congressional approval. His 60 days were up at 12:01 a.m. last Wednesday.

Some principled Democrats and Republicans are speaking out on the presidential war against Yugoslavia, however. Twenty-four congressional Republicans have joined with two principled Democrats (Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur, both of Ohio) to sue the Clinton administration in federal court to get this president to either obey the War Powers Act and the Constitution by seeking congressional approval for the war or begin withdrawing U.S. forces from the Balkans.

Of course, some have argued that the War Powers law is an unconstitutional infringement either on Congress's sole power to declare war or on the president's power to conduct foreign policy. But Mr. Clinton argues neither of these. He simply ignores the law, and the Constitution.

Said Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, one of the initiators of the lawsuit: "Apparently this president thinks he is king, for in our representative democracy no man is given the power to unilaterally commit troops to battle without the express authorization of the people's representatives in Congress."

On Thursday, a federal court is scheduled to hear arguments on the lawsuit filed by members of Congress. Of course, even if the courts rule that Bill Clinton is in violation of the War Powers Act, don't expect the president to pay heed. After all, the Democrats in the U.S. Senate have already voted to place Mr. Clinton above the law, and that's just the way this rogue president likes things.

06/14/1999: to:
The Honorable Curt Souder
109 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-4436 / FAX (202) 225-3479

Dear Mr. Souder,

In your comments to the House last week, which I saw on C-SPAN, you asked "Why Kosovo?", in reference to why president Clinton ordered the military activity in that region while ignoring numerous humanitarian atrocities elsewhere in the world.

Your answer may be found at the Stari Trg mining complex, 30 miles northwest of the capitol city of Pristina. It includes Europe's richest gold mines, along with a vast wealth of lead, zinc, iron, silver, cadmium, platinum, and uranium; also massive reserves of coal. It can generate a trillion dollars per year.

This is why people have been fighting over this land for hundreds of years. It is why an ordinary territorial dispute escalated into a humanitarian catastrophe.

It is the British who want control of the mines, which is why they staked out the north central region of Kosovo for themselves. Their NATO allies are to be posted around the perimeter for defense.

The president, in whom I am most deeply ashamed and disappointed, entered the war primarily to distract public attention away from the "Campaign Cash -> Technology Export -> Nuclear Labs Espionage -> Stonewalled Investigation" jigsaw puzzle -- an issue of great significance which I feel deserves the undivided attention of the House until all of the associated criminal activity has been prosecuted.

I hope this information helps you.

Doc.

06/05/1999:

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HOW THE SERBS OUTFOXED NATO
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By David H. Hackworth, 5 July 1999

NATO claims its aircraft destroyed 120 Serb armored vehicles and tons of other military hardware during its recent Balkans bashing. But as reported in this space last week, down in the Kosovo mud our grunts say, "It ain't so."

Our warriors say it sure looks like NATO, after blowing a cool $4 billion on bombs and missiles, didn't do the demo job as hyped. Pound for pound of enemy gear destroyed, this is America's costliest war.

So how did the Serbs pull the wool over NATO's electronic eyes and foil the most high-tech military force in history?

Simple. They used their imaginations and adapted tricks and deceptions that've been around since long before the Trojan Horse rolled into Troy. And our electronic spies in the sky and other high-tech gadgets, gadgeteers and generals fell for it.

During the conflict, smart bombs and missiles costing from 50 grand to 2 million bucks repeatedly blew up decoy "tanks," "artillery pieces" and other "targets" made of sticks and plastic, some of which included primitive heat sources for faking out gold-plated thermal-image systems in NATO aircraft.

Our guys in Kosovo have found hundreds of imitation tanks, trucks, artillery pieces, missiles and missile launchers, roads and even bridges, which NATO aircraft and cruise missiles had "destroyed." "From up close they look like junk, but from three miles up, they'd look like the real thing," says an Army sergeant.

Real roads and bridges were painted to show "battle damage" to con NATO satellites and reconnaissance aircraft into thinking they'd already been knocked out.

Another trick used by the Yugoslav army was to set up dummy mobile air defense missile units. Many of these were placed next to fake bridges (made out of logs) and mock roads -- strips of black plastic sheeting laid across open fields with "tanks" and other "military vehicles" painted on them.

U.S. aircraft flying at 15,000 feet had a field day blowing up these "Serb air defense units" and other dummy targets, while their spinners back at NATO headquarters daily chanted to the world, "We are significantly degrading their air defense and combat ability."

Serb commanders worked out that NATO did most of their reconnaissance during the daytime, after which targets were laboriously picked by generals, diplomats and horse-holders for presidents and prime ministers to approve, then assigned to pilots who'd be tasked to zap them. So as soon as darkness fell, Serb units scooted to new positions and began the mock-up game. One Serb commanding officer said, "From the 300 projectiles which NATO has fired, only four have hit something of substance."

Another Serb CO said his unit would fire at attacking NATO aircraft and then quickly move his firing batteries, replacing them with dummies. "The time it took NATO's photo-reconnaissance people to identify the point of fire... and return to bomb the mock-up was a minimum of 12 hours. So we knew when we had to move our equipment -- every 12 hours," he said.

The same officer said that Serb army technicians had taken apart an unexploded $1million U.S. Tomahawk missile and figured out that its targeting largely depended on a chip that guided the rocket by heat sources. As a result, soldiers burned tires parallel to major roads and bridges. The burning tires emitted more heat than the surface of the bridges themselves and attracted the missiles away from the vital bridges.

Saddam Hussein used similar tricks during Desert Storm. His heat source was a can with burning oil, set next to a plywood or rubber tank. An Iraqi prisoner of war said he knew of one such "tank" that was "knocked out 10 times" by U.S. aircraft.

In February 1991, the Air Force reported they'd destroyed half of Iraq's tanks. This news triggered Stormin' Norman's ground attack. U.S units on the ground later discovered that only 13 percent of the enemy tanks were knocked out. Luckily, the Iraqis didn't have the stomach for a fight, or we would've paid for this bad call in American blood.

Fortunately, Milosevic's army bugged out before our ground force hit the deck, or our generals would be relearning the hard way that an opposing army cannot be defanged at 15,000 feet regardless of how smart the weapons and how all-seeing the eyes in the sky.

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... And an added bonus, excerpts from another article further reinforcing the position that the NATO bombing was directly responsible for the escalation of the "ethnic cleansing" - which was a relatively minor issue before the bombing started... Doc

SUMMARY: A Canadian perspective on Kosovo from a career officer.
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By Rollie Keith, Canadian Army Officer

What, however, was the situation within Kosovo before March 20, and are we now being misled with biased media information? Is this aggressive war really justified to counter alleged humanitarian violations, or are there problematical premises being applied to justify the hostilities? Either way, diplomacy has failed and the ongoing air bombardment has greatly exacerbated an internal humanitarian problem into a disaster. There were no international refugees over the last five months of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) presence within Kosovo and Internal Displaced Persons only numbered a few thousand in the weeks before the air bombardment commenced.

As an OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) monitor during February and March of this year, I was assigned as the Director of the Kosovo Polje Field Office, just west of the provincial capital of Pristina.

The situation was clearly that KLA provocations, as personally witnessed in ambushes of security patrols which inflicted fatal and other casualties, were clear violations of the previous October's agreement. The security forces responded and the consequent security harassment and counter-operations led to an intensified insurrectionary war, but as I have stated elsewhere, I did not witness, nor did I have knowledge of any incidents of so-called "ethnic cleansing" and there certainly were no occurrences of "genocidal policies" while I was with the KVM in Kosovo.

What has transpired since the OSCE monitors were evacuated on March 20, in order to deliver the penultimate warning to force Yugoslavian compliance with the Rambouillet and subsequent Paris documents and the commencement of the NATO air bombardment of March 24, obviously has resulted in human rights abuses and a very significant humanitarian disaster as some 600,000 Albanian Kosovars have fled or been expelled from the province. This did not occur, though, before March 20, so I would attribute the humanitarian disaster directly or indirectly to the NATO air bombardment and resulting antiterrorist campaign.

However, the NATO bombardment has been counterproductive, as it has created a significant European humanitarian problem of more than 600,000 external refugees that threaten to destabilize the surrounding vulnerable nations, exacerbating regional security. Another estimated 600,000 plus internally displaced Kosovars are also being subjected to the deprivations of the full-scale civil war. Then in the end the international community will also have to rebuild not only Kosovo, but the rest of Yugoslavian to ensure their future participation in the new Europe of the 21st century, This is what the failure of diplomacy with its consequent ill-prepared and ill-conceived air bombardment has accomplished.

What is crucial to have happen then, is that the unjustified moral certitude that that has resulted in the demonization and vilification of Yugoslavia and its nationalist President Milosevic cease, and be replaced by a rational discourse to enable a fair and just solution to be agreed to.

NATO has gone to war to prevent the humanitarian expulsion of an ethnic minority and has caused the catastrophic Kosovo population displacement to occur. The western government, led by inept diplomats and politicians, have failed to provide a rational and diplomatic alternative, and instead have incited an irresponsible public opinion, whose conscience has led it to demand actions to solve problems that it does not comprehend. NATO is now in a war that it cannot win. Its objective of liberating the Kosovo Albanians from Serbian misrule has been counterproductive, and has resulted in their expulsion. The war has broken international law, disregarded the UN Charter, and violated the NATO mandate. This has arguably irrevocably damaged the dreams and aspirations for rational diplomacy and the rule of law, meant to establish an international system with limits on great power ambitions.

There were political alternatives to this war, but we also should have known what would happen. And it did happen. The pointless and degrading bombing must stop and rational international negotiations must commence. The alternative is incomprehensible.

11/24/1999: The Truth Leaks Out About Kosovo by: Phyllis Schlafly

The embarrassing truth is starting to come out that the Clinton Administration lied to us about Kosovo atrocities which were supposed to justify the bombing of Yugoslavia. In five months of investigation and exhumation of the dead in Kosovo, United Nations war crimes investigators have found only 2,108 bodies.

Before the bombing, Clinton and Defense Secretary William Cohen repeatedly tossed out figures of 100,000 dead, and the State Department even claimed that up to 500,000 Kosovars were feared dead. Clinton claimed that his bombing prevented Milosevic from "deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide."

The chief prosecutor for the UN war crimes tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, can confirm only the 2,108 figure. That's what she reported to the UN Security Council.

Pathologist Emilio Perez Pujol, who led a Spanish forensic team looking for bodies, found only 187, mostly in individual graves. He calculated that "the final figure of dead in Kosovo will be 2,500 at the most. This includes lots of strange deaths that can't be blamed on anyone in particular."

The British, who seem to be more interested in getting to the truth than Congress, are pressuring Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to answer claims that Tony Blair's government misled the public over the scale of deaths in order to justify NATO's bombing of Belgrade. Alice Mahon, the Labor MP who chairs the Balkans committee, said that the Kosovo deaths were tragic but did not justify the killing of Belgrade civilians by NATO's bombing.

Lacking a constitutional or national security basis for his Yugoslav adventure, Clinton relied wholly on the humanitarian argument. That rationale has fallen apart because the numbers of Milosevic's crimes in Kososo were so grossly inflated, the indiscriminate damage done by the Clinton/NATO bombing raids was so vast, and all the people he said he was helping are far worse off than before the bombing started.

The Clinton/NATO bombing was carried on for 78 days with total disregard for human life. The bombs killed thousands of innocent civilians and even destroyed hospitals and schools.

The Clinton/NATO bombing decimated Yugoslavia's economic infrastructure and created an environmental nightmare. Not only are water and power systems destroyed, but the lifeline of the region, the Danube River, is polluted and largely impassable because of destroyed bridges.

Repeated air strikes on the Serbian town of Pancevo enveloped the area in clouds of black smoke and flames for ten days and unleashed tons of chemicals into the air, water and soil. The fish, produce and water are all contaminated.

What was advertised as an air war against Yugoslavia's military capabilities was really a war directed against the Serbian people. Dropping cluster bombs from 15,000 feet and firing missiles from many miles away guaranteed "mistakes" and "collateral damage" and prove that the targets were civilian as well as military.

U.S. Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Michael Short admitted that the goal was to break the will of the Serbs and make them so miserable that they would force Milosevic to pull out of Kosovo. Estimates of the cost to rebuild the damage range up to $100 billion, but the costs in human misery are incalculable.

The situation in Kosovo, the province Clinton was supposed to be protecting, is even worse. The danger from unexploded British and American cluster bombs and mines is at alarming levels, according to international aid agencies.

Before the bombing began, there was no humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. It was only after the U.S. and NATO air strikes began that the Serbs started to expel Albanians from Kosovo.

The NATO "peacekeeping" force in Kosovo is completely unable to restrain the revenge-seeking Albanians who are beating and murdering the Serbs (even targeting grandmothers) and burning their homes and churches. More Serb civilians have been slaughtered in Kosovo than ethnic Albanians before the bombing began.

The daily violence continues even though there are now more NATO troops in Kosovo than Serbs. According to Human Rights Watch, 164,000 Serb civilians have been driven out of Kosovo.

The Clinton-Albright policy is based on the absurd fantasy that America and NATO can force the Serbs and Albanians to live together in a multiethnic society. Neither side wants that, and the attempt to impose our will means that U.S. troops will play the costly roles of global cop and social worker indefinitely.

The only people happy about the Yugoslavia debacle are the globalists who want America to be perpetually engaged in foreign conflicts. In a speech to the Canadian Parliament, Czech leader Vaclav Havel praised the Yugoslav war as "an important precedent for the future," saying that "state sovereignty must inevitably dissolve" and nation-states will be transformed into "civil administrative units."

When Clinton's National Security Adviser Sandy Berger spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations on October 21, he described Clinton's foreign policy as grounded in the policy of "engagement." America will now be "engaged" in Yugoslavia for the rest of our lives.

Phyllis Schlafly column 11-24-99
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01/15/2000:

(From Voice of the Grunt editors) This is forwarded to you from the head of the "Police Academy" in Kosovo. These are the poor bastards <though well paid> who are trying to teach the KLA and Serbs to "just get along" in a "kinder and gentler" world. Thought you might find it of interest! Situation is like Hack figured it would become.

January 15, 2000

Dear Family and Friends:

Can you believe it is 2000? Boy the time goes by fast when your having fun. At least I think we are having fun. Give you a little update on the life in Kosovo.

Well December was a great month. I got to go home for Christmas. I left Kosovo on the 17th and was home on the 17th. Spent a day golfing. We also spent a lot of time doing chores around the house. We refinished the kitchen with new appliances. Next trip home we will get a new countertop and sink, then a new wood floor. We spent a great Christmas Eve with family; on Christmas we had a nice dinner with relatives. Then we had a couple of days to just relax.

On the 28th, we left for Paris. We stayed at the Marriott Renaissance at LaDeFense. The hotel was OK a little out of the way but we were right on the subway line and in 5 minutes we were anywhere we wanted to go. We took the usual tours and really enjoyed the city. On the 30th a French police friend was to meet us for dinner, however, the traffic in Paris was such that he was hit by another car, so we had to cancel. So he and I hoisted a cheer when we got back to Kosovo. On New Years Eve we had a nice dinner and then watched the Eiffel tower go off. That was really a sight. The crowds were such that you could hardly move and we were near the hotel about 3 miles away. It was nuts. We watched a lot of it and much clearer from the hotel bar. On New Years day we had dinner at the Eiffel Tower and then went to the Moulin Rouge show. Had some great meals in some quaint bistros and brassieres. We also took in the Louve and the Mona Lisa and Venus Demilo, as well as Notre Dame. We were going to take a Seine River cruise but the river was so high from the rains and storms that all river traffic was cancelled. Maybe next time. One day we just walked the Champ Elysees. The people in France are often rude and getting information from the hotel was a chore. The taxis are a trip, avoid them if you go. The hardest part of Paris was leaving. We left on the 5th of January. Elly took a flight back to Phoenix and I went on to Kosovo.

What did I return too????? Well, it is cold, icy, no electricity or water.

Thank god we have heat in the house. But the electric plant caught on fire and we now only have electricity in 2-hour intervals and 4 hours off. Right now I'm working on the 2 hours. The people have not changed, they are still beggars, tramps and thieves. The Mafia is taking over and the police losing control of the population to the military, TMK/UCK. (TMK=Thugs Mugging Kosovo) This place is one big lawless Shithole. The UN police are about as effective as a fire in hell. Many countries send their finest rejects, who cannot police. The Americans want to do something but are always rejected because some tree hugging bleeding heart thinks we’re too oppressive in our law enforcement tactics. This place will turn out like Haiti and Bosnia.

We want to do a good job, but the politics and other things just won't let that happen. Even in Bosnia they are now having problems with a lot of the Islamic terrorist groups that helped fight the war there. When I was there, we identified some groups that were from Iraq, Iran and other Islamic countries but nobody acted on the intell; now the soldiers in Bosnia are looking for a Said Atmani who has ties to Osmama bin Laden. Well the Albanians in Kosovo are too dumb for that, they are just plain smugglers and killers. Near the Border in Tetovo, which is in Macedonia and is a strong Albanian town and the center for smuggling and running crime in Kosovo, 4 Macedonian police officers were ambushed and killed by Albanian mafia. This really escalates the ethnic tension in region. It also doesn't help the Americans since we are backing Kosovo. Sometimes I think we backed the wrong side. We should have just left Slobo take these idiots out. Besides we now help the Albanian Kosvars with their ethnic cleansing of Serbs, but now its OK. Sometimes I wonder what the hell we are doing. To make matters worse, the Russian and Ukraine Mafia is moving in with the Prostitutes.

The school is slowly being refurbished. We now have 176 students and they are scheduled to graduate on February 19th. My team is slowly withering away. I lost one of my best instructors this week. He went home after 6 months. I lose 2 more at the end of the month. All Americans. That is a great loss. But I am getting one replacement American, but I still have a hardheaded Dane and a German. We start another Instructor development course this next week for our new French and Canadian instructors and in 2 weeks we do an Instructor course for the UN. We are also doing Interpreter Training for OSCE as well as the school.

Just before school let out for the holidays, I had the opportunity to work on the Planning document for the school for ICITAP. Three of us completed a huge document in a week’s time. Now all we have to do is see if things can be implemented. We shall see.

We now can get back on the military bases to use the PX, but still no mail. I just stocked up today with American canned food. With the electricity problem we can't keep fresh meat or any perishables for more than a day. Hopefully that will be over in a couple of weeks. The landlord is going to Turkey to get some generators. That will help.

Other than that, life goes on. I will try to get home for Elly’s birthday in March. Will let you know what goes on. Drop me a line. We can get mail through Vienna, but it takes a couple of weeks.

Well folks, if it isn't perfectly clear by now that the most nefarious war criminals of the 20th century were holding public office in Washington DC - you've got your head stuck so far up your ass you can lick your own small intestine clean ! Doc...

Get Me Outta Here!