written by
SAVE THE USA
Everyday the US Corporate Media bombards America with the “huge spike in violence” that inevitably means that Iraq is descending into civil war. We’re told there are two choices, it’s a civil war, or its “al Qaeda” - but there is a third option the corporate media refuses to utter.
Even high-school slackers have heard of the age-old strategy “Divide and Conquer”. Is it possible that there are outside forces working this strategy in Iraq today? Perhaps rogue elements inside some government(s) would like to conquer Iraq for the oil, permanent bases, strategic position, etc.
Why is it that nobody in the TV news world can utter this possibility? Is it really that outrageous to think that perhaps the same people that lied to launch the war, are still lying today to prolong the war?
Let’s look at a few “under-reported” stories:
- US car theft rings probed for ties to Iraq bombings
Think about that: Car-bombs in Iraq are made with cars Stolen in the USA Does “al-Qaeda” have C-130s or huge ships capable of transporting the stolen cars to Iraq? If “al Qaeda” had operatives in America, would they really be stealing cars to ship them to Iraq? Seems quite illogical to me.
- Undercover British soldiers caught red-handed: Dressed as Arabs in a car full of explosives with a remote detonator
-Foreign Fighter Lie Exposed: 1300 insurgents arrested- all Iraqis, no foreigners
-Iraqis had a “No to the Occupation” Protest, which was much larger than the Saddam Statue Toppled “Celebration”
- Many Iraqis believe ’suicide’ bombings done by US to start a civil war“I believe it is the Americans who are doing this, pretending it is the Sunni, so there will be a civil war and they can control our wealth.”
- El Salvador-style ‘death squads’ to be deployed by US against Iraq militants
“Death Squads” Negroponte appointed ambassador to Iraq: Six Months later, Death Squads appear
The question:
Is it possible that “Divide and Conquer” is a strategy being employed by our own government, not just Bush and the Republicons, but also by the majority of DC Democrats. Is it possible that this is a war of conquest, and Americans are the modern day equivalent of the “good germans” duped by the gov’t propaganda.
Is it possible that millions of Americans are “willfully ignorant”, accepting the lies because it’s so much easier than confronting the fact that they’ve been supporting murderers and liars.
ps- dont’ forget about the numerous polls indicating that
MOST Iraqis want US Troops to leave.
Still believe it’s a Civil War? One last factoid to consider:
Out of Iraq’s 6.5 million married couples, 2 million are Sunni-Shia unions
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
War on Iran: Unleashing Armageddon in the Middle East
Pravda.ru
by
Dr. Elias Akleh
USA
The American “power elite” had drawn a “Grand Plan” to control and to monopolize global oil and nuclear energy resources to assure American global hegemony. The collapse of the Soviet Union had created a power vacuum the American administration is trying to fill up.
The attacks of 911 were necessary requirement for the Bush administration to wage a “global war against terror” that would serve as a cover up for American hegemonic actions. President Bush had borrowed Mussolini’s fascist motto of “If you are not with me, you are against me”, and turned it into “You are either with us or with the terrorist” to terrorize weaker nations into accepting American expansions.
The part of the “Grand Plan” that deals with the Middle East and South East Asia was handed down to Bush/Cheney administration for execution. The invasions and destructions of Afghanistan and Iraq are just the beginning. Iran, Syria and Lebanon are next.
Controlling Iran is very important for the American administration. Iran sits on a lake of oil and has large deposits of uranium, that when mined and refined could make Iran a super global power. Controlling Iran leads to the containment of China (America’s greatest competitor), who depends heavily on Iranian oil to satisfy its growing hunger for energy. Geographically Iran makes the shortest and the most economical route for Kazakhstan’s oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea north to the Persian Gulf south with all the oil-tankers traffic. Iran also fits perfectly within the line of American hegemony in South East Asia starting from Afghanistan east extending to Iraq west. Listening to Bush’s speeches –especially his speech to the UN last September 2006- one can detect his “enthusiasm” for “spreading democracy and freedom” in the “despotic Middle East” with Iraq as an example.
Bush/Cheney administration started its overt aggression against Iran immediately after 911. Iran was labeled as one of the “axis of evil” sponsoring terrorist groups – Hezbollah and Hamas. It is accused of meddling into Iraq and instigating civil war by supporting Shiites against Sunnis, and of opening its borders for terrorists to enter Iraq. Iran is also accused of building a nuclear bomb to wipe Israel off the map. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, described Iran as “central bank for world terrorism” threatening the stability in the region
The American media joined the administration into demonizing Iranian leaders describing them as extremist fundamental theocracy seeking to revive the glory of ancient Persian Empire by establishing a nuclear Islamic “Caliphate”. Ahmadinejad is portrayed as an irrational, violent, mad Hitler-like anti-Semite, who hates Jews, denies the Holocaust and wants to wipe Israel off the map.
The American administration refused to consider all Iranian attempts for dialogue and cooperation. According to Washington Post June 18th 2006 Richard Hass, head of policy planning at the State Department in 2003, stated that at the wake of American invasion of Iraq Iranian leaders offered the Americans a proposal for a broad dialogue that included full cooperation on war against terror, nuclear program, accepting Israel and halting support to Hamas. The administration already had plans for regime change in Iran that started immediately after the invasion of Iraq. Spy stations were erected at the Iraqi/Iranian borders. Congress had authorized the expenditure of $75 million to support Iranian opposition. Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, reported in June 2005 and in his book “Target Iran” that the US has been using terrorist organizations (Mujahedeen el-Khalq) under the supervision of the CIA to conduct covert terrorist operation in Iran. This terrorist group is operating out of Camp Habib in Basra and launches their terrorist raids against the southern region of Iran.
Israel , on the other hand, refuses to “live under the threat” of nuclear Iran. Israeli politicians point to Ahmadinejad’s alleged threat to wipe Israel off the map as a threat to their own existence, and a possible justification for a pre-emptive strike as a measure of self-defense. They continually threaten to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities the same way they did to Iraq’s nuclear reactors. Israel had sent its military operatives into the Kurdish region north of Iraq to establish training camps for the Kurds. The Kurds want to establish their independent Kurdistan extending from north Iran to east Turkey. Encouraged, financed, and armed by Israel the Kurds send their militants to conduct military operations into northern Iran.
The US is adamant on invading Iran. Invasion plan was originally to take place last April 2006, and consisted of 5 days of continuous aerial bombardment by joint air planes of Israel, UK, and US that might include tactical nuclear bunker buster bombs. Land invasion was to follow from west (Iraq), from east (Afghanistan), and from sea (Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman).
To stop this invasion Iran flexed its military muscles in war games conducted last April demonstrating its effective capability of waging war on land, sea, and air with sophisticated weapons. Iran also conducted other war games last August in coordination with China and Russia. The Americans discovered that they had underestimated Iran’s military power, and decided to adjust its war plans by bringing in more allies such as EU and some Arab states.
Contrary to the American propaganda Iranian leaders are pragmatic politicians, who seek peace, stability and nuclear-free Middle East. After their negotiation proposal to the US was rejected they needed to protect their interests in the region and to counter balance the threat of warring Israel, UK, and US by supporting Hamas, Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiites. For many generations Iran has not been involved in any colonial war. Iran was defending itself during the eight years Iraq/Iran war that was instigated by the US. Iranians are aware that if they were to hit Israel with one nuclear bomb Israel would shower them with their 200 or more of their nuclear bombs.
Ahmadinejad is not the mad man intent on wiping Israel off the map as Israelis keep alleging. Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan, stated in New York Times of June 11th that “Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map, because no such idiom exists in Persian. He did say he hoped its regime i.e. a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse”. Ahmadinejad is not a Jew hater; he pointed to the largest Jewish community out of Israel, who lives peacefully in Iran. They are recognized as a religious minority and are represented by a Jewish MP, Maurice Mohtamed, in the Iranian parliament. Iranians make a distinction between Jews and Zionists.
To avoid the seemingly inevitable war Iran had followed the diplomatic path with no avail. It opened its nuclear facilities to the strictest and most detailed inspections by IAEA. Iran proposed to stop its nuclear program if the US halts its threats and gives guarantees not to attack Iran. Ahmadinejad had called for peaceful negotiations and a nuclear-free Middle East in his speech to the UN last September, but his speech was boycotted by American politician and American media. Lately Iran proposed to have an international consortium to supervise uranium enrichment in Iran to guarantee that its program is really for peaceful purposes only.
Iran had also turned to the international community – mainly anti-American countries- for political support through economical trade and common political interests. In 2004 Iran sold China Petrochemical Corp. 51% stake in its Yadavaran oil field near the border of Iraq. Iran also became Russia’s most important weapons customer. Iran had also gained the political support of at least 118 countries during the summit of the Nonaligned Movement in Cuba in mid last September.
The US recognizes that attacking Iran will disrupt oil flow to the west. Iranian would close the Strait of Hermuz and could hit the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline carrying oil to Europe. Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez, an Iranian ally, had threatened to stop oil shipments to the US if Iran and Syria were attacked. China might also enter the conflict to protect its oil assets. The American administration decided to postpone its attack until it creates a “war oil reserve”, forms a large alliance of “willing countries”, and sends a big military armada to the region to guarantee a quick victory (a blitzkrieg).
The influence of the American administration on the UN and NATO can be seen clearly by the types of resolutions the UN adopts, and by the NATO troops becoming an American proxy occupier of Afghanistan. The US and NATO countries had lately amassed the largest military armada in the Middle East. The American armada consists of Carrier Strike Group 12 led by nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, Eisenhower Strike Group – another nuclear powered aircraft carrier with companion vessels and submarines, Expeditionary Strike Group 5 led by aircraft carrier USS Boxer, the Iowa Jima Expeditionary Strike Group, and the US Coast Guard. Canada has sent its HMCS Ottawa frigate to join the American armada.
Under the guise of UN resolution 1701 NATO countries had sent 15 thousand armed UNIFEL troops into southern Lebanon to protect Israel. They also sent their naval armada to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean allegedly to stop arm shipments to Hezbollah. Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Greek, Netherlands, France, Belgium and Bulgaria have sent their military ships to the region.
This is the largest amass ever of military power in the region, and it has gathered there for a reason. With the American “Leading Edge” war game in the Gulf followed by the Iranian “Great Prophet” war games the powder keg became ready and all it needs is a match to ignite it. This could come in the form of an “arranged” terrorist act in Lebanon e.g. another political assassination or toppling of the government to be blamed against Syria and Iran. American warnings of such an act are already in the media.
The present American administration is an extremist theocratic apocalyptic neoconservative Christian-Zionist war mongering law-breaking power hungry administration with a bragging “war president” adopting the doctrines of pre-emptive strike and perpetual war against global terror. This war will take place far away from the American home-land, and will generate large profits for the American military corporations. The war against Iran would engulf the whole Middle East and might overflow to its neighboring countries. Controlling Iran is a very important strategic move to assure American global hegemony. According to military experts this war is scheduled to take place during March/April 2007 period.
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/feedback/85553-0/
by
Dr. Elias Akleh
USA
The American “power elite” had drawn a “Grand Plan” to control and to monopolize global oil and nuclear energy resources to assure American global hegemony. The collapse of the Soviet Union had created a power vacuum the American administration is trying to fill up.
The attacks of 911 were necessary requirement for the Bush administration to wage a “global war against terror” that would serve as a cover up for American hegemonic actions. President Bush had borrowed Mussolini’s fascist motto of “If you are not with me, you are against me”, and turned it into “You are either with us or with the terrorist” to terrorize weaker nations into accepting American expansions.
The part of the “Grand Plan” that deals with the Middle East and South East Asia was handed down to Bush/Cheney administration for execution. The invasions and destructions of Afghanistan and Iraq are just the beginning. Iran, Syria and Lebanon are next.
Controlling Iran is very important for the American administration. Iran sits on a lake of oil and has large deposits of uranium, that when mined and refined could make Iran a super global power. Controlling Iran leads to the containment of China (America’s greatest competitor), who depends heavily on Iranian oil to satisfy its growing hunger for energy. Geographically Iran makes the shortest and the most economical route for Kazakhstan’s oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea north to the Persian Gulf south with all the oil-tankers traffic. Iran also fits perfectly within the line of American hegemony in South East Asia starting from Afghanistan east extending to Iraq west. Listening to Bush’s speeches –especially his speech to the UN last September 2006- one can detect his “enthusiasm” for “spreading democracy and freedom” in the “despotic Middle East” with Iraq as an example.
Bush/Cheney administration started its overt aggression against Iran immediately after 911. Iran was labeled as one of the “axis of evil” sponsoring terrorist groups – Hezbollah and Hamas. It is accused of meddling into Iraq and instigating civil war by supporting Shiites against Sunnis, and of opening its borders for terrorists to enter Iraq. Iran is also accused of building a nuclear bomb to wipe Israel off the map. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, described Iran as “central bank for world terrorism” threatening the stability in the region
The American media joined the administration into demonizing Iranian leaders describing them as extremist fundamental theocracy seeking to revive the glory of ancient Persian Empire by establishing a nuclear Islamic “Caliphate”. Ahmadinejad is portrayed as an irrational, violent, mad Hitler-like anti-Semite, who hates Jews, denies the Holocaust and wants to wipe Israel off the map.
The American administration refused to consider all Iranian attempts for dialogue and cooperation. According to Washington Post June 18th 2006 Richard Hass, head of policy planning at the State Department in 2003, stated that at the wake of American invasion of Iraq Iranian leaders offered the Americans a proposal for a broad dialogue that included full cooperation on war against terror, nuclear program, accepting Israel and halting support to Hamas. The administration already had plans for regime change in Iran that started immediately after the invasion of Iraq. Spy stations were erected at the Iraqi/Iranian borders. Congress had authorized the expenditure of $75 million to support Iranian opposition. Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, reported in June 2005 and in his book “Target Iran” that the US has been using terrorist organizations (Mujahedeen el-Khalq) under the supervision of the CIA to conduct covert terrorist operation in Iran. This terrorist group is operating out of Camp Habib in Basra and launches their terrorist raids against the southern region of Iran.
Israel , on the other hand, refuses to “live under the threat” of nuclear Iran. Israeli politicians point to Ahmadinejad’s alleged threat to wipe Israel off the map as a threat to their own existence, and a possible justification for a pre-emptive strike as a measure of self-defense. They continually threaten to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities the same way they did to Iraq’s nuclear reactors. Israel had sent its military operatives into the Kurdish region north of Iraq to establish training camps for the Kurds. The Kurds want to establish their independent Kurdistan extending from north Iran to east Turkey. Encouraged, financed, and armed by Israel the Kurds send their militants to conduct military operations into northern Iran.
The US is adamant on invading Iran. Invasion plan was originally to take place last April 2006, and consisted of 5 days of continuous aerial bombardment by joint air planes of Israel, UK, and US that might include tactical nuclear bunker buster bombs. Land invasion was to follow from west (Iraq), from east (Afghanistan), and from sea (Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman).
To stop this invasion Iran flexed its military muscles in war games conducted last April demonstrating its effective capability of waging war on land, sea, and air with sophisticated weapons. Iran also conducted other war games last August in coordination with China and Russia. The Americans discovered that they had underestimated Iran’s military power, and decided to adjust its war plans by bringing in more allies such as EU and some Arab states.
Contrary to the American propaganda Iranian leaders are pragmatic politicians, who seek peace, stability and nuclear-free Middle East. After their negotiation proposal to the US was rejected they needed to protect their interests in the region and to counter balance the threat of warring Israel, UK, and US by supporting Hamas, Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiites. For many generations Iran has not been involved in any colonial war. Iran was defending itself during the eight years Iraq/Iran war that was instigated by the US. Iranians are aware that if they were to hit Israel with one nuclear bomb Israel would shower them with their 200 or more of their nuclear bombs.
Ahmadinejad is not the mad man intent on wiping Israel off the map as Israelis keep alleging. Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan, stated in New York Times of June 11th that “Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map, because no such idiom exists in Persian. He did say he hoped its regime i.e. a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse”. Ahmadinejad is not a Jew hater; he pointed to the largest Jewish community out of Israel, who lives peacefully in Iran. They are recognized as a religious minority and are represented by a Jewish MP, Maurice Mohtamed, in the Iranian parliament. Iranians make a distinction between Jews and Zionists.
To avoid the seemingly inevitable war Iran had followed the diplomatic path with no avail. It opened its nuclear facilities to the strictest and most detailed inspections by IAEA. Iran proposed to stop its nuclear program if the US halts its threats and gives guarantees not to attack Iran. Ahmadinejad had called for peaceful negotiations and a nuclear-free Middle East in his speech to the UN last September, but his speech was boycotted by American politician and American media. Lately Iran proposed to have an international consortium to supervise uranium enrichment in Iran to guarantee that its program is really for peaceful purposes only.
Iran had also turned to the international community – mainly anti-American countries- for political support through economical trade and common political interests. In 2004 Iran sold China Petrochemical Corp. 51% stake in its Yadavaran oil field near the border of Iraq. Iran also became Russia’s most important weapons customer. Iran had also gained the political support of at least 118 countries during the summit of the Nonaligned Movement in Cuba in mid last September.
The US recognizes that attacking Iran will disrupt oil flow to the west. Iranian would close the Strait of Hermuz and could hit the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline carrying oil to Europe. Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez, an Iranian ally, had threatened to stop oil shipments to the US if Iran and Syria were attacked. China might also enter the conflict to protect its oil assets. The American administration decided to postpone its attack until it creates a “war oil reserve”, forms a large alliance of “willing countries”, and sends a big military armada to the region to guarantee a quick victory (a blitzkrieg).
The influence of the American administration on the UN and NATO can be seen clearly by the types of resolutions the UN adopts, and by the NATO troops becoming an American proxy occupier of Afghanistan. The US and NATO countries had lately amassed the largest military armada in the Middle East. The American armada consists of Carrier Strike Group 12 led by nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, Eisenhower Strike Group – another nuclear powered aircraft carrier with companion vessels and submarines, Expeditionary Strike Group 5 led by aircraft carrier USS Boxer, the Iowa Jima Expeditionary Strike Group, and the US Coast Guard. Canada has sent its HMCS Ottawa frigate to join the American armada.
Under the guise of UN resolution 1701 NATO countries had sent 15 thousand armed UNIFEL troops into southern Lebanon to protect Israel. They also sent their naval armada to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean allegedly to stop arm shipments to Hezbollah. Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Greek, Netherlands, France, Belgium and Bulgaria have sent their military ships to the region.
This is the largest amass ever of military power in the region, and it has gathered there for a reason. With the American “Leading Edge” war game in the Gulf followed by the Iranian “Great Prophet” war games the powder keg became ready and all it needs is a match to ignite it. This could come in the form of an “arranged” terrorist act in Lebanon e.g. another political assassination or toppling of the government to be blamed against Syria and Iran. American warnings of such an act are already in the media.
The present American administration is an extremist theocratic apocalyptic neoconservative Christian-Zionist war mongering law-breaking power hungry administration with a bragging “war president” adopting the doctrines of pre-emptive strike and perpetual war against global terror. This war will take place far away from the American home-land, and will generate large profits for the American military corporations. The war against Iran would engulf the whole Middle East and might overflow to its neighboring countries. Controlling Iran is a very important strategic move to assure American global hegemony. According to military experts this war is scheduled to take place during March/April 2007 period.
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/feedback/85553-0/
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Litvinenko poisoning scandal
yet another neo-con perverse display of its parallel intelligence structures.
December 11, 2006 -- SPECIAL REPORT.
by
Wayne Madsen
The more confusing the Litvinenko poisoning affair becomes, the more it appears to be yet another example of the dangerous neo-con global network of spies, weapons smugglers, far right-wing politicians, Russian-Israeli mafia businessmen, and Islamic mujaheddin false flag provocateurs. Litvinenko's death from polonium-210 radioactive isotope poisoning has actually helped to cast light on this international network, which has its fingerprints on the false intelligence that propelled the United States into an impending military defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan; the false flag operations of the 9/11 attacks on New York City and Washington; and countless other operations, including political operations in Ukraine, Georgia, and Poland, among other nations.
Litvinenko, far from being some sympathetic figure battling the Kremlin, was a central player in a global crime, disinformation, and terrorism network. He had contacts with a right-wing British political party, the United Kingdom Independence Party (which advocates the UK leaving the European Union, abolition of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, has links to the fascist British National Front, and wants a strong commitment to NATO); the mujaheddin movements of Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan, including the Georgia Pankisi Gorge-based "Al Qaeda" branch (Al Ansar) led by the Jordanian terrorist Faris Yusef Amirat, aka "Abu Hafs"; the Russian-Israeli criminal syndicate of wanted Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky and his accomplices; and other bad actors involved in a host of illegal and dubious activities around the world. Litvinenko defected to Britain through Turkey, a major hub for the Russian-Israeli Mafia. He has also been linked to Georgia-based Chechen operations in Turkey and Japan. Litvinenko was also reportedly close to the widow of Chechen President Dzhokar Dudayev, killed by an air-to-surface Russian missile attack in 1996. Litvinenko also had close links to exiled and wanted Russian oligarch Leonid Nevzlin, now exiled in Tel Aviv, and Erinsys, Ltd., a British mercenary firm with ties to Iraqi con man Ahmad Chalabi, whose nephew Salem is a business partner of Jerusalem-based Marc Zell, Douglas Feith's former law partner.
One of Litvinenko's associates, who at first claimed to also have been poisoned by polonium but has now been proven to be "Curveball"-grade prevaricator, is Mario Scaramella, a self-styled Italian spy who has charged that Italy's current Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, was a KGB spy. Scaramella has not only been dismissed as a neo-con tool by the Russian and Italian governments, but has been criticized as an insignificant "soap bubble" by Oleg Gordievski, the highest-ranking officer to have ever defected from the KGB. Italians, who witnessed Rome being used as a central location for the disinformation used to promote the invasion of Iraq -- including the infamous Niger "yellow cake" documents (involving another dubious Italian information broker named Rocco Martino), know Scaramella as a swindler and a braggart. Scaramella has also been under investigation by Italian authorities in Naples for weapons smuggling.
So who is Scaramella and what are his connections to the right-wing? Scaramella has been a longtime provocateur who has tried to link European progressive politicians and the Russian government with Cold War misdeeds. He is also linked to the Forza Italiana party of former (and indicted) Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a figure having his own ties to organized crime. Scaramella and Forza Italiana Senator Paolo Guzzanti, coordinated a political attack against Prodi aimed at proving the progressive leftist leader was a KGB spy. Prodi has threatened a lawsuit over the charge. Berlusconi, a major media tycoon, has, like his fellow right-wing media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, used his media holdings to advance a number of right-wing conspiracy theories about leftist and progressive political leaders in Italy and abroad.
Italy has been wracked by an investigation of a 2003 CIA kidnapping and rendition of Abu Omar, a Milan-based imam, via Germany to Egypt for torture. Arrest warrants have been issued for a number of CIA agents suspected of being involved in the kidnapping. Italian authorities are also investigating the assassination by U.S. or U.S.-controlled forces in Baghdad of General Nicola Calipari, the deputy chief of the Italian SISMI intelligence service. Although ruled an "accident" by US authorities, there is increasing evidence that Calipari was a threat to the neo-con network because of what he knew about the CIA kidnappings, the source of the yellowcake documents, and Scaramella's activities. Rather than CIA agents, informed sources now believe the Americans involved with Italian intelligence in secret operations were members of Pentagon intelligence chief Stephen Cambone's parallel intelligence and special operations network, a network that was set up by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to compete with the CIA.
Nicolo Pollari, Calipari's immediate boss, was fired last month as the head of SISMI. An Italian magistrate is now seeking indictments for 26 Americans and five senior Italian intelligence officials, including Pollari and his one-time deputy, Marco Mancini, for the kidnapping of Omar. Mancini was arrested by Italian authorities in the case. Informed Italian intelligence sources have linked Scaramella to the Pollari-Mancini network of neo-cons in SISMI.
Scaramella was a consultant for the Mitrokhin Committee, a body set up by the Italian right-wing-controlled Parliament in 2003 to investigate leftist Italian politicians for their links to the Soviets. The committee was a ruse designed to damage the reputations of Italian progressive leaders. Guzzanti was the committee chairman and another Scaramella friend, Senator Lucio Malan, also of Forza Italiana, served as a member. Italian sources report that Guzzanti told Scaramella that the "Capo," meaning Berlusconi, was going to be pleased with damaging information Litvinenko could pass on about Prodi. Scaramella also reportedly told Italian right-wing politicians of support from a top-level contact in or close to the U.S. government. That has been taken to mean the CIA, but our Italian sources believe it is likely someone associated with the neo-con network in either the Pentagon or National Security Council of the White House. Even more intriguing is a report from a confidential Italian source that Scaramella received funding from a French environmental group "front" activity, a possible link between the Italian agent of influence and a huge neo-con false flag operation involving French Interior Minister and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy, himself, has been accused of receiving illegal funds through dubious bank accounts in Luxembourg and some of those funds have Russian-Israeli mafia fingerprints written all over them.
The Mitrokhin Committee neo-cons and neo-fascists attempted to link the Italian left to the kidnapping and murder of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981. We now know from history that Moro was kidnapped and assassinated by Red Brigades in the employment of the Italian fascists, particularly agents associated with the fascist P-2 secret Masonic lodge and the similarly fascist Opus Dei as retaliation for Moro's plans to bring the Communists into a grand coalition. We also now know that Mehmet Ali Agca, the would-be killer of the Pope, was a member of Turkey's far right Gray Wolves and the plot was carried out to lay blame on the Russian KGB and Bulgaria's secret intelligence service.
Sergei Stepashin, former Russian Prime Minister and chief of the Federal Security Service (FSB), said, "It is apparent that those who wanted to tarnish the current Russian authorities, and primarily the president, killed Litvinenko." Two Russian business associates of Litvinenko, Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi (a former agent with the KGB's 9th Directorate, which protected Russian nuclear weapons caches), who met Litvinenko at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in London, have reportedly been affected by exposure to polonium-210 and seven bartenders who worked at the bar have tested positive for contamination with polonium-210. The Itsu sushi bar in :Picadilly where Litvinenko met Scaramella is now not assumed to be the location where Litvinenko was poisoned. Trace of polonium-210 were found at the restaurant but focus is on the Pine Bar at the Millenium as the scene of the poisoning.
Perhaps not surprisingly, FBI agents have been dispatched to London to investigate the Litvinenko death, even though the United States lacks jurisdiction in the case, since no Americans are involved. However, since even before 9/11, the FBI has covered for the international global mafia of terrorists and smugglers, and agents for this network who have been caught in the United States, including Israeli "art students," office and home furniture "movers," and "tourists" photographing sensitive U.S. installations have merely been deported by the FBI back to Israel. Many of the Israelis also possessed passports from Russia and Ukraine. The FBI's interest in the case may be to cover-up the United States as a source of the polonium-210.
What is now even more intriguing is where traces of polonium have also been detected in the case. The British embassy in Moscow and two British Airways Boeing 767a used on the Moscow-London route have tested positive for polonium-210. Kotvun and Lugovoi met the deputy British ambassador at the British embassy in Moscow prior to their trip to London and Lugovoi is claiming that someone, perhaps the British government, is now involved in trying to frame him. A car used by Kotvun in Hamburg on October 31, the night before he left for London, has also tested positive for polonium-210. However, traces of polonium-210 were also found on a Finnair plane that traveled to Moscow from Berlin via Helsinki.
If Britain's intelligence service is involved in the plot to set up Putin by using two unsuspecting Russian businessmen, it means that the Russian-Israeli global mafia has as many links and resources inside British intelligence as it does inside the FBI and U.S. intelligence. And that is a problem that would make James Bond tender his resignation.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has cleared Russia as the source of any illegal radioactive materials shipments. No shipments of polonium have been made by Russia to the UK since 2001.
WMR was the first to report on why polonium was possibly selected as the radioactive weapon of choice. Polonium was discovered by Marie Curie, a champion of Polish independence. The present neo-con government of Poland is a now a favorite base for the Russian-Israeli mafia. It is governed by two far right twins -- the Kaczynski brothers (Lech Kaczynski, the President, and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the Prime Minister -- and includes a noted neo-con, Radek Sikorksi, formerly of the American Enterprise Institute as Defense Minister. Sikorksi is a vitriolic critic of the Russian-Germany undersea Baltic gas pipeline who has made no secret of his dislike for Putin and Gazprom pipeline consortium chief Gerhard Schroeder, the former Social Democratic Chancellor of Germany who is enjoying a rise in popularity at the expense of Christian Democratic Chancellor Angela Merkel, his successor. Any attempt to smear Putin also affects Schroeder, a close friend.
[Note: It is always interesting how the neo-con Mafia reacts when someone gets close to their sordid actions. A web site that appears to be quite close to the fake progressive web site Democratic Underground had a fit with the exposure of the Litvinenko case}.
Poland's right-wing government, like Italy's under Berlusconi, is now engaged in a major program to "out" leading Polish politicians linked to Poland's Cold War-era Communist regime. The process, called "lustration," has also been used by Czech right-wingers to embarrass and ruin progressive political leaders. Poland's lustration law, pushed through by the Kacynskis, resulted in dirt being cast out on former Polish President Aleksandr Kwasniewski, whose attempt to replace Kofi Annan as UN Secretary General was cleverly derailed as a result of the accusations. South Korea's suspected Sun Myung Moon/Unification Church adherent, Ban Ki-moon, was elected with the strong support of US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, a close friend of Sikorski and his neocon Polish government colleagues, the Kaczynskis. However, one of the "incriminating" documents found on Kwasniewski was a Polish security service document that stated Kwasniewksi, while the Communist government's Sports Minister, was a head security agent on Poland's Olympic team that competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. Kwasniewski would have reported on any attempts to get members of the team to defect by U.S. intelligence officers or agents of the host country, South Korea. At the time of the Olympics, Ban was First Secretary of the South Korean embassy in Washington and maintained close links to the Reagan-Bush intelligence infrastructure, an infrastructure that was promoting a revolt in Eastern Europe using emigre groups that included those affiliated with Sun Myung Moon's organization.
However, Poland's lustration process appears to be more of an attempt to change the subject amid a major political scandal involving one of the Polish right-wing coalition partners -- the League of Polish Families which has the Education Minister portfolio held by Roman Giertych. Photos of a League of Polish Families meeting have surfaced in the Polish press showing swastikas and members giving the "Seig Heil" salute. As with the UK Independence Party, the Italian neo-fascists, and French right-wing parties, the Russian-Israeli Mafia has no problem dealing with Nazis, fascists, or anyone else that can provide it influence. The Russian-Israeli Mafia has also shown itself adept at destroying its political enemies. Out Italian sources also report that Naples, where Scaramella maintained ties to the local Mafia's weapons smuggling operations, is a hotbed of activity for the Russian-Israeli Mafia. It is also a major center for the Mafia to recruit local Italian police and prison guards for various "services." The mysterious death of Litvinenko may yet expose the Mafia's true leadership and aims.
December 11, 2006 -- SPECIAL REPORT.
by
Wayne Madsen
The more confusing the Litvinenko poisoning affair becomes, the more it appears to be yet another example of the dangerous neo-con global network of spies, weapons smugglers, far right-wing politicians, Russian-Israeli mafia businessmen, and Islamic mujaheddin false flag provocateurs. Litvinenko's death from polonium-210 radioactive isotope poisoning has actually helped to cast light on this international network, which has its fingerprints on the false intelligence that propelled the United States into an impending military defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan; the false flag operations of the 9/11 attacks on New York City and Washington; and countless other operations, including political operations in Ukraine, Georgia, and Poland, among other nations.
Litvinenko, far from being some sympathetic figure battling the Kremlin, was a central player in a global crime, disinformation, and terrorism network. He had contacts with a right-wing British political party, the United Kingdom Independence Party (which advocates the UK leaving the European Union, abolition of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, has links to the fascist British National Front, and wants a strong commitment to NATO); the mujaheddin movements of Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan, including the Georgia Pankisi Gorge-based "Al Qaeda" branch (Al Ansar) led by the Jordanian terrorist Faris Yusef Amirat, aka "Abu Hafs"; the Russian-Israeli criminal syndicate of wanted Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky and his accomplices; and other bad actors involved in a host of illegal and dubious activities around the world. Litvinenko defected to Britain through Turkey, a major hub for the Russian-Israeli Mafia. He has also been linked to Georgia-based Chechen operations in Turkey and Japan. Litvinenko was also reportedly close to the widow of Chechen President Dzhokar Dudayev, killed by an air-to-surface Russian missile attack in 1996. Litvinenko also had close links to exiled and wanted Russian oligarch Leonid Nevzlin, now exiled in Tel Aviv, and Erinsys, Ltd., a British mercenary firm with ties to Iraqi con man Ahmad Chalabi, whose nephew Salem is a business partner of Jerusalem-based Marc Zell, Douglas Feith's former law partner.
One of Litvinenko's associates, who at first claimed to also have been poisoned by polonium but has now been proven to be "Curveball"-grade prevaricator, is Mario Scaramella, a self-styled Italian spy who has charged that Italy's current Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, was a KGB spy. Scaramella has not only been dismissed as a neo-con tool by the Russian and Italian governments, but has been criticized as an insignificant "soap bubble" by Oleg Gordievski, the highest-ranking officer to have ever defected from the KGB. Italians, who witnessed Rome being used as a central location for the disinformation used to promote the invasion of Iraq -- including the infamous Niger "yellow cake" documents (involving another dubious Italian information broker named Rocco Martino), know Scaramella as a swindler and a braggart. Scaramella has also been under investigation by Italian authorities in Naples for weapons smuggling.
So who is Scaramella and what are his connections to the right-wing? Scaramella has been a longtime provocateur who has tried to link European progressive politicians and the Russian government with Cold War misdeeds. He is also linked to the Forza Italiana party of former (and indicted) Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a figure having his own ties to organized crime. Scaramella and Forza Italiana Senator Paolo Guzzanti, coordinated a political attack against Prodi aimed at proving the progressive leftist leader was a KGB spy. Prodi has threatened a lawsuit over the charge. Berlusconi, a major media tycoon, has, like his fellow right-wing media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, used his media holdings to advance a number of right-wing conspiracy theories about leftist and progressive political leaders in Italy and abroad.
Italy has been wracked by an investigation of a 2003 CIA kidnapping and rendition of Abu Omar, a Milan-based imam, via Germany to Egypt for torture. Arrest warrants have been issued for a number of CIA agents suspected of being involved in the kidnapping. Italian authorities are also investigating the assassination by U.S. or U.S.-controlled forces in Baghdad of General Nicola Calipari, the deputy chief of the Italian SISMI intelligence service. Although ruled an "accident" by US authorities, there is increasing evidence that Calipari was a threat to the neo-con network because of what he knew about the CIA kidnappings, the source of the yellowcake documents, and Scaramella's activities. Rather than CIA agents, informed sources now believe the Americans involved with Italian intelligence in secret operations were members of Pentagon intelligence chief Stephen Cambone's parallel intelligence and special operations network, a network that was set up by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to compete with the CIA.
Nicolo Pollari, Calipari's immediate boss, was fired last month as the head of SISMI. An Italian magistrate is now seeking indictments for 26 Americans and five senior Italian intelligence officials, including Pollari and his one-time deputy, Marco Mancini, for the kidnapping of Omar. Mancini was arrested by Italian authorities in the case. Informed Italian intelligence sources have linked Scaramella to the Pollari-Mancini network of neo-cons in SISMI.
Scaramella was a consultant for the Mitrokhin Committee, a body set up by the Italian right-wing-controlled Parliament in 2003 to investigate leftist Italian politicians for their links to the Soviets. The committee was a ruse designed to damage the reputations of Italian progressive leaders. Guzzanti was the committee chairman and another Scaramella friend, Senator Lucio Malan, also of Forza Italiana, served as a member. Italian sources report that Guzzanti told Scaramella that the "Capo," meaning Berlusconi, was going to be pleased with damaging information Litvinenko could pass on about Prodi. Scaramella also reportedly told Italian right-wing politicians of support from a top-level contact in or close to the U.S. government. That has been taken to mean the CIA, but our Italian sources believe it is likely someone associated with the neo-con network in either the Pentagon or National Security Council of the White House. Even more intriguing is a report from a confidential Italian source that Scaramella received funding from a French environmental group "front" activity, a possible link between the Italian agent of influence and a huge neo-con false flag operation involving French Interior Minister and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy, himself, has been accused of receiving illegal funds through dubious bank accounts in Luxembourg and some of those funds have Russian-Israeli mafia fingerprints written all over them.
The Mitrokhin Committee neo-cons and neo-fascists attempted to link the Italian left to the kidnapping and murder of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981. We now know from history that Moro was kidnapped and assassinated by Red Brigades in the employment of the Italian fascists, particularly agents associated with the fascist P-2 secret Masonic lodge and the similarly fascist Opus Dei as retaliation for Moro's plans to bring the Communists into a grand coalition. We also now know that Mehmet Ali Agca, the would-be killer of the Pope, was a member of Turkey's far right Gray Wolves and the plot was carried out to lay blame on the Russian KGB and Bulgaria's secret intelligence service.
Sergei Stepashin, former Russian Prime Minister and chief of the Federal Security Service (FSB), said, "It is apparent that those who wanted to tarnish the current Russian authorities, and primarily the president, killed Litvinenko." Two Russian business associates of Litvinenko, Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi (a former agent with the KGB's 9th Directorate, which protected Russian nuclear weapons caches), who met Litvinenko at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in London, have reportedly been affected by exposure to polonium-210 and seven bartenders who worked at the bar have tested positive for contamination with polonium-210. The Itsu sushi bar in :Picadilly where Litvinenko met Scaramella is now not assumed to be the location where Litvinenko was poisoned. Trace of polonium-210 were found at the restaurant but focus is on the Pine Bar at the Millenium as the scene of the poisoning.
Perhaps not surprisingly, FBI agents have been dispatched to London to investigate the Litvinenko death, even though the United States lacks jurisdiction in the case, since no Americans are involved. However, since even before 9/11, the FBI has covered for the international global mafia of terrorists and smugglers, and agents for this network who have been caught in the United States, including Israeli "art students," office and home furniture "movers," and "tourists" photographing sensitive U.S. installations have merely been deported by the FBI back to Israel. Many of the Israelis also possessed passports from Russia and Ukraine. The FBI's interest in the case may be to cover-up the United States as a source of the polonium-210.
What is now even more intriguing is where traces of polonium have also been detected in the case. The British embassy in Moscow and two British Airways Boeing 767a used on the Moscow-London route have tested positive for polonium-210. Kotvun and Lugovoi met the deputy British ambassador at the British embassy in Moscow prior to their trip to London and Lugovoi is claiming that someone, perhaps the British government, is now involved in trying to frame him. A car used by Kotvun in Hamburg on October 31, the night before he left for London, has also tested positive for polonium-210. However, traces of polonium-210 were also found on a Finnair plane that traveled to Moscow from Berlin via Helsinki.
If Britain's intelligence service is involved in the plot to set up Putin by using two unsuspecting Russian businessmen, it means that the Russian-Israeli global mafia has as many links and resources inside British intelligence as it does inside the FBI and U.S. intelligence. And that is a problem that would make James Bond tender his resignation.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has cleared Russia as the source of any illegal radioactive materials shipments. No shipments of polonium have been made by Russia to the UK since 2001.
WMR was the first to report on why polonium was possibly selected as the radioactive weapon of choice. Polonium was discovered by Marie Curie, a champion of Polish independence. The present neo-con government of Poland is a now a favorite base for the Russian-Israeli mafia. It is governed by two far right twins -- the Kaczynski brothers (Lech Kaczynski, the President, and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the Prime Minister -- and includes a noted neo-con, Radek Sikorksi, formerly of the American Enterprise Institute as Defense Minister. Sikorksi is a vitriolic critic of the Russian-Germany undersea Baltic gas pipeline who has made no secret of his dislike for Putin and Gazprom pipeline consortium chief Gerhard Schroeder, the former Social Democratic Chancellor of Germany who is enjoying a rise in popularity at the expense of Christian Democratic Chancellor Angela Merkel, his successor. Any attempt to smear Putin also affects Schroeder, a close friend.
[Note: It is always interesting how the neo-con Mafia reacts when someone gets close to their sordid actions. A web site that appears to be quite close to the fake progressive web site Democratic Underground had a fit with the exposure of the Litvinenko case}.
Poland's right-wing government, like Italy's under Berlusconi, is now engaged in a major program to "out" leading Polish politicians linked to Poland's Cold War-era Communist regime. The process, called "lustration," has also been used by Czech right-wingers to embarrass and ruin progressive political leaders. Poland's lustration law, pushed through by the Kacynskis, resulted in dirt being cast out on former Polish President Aleksandr Kwasniewski, whose attempt to replace Kofi Annan as UN Secretary General was cleverly derailed as a result of the accusations. South Korea's suspected Sun Myung Moon/Unification Church adherent, Ban Ki-moon, was elected with the strong support of US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, a close friend of Sikorski and his neocon Polish government colleagues, the Kaczynskis. However, one of the "incriminating" documents found on Kwasniewski was a Polish security service document that stated Kwasniewksi, while the Communist government's Sports Minister, was a head security agent on Poland's Olympic team that competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. Kwasniewski would have reported on any attempts to get members of the team to defect by U.S. intelligence officers or agents of the host country, South Korea. At the time of the Olympics, Ban was First Secretary of the South Korean embassy in Washington and maintained close links to the Reagan-Bush intelligence infrastructure, an infrastructure that was promoting a revolt in Eastern Europe using emigre groups that included those affiliated with Sun Myung Moon's organization.
However, Poland's lustration process appears to be more of an attempt to change the subject amid a major political scandal involving one of the Polish right-wing coalition partners -- the League of Polish Families which has the Education Minister portfolio held by Roman Giertych. Photos of a League of Polish Families meeting have surfaced in the Polish press showing swastikas and members giving the "Seig Heil" salute. As with the UK Independence Party, the Italian neo-fascists, and French right-wing parties, the Russian-Israeli Mafia has no problem dealing with Nazis, fascists, or anyone else that can provide it influence. The Russian-Israeli Mafia has also shown itself adept at destroying its political enemies. Out Italian sources also report that Naples, where Scaramella maintained ties to the local Mafia's weapons smuggling operations, is a hotbed of activity for the Russian-Israeli Mafia. It is also a major center for the Mafia to recruit local Italian police and prison guards for various "services." The mysterious death of Litvinenko may yet expose the Mafia's true leadership and aims.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Why Ahmadinejad And Chavez Are Right
By Vincent A. Cowherd
10-1-6
Tehran Times
It is amazing how the United States deals with its history by either hiding its head in the sand or attempting to rewrite the accounts of its shameful behavior. What is even more disturbing is that the much vaunted "free press" in the U.S. is complicit in this intellectual rape of the general populace. The collaboration between the delusional political prostitutes that act as the government and the intellectual eunuchs who make up the communications media has left the American public deaf, dumb and blind to the truth.
Americans need to know that both President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela spoke the truth in their respective presentations to the United Nations General Assembly recently. By knowing the truth we will be able to see through the politics of fear and the mountains of illusions and outright lies that the Bush administration has used to drive the country into the grip of the neo-fascists who hold the reigns of government.
Anyone who doubts President Ahmadinejad's veracity needs to familiarize him/herself with the 20th century history of the nation of Iran. It was indeed the United States and Great Britain that in 1953 overthrew the legitimate government of Iran, ousted Dr. Mohammed Mossadeq -- the legitimate prime minister -- and installed their puppet, the murderer and international gangster Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, to do their bidding. And, since 1979, when the Iranian people threw that criminal out and took their country back, the U. S. and Britain have been engaged in plot after plot to destabilize and topple the democratically elected government of Iran. This cannot be denied, and when President Ahmadinejad pointed this out, he spoke the truth and exposed the lie that is the foundation of the Bush administration's foreign policy.
Additionally, there is no doubt whatsoever that the United States government not only gave Saddam Hussein military intelligence but also provided him the means to produce the arms he used in his eight-year war against Iran, which caused the death of over one million people. It is an indisputable fact that these arms included the poison gases that were used against the Iranians, the Kurds and the Shia Muslims who lived in the marshlands of southern Iraq.
The pictures of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands and grinning in the madman's face are a matter of public record. This cannot be denied by the world any more than the Ottoman slaughter of the Armenians and the German slaughter of the Gypsies, Poles and Russians can be denied. The truth is that, by way of their puppet Saddam, the blood of the dead in Iran's war with Iraq, the blood of the Kurds, the blood of the Marsh Shias and all of those others who were tortured and killed by Saddam is on the hands of the U.S. government.
In the recent history of the relationship between the United States and Venezuela, it is abundantly clear that the Bush administration was complicit in the short-lived April 2002 military coup that temporarily ousted the democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez.
The United States Navy -- under orders from Commander-in-Chief George Bush -- jammed the Venezuelan government's communications and supplied the usurpers with intelligence and logistical support before, during and after the feeble, ill-fated coup. After the coup was rebuffed, United States government operatives -- again under Bush's orders -- spirited the coup leaders and their would-be assassins out of the country and into the United States, where they are living today.
This was not the only time that the U.S. has been implicated in plots to maim or murder President Chavez. In September of 2003, President Chavez had to cancel a flight to the U.S. to speak before the United Nations because his security people uncovered another CIA plot; this one designed to bring down his airplane en route to the United States. That same month, after an intense gun battle, Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP) agents arrested a man who, in yet another CIA-backed plot, tried to kill President Chavez with a hand grenade. Neither of these incidents was ever reported in the U.S. press.
Political prostitutes and media eunuchs are as old, real and American as apple pie. The combination of the two has been misleading the American people for centuries, and all the current hoopla about the comments of presidents Ahmadinejad and Chavez is the continuation of a behavior that has led the U.S. into war and mayhem time and time again under administration after administration.
Whether the administration is Republican or Democrat does not matter -- Teddy Roosevelt and the press had the battleship Maine lie, Wilson and the press had the sinking of the Lusitania lie (the history of the plot between Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson and the Rothschild and J.P. Morgan "money-men" to sink the Lusitania in order to get the U. S. into WWI is too exhaustive to explore here), Franklin Roosevelt and the press may have lied about Pearl Harbor just to get into WWII, Eisenhower took over in Vietnam after the French were run out of the country and the press lied about it, Johnson and the press lied about events in the Gulf of Tonkin in order to keep up the Vietnam fiasco, Reagan lied about "the threat" posed by Grenada and the press willingly collaborated.
Now the press is helping the Bush regime foist the worst lie of them all upon the American people. It has been proven over and over again by commission after commission and inquiry after inquiry that since September 11, 2001 the American people have been consistently lied to regarding all aspects of the illegal invasion of Iraq and the so-called "war on terror". President Bush and the members and representatives of his cabinet have perpetrated this lie, and it has already cost over 2000 American lives, additional thousands of young American women and men have been maimed and wounded, and it is estimated by some that over 200,000 Iraqis have died. Day by day the number of casualties keeps growing and the lie keeps going. There is no denying this fact for anyone who is not deaf, dumb and blind.
President Bush calls himself a born-again Christian -- he claims he talked directly to God before invading Iraq -- and President Chavez is a devout Catholic. As such, both are familiar with the foundational tenet of the Christian faith that says, "The Devil is a liar." While some may say that the words of presidents Ahmadinejad and Chavez are coarse and abrasive, they cannot say that they are untrue. However, when measuring the words of President Bush against historical truth, no similarity between his words and the truth is to be found. To paraphrase that old saying, "If it looks like a devil, walks like a devil and talks like a devil, it must be a devil."
10-1-6
Tehran Times
It is amazing how the United States deals with its history by either hiding its head in the sand or attempting to rewrite the accounts of its shameful behavior. What is even more disturbing is that the much vaunted "free press" in the U.S. is complicit in this intellectual rape of the general populace. The collaboration between the delusional political prostitutes that act as the government and the intellectual eunuchs who make up the communications media has left the American public deaf, dumb and blind to the truth.
Americans need to know that both President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela spoke the truth in their respective presentations to the United Nations General Assembly recently. By knowing the truth we will be able to see through the politics of fear and the mountains of illusions and outright lies that the Bush administration has used to drive the country into the grip of the neo-fascists who hold the reigns of government.
Anyone who doubts President Ahmadinejad's veracity needs to familiarize him/herself with the 20th century history of the nation of Iran. It was indeed the United States and Great Britain that in 1953 overthrew the legitimate government of Iran, ousted Dr. Mohammed Mossadeq -- the legitimate prime minister -- and installed their puppet, the murderer and international gangster Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, to do their bidding. And, since 1979, when the Iranian people threw that criminal out and took their country back, the U. S. and Britain have been engaged in plot after plot to destabilize and topple the democratically elected government of Iran. This cannot be denied, and when President Ahmadinejad pointed this out, he spoke the truth and exposed the lie that is the foundation of the Bush administration's foreign policy.
Additionally, there is no doubt whatsoever that the United States government not only gave Saddam Hussein military intelligence but also provided him the means to produce the arms he used in his eight-year war against Iran, which caused the death of over one million people. It is an indisputable fact that these arms included the poison gases that were used against the Iranians, the Kurds and the Shia Muslims who lived in the marshlands of southern Iraq.
The pictures of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands and grinning in the madman's face are a matter of public record. This cannot be denied by the world any more than the Ottoman slaughter of the Armenians and the German slaughter of the Gypsies, Poles and Russians can be denied. The truth is that, by way of their puppet Saddam, the blood of the dead in Iran's war with Iraq, the blood of the Kurds, the blood of the Marsh Shias and all of those others who were tortured and killed by Saddam is on the hands of the U.S. government.
In the recent history of the relationship between the United States and Venezuela, it is abundantly clear that the Bush administration was complicit in the short-lived April 2002 military coup that temporarily ousted the democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez.
The United States Navy -- under orders from Commander-in-Chief George Bush -- jammed the Venezuelan government's communications and supplied the usurpers with intelligence and logistical support before, during and after the feeble, ill-fated coup. After the coup was rebuffed, United States government operatives -- again under Bush's orders -- spirited the coup leaders and their would-be assassins out of the country and into the United States, where they are living today.
This was not the only time that the U.S. has been implicated in plots to maim or murder President Chavez. In September of 2003, President Chavez had to cancel a flight to the U.S. to speak before the United Nations because his security people uncovered another CIA plot; this one designed to bring down his airplane en route to the United States. That same month, after an intense gun battle, Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP) agents arrested a man who, in yet another CIA-backed plot, tried to kill President Chavez with a hand grenade. Neither of these incidents was ever reported in the U.S. press.
Political prostitutes and media eunuchs are as old, real and American as apple pie. The combination of the two has been misleading the American people for centuries, and all the current hoopla about the comments of presidents Ahmadinejad and Chavez is the continuation of a behavior that has led the U.S. into war and mayhem time and time again under administration after administration.
Whether the administration is Republican or Democrat does not matter -- Teddy Roosevelt and the press had the battleship Maine lie, Wilson and the press had the sinking of the Lusitania lie (the history of the plot between Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson and the Rothschild and J.P. Morgan "money-men" to sink the Lusitania in order to get the U. S. into WWI is too exhaustive to explore here), Franklin Roosevelt and the press may have lied about Pearl Harbor just to get into WWII, Eisenhower took over in Vietnam after the French were run out of the country and the press lied about it, Johnson and the press lied about events in the Gulf of Tonkin in order to keep up the Vietnam fiasco, Reagan lied about "the threat" posed by Grenada and the press willingly collaborated.
Now the press is helping the Bush regime foist the worst lie of them all upon the American people. It has been proven over and over again by commission after commission and inquiry after inquiry that since September 11, 2001 the American people have been consistently lied to regarding all aspects of the illegal invasion of Iraq and the so-called "war on terror". President Bush and the members and representatives of his cabinet have perpetrated this lie, and it has already cost over 2000 American lives, additional thousands of young American women and men have been maimed and wounded, and it is estimated by some that over 200,000 Iraqis have died. Day by day the number of casualties keeps growing and the lie keeps going. There is no denying this fact for anyone who is not deaf, dumb and blind.
President Bush calls himself a born-again Christian -- he claims he talked directly to God before invading Iraq -- and President Chavez is a devout Catholic. As such, both are familiar with the foundational tenet of the Christian faith that says, "The Devil is a liar." While some may say that the words of presidents Ahmadinejad and Chavez are coarse and abrasive, they cannot say that they are untrue. However, when measuring the words of President Bush against historical truth, no similarity between his words and the truth is to be found. To paraphrase that old saying, "If it looks like a devil, walks like a devil and talks like a devil, it must be a devil."
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Iranian President Ahmadinejad's letter to President George W. Bush
Text of Iranian President Ahmadinejad's letter to President George W. Bush
By Iranian Republic News Angency (IRNA)
Updated May 9, 2006, 08:13 pm
Iranian President Ahmadinejad opens dialogue with President Bush. Graphic: http://www.president.ir/
The Iranian Government has released to the public, the full text of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to President George Bush.
"The letter to US President George Bush carries the Iranian nation's views and comments on international issues as well as suggestions for resolving the many problems facing humanity," said the Iranian president.
The letter was submitted to President Bush on Monday, May 9, 2006 via the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which takes care of the US interest section in Iran and acts as a liason between the two countries.
The following is the full text of President Ahmadinejad's letter to President George Bush:
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,
Mr George Bush,
President of the United States of America,
For sometime now I have been thinking, how one can justify the undeniable contradictions that exist in the international arena -- which are being constantly debated, especially in political forums and amongst university students. Many questions remain unanswered. These have prompted me to discuss some of the contradictions and questions, in the hope that it might bring about an opportunity to redress them.
Can one be a follower of Jesus Christ (PBUH), the great Messenger of God, feel obliged to respect human rights, present liberalism as a civilization model, announce one’s opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and WMDs, make “War on Terror” his slogan, and finally, work towards the establishment of a unified international community – a community which Christ and the virtuous of the Earth will one day govern, but at the same time, have countries attacked. The lives, reputations and possessions of people destroyed and on the slight chance of the presence of a few criminals in a village, city, or convoy for example, the entire village, city or convoy (are) set ablaze.
Or because of the possibility of the existence of WMDs in one country, it is occupied, around one hundred thousand people killed, its water sources, agriculture and industry destroyed, close to 180,000 foreign troops put on the ground, sanctity of private homes of citizens broken, and the country pushed back perhaps fifty years. At what price? Hundreds of billions of dollars spent from the treasury of one country and certain other countries and tens of thousands of young men and women – as occupation troops – put in harms way, taken away from family and loved ones, their hands stained with the blood of others, subjected to so much psychological pressure that everyday some commit suicide and those returning home suffer depression, become sickly and grapple with all sorts of ailments; while some are killed and their bodies handed to their families.
On the pretext of the existence of WMDs, this great tragedy came to engulf both the peoples of the occupied and the occupying country. Later it was revealed that no WMDs existed to begin with.
Of course Saddam was a murderous dictator. But the war was not waged to topple him, the announced goal of the war was to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction. He was toppled along the way towards another goal; nevertheless the people of the region are happy about it. I point out that throughout the many years of the imposed war on Iran Saddam was supported by the West.
Mr. President,
You might know that I am a teacher. My students ask me how can these actions be reconciled with the values outlined at the beginning of this letter and duty to the tradition of Jesus Christ (PBUH), the Messenger of peace and forgiveness?
There are prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that have not been tried, have no legal representation, their families cannot see them and are obviously kept in a strange land outside their own country. There is no international monitoring of their conditions and fate. No one knows whether they are prisoners, POWs, accused or criminals.
European investigators have confirmed the existence of secret prisons in Europe too. I could not correlate the abduction of a person, and him or her being kept in secret prisons, with the provisions of any judicial system. For that matter, I fail to understand how such actions correspond to the values outlined in the beginning of this letter, i.e. the teachings of Jesus Christ (PBUH), human rights and liberal values.
Young people, university students, and ordinary people have many questions about the phenomenon of Israel. I am sure you are familiar with some of them.
Throughout history many countries have been occupied, but I think the establishment of a new country with a new people, is a new phenomenon that is exclusive to our times.
Students are saying that sixty years ago such a country did not exist. They show old documents and globes and say try as we have, we have not been able to find a country named Israel.
I tell them to study the history of WWI and II. One of my students told me that during WWII, which more than tens of millions of people perished in, news about the war, was quickly disseminated by the warring parties. Each touted their victories and the most recent battlefront defeat of the other party. After the war they claimed that six million Jews had been killed. Six million people that were surely related to at least two million families.
Again let us assume that these events are true. Does that logically translate into the establishment of the state of Israel in the Middle East or support for such a state? How can this phenomenon be rationalized or explained?
Mr. President,
I am sure you know how – and at what cost – Israel was established:
-Many thousands were killed in the process.
-Millions of indigenous people were made refugees.
-Hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland, olive plantations, towns and villages were destroyed.
This tragedy is not exclusive to the time of establishment; unfortunately it has been ongoing for sixty years now.
A regime has been established which does not show mercy even to kids, destroys houses while the occupants are still in them, announces beforehand its list and plans to assassinate Palestinian figures, and keeps thousands of Palestinians in prison. Such a phenomenon is unique – or at the very least extremely rare – in recent memory.
Another big question asked by the people is “why is this regime being supported?”
Is support for this regime in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ (PBUH) or Moses (PBUH) or liberal values?
Or are we to understand that allowing the original inhabitants of these lands – inside and outside Palestine -- whether they are Christian, Moslem or Jew, to determine their fate, runs contrary to principles of democracy, human rights and the teachings of prophets? If not, why is there so much opposition to a referendum?
The newly elected Palestinian administration recently took office. All independent observers have confirmed that this government represents the electorate. Unbelievingly, they have put the elected government under pressure and have advised it to recognize the Israeli regime, abandon the struggle and follow the programs of the previous government.
If the current Palestinian government had run on the above platform, would the Palestinian people have voted for it? Again, can such position taken in opposition to the Palestinian government be reconciled with the values outlined earlier? The people are also asking “Why are all UNSC resolutions in condemnation of Israel vetoed?”
Mr. President,
As you are well aware, I live amongst the people and am in constant contact with them -- many people from around the Middle East manage to contact me as well. They do not have faith in these dubious policies either. There is evidence that the people of the region are becoming increasingly angry with such policies.
It is not my intention to pose too many questions, but I need to refer to other points as well.
Why is it that any technological and scientific achievement reached in the Middle East region is translated into and portrayed as a threat to the Zionist regime? Is not scientific R&D [Research & Development] one of the basic rights of nations?
You are familiar with history. Aside from the Middle Ages, in what other point in history has scientific and technical progress been a crime? Can the possibility of scientific achievements being utilized for military purposes be reason enough to oppose science and technology altogether? If such a supposition is true, then all scientific disciplines, including physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, engineering, etc. must be opposed.
Lies were told in the Iraqi matter. What was the result? I have no doubt that telling lies is reprehensible in any culture, and you do not like to be lied to.
Mr. President,
Don’t Latin Americans have the right to ask why their elected governments are being opposed and coup leaders supported? Or, Why must they constantly be threatened and live in fear?
The people of Africa are hardworking, creative and talented. They can play an important and valuable role in providing for the needs of humanity and contribute to its material and spiritual progress. Poverty and hardship in large parts of Africa are preventing this from happening. Don’t they have the right to ask why their enormous wealth – including minerals – is being looted, despite the fact that they need it more than others?
Again, do such actions correspond to the teachings of Christ and the tenets of human rights?
The brave and faithful people of Iran too have many questions and grievances, including: the coup d’etat of 1953 and the subsequent toppling of the legal government of the day, opposition to the Islamic revolution, transformation of an Embassy into a headquarters supporting the activities of those opposing the Islamic Republic (many thousands of pages of documents corroborate this claim), support for Saddam in the war waged against Iran, the shooting down of the Iranian passenger plane, freezing the assets of the Iranian nation, increasing threats, anger and displeasure vis-Ã -vis the scientific and nuclear progress of the Iranian nation (just when all Iranians are jubilant and celebrating their country’s progress), and many other grievances that I will not refer to in this letter.
Mr. President,
September Eleven was a horrendous incident. The killing of innocents is deplorable and appalling in any part of the world. Our government immediately declared its disgust with the perpetrators and offered its condolences to the bereaved and expressed its sympathies.
All governments have a duty to protect the lives, property and good standing of their citizens. Reportedly your government employs extensive security, protection and intelligence systems – and even hunts its opponents abroad. September eleven was not a simple operation. Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services – or their extensive infiltration? Of course this is just an educated guess. Why have the various aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And, why aren’t those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial?
All governments have a duty to provide security and peace of mind for their citizens. For some years now, the people of your country and neighbors of world trouble spots do not have peace of mind. After 9.11, instead of healing and tending to the emotional wounds of the survivors and the American people -- who had been immensely traumatized by the attacks -- some Western media only intensified the climate of fear and insecurity – some constantly talked about the possibility of new terror attacks and kept the people in fear. Is that service to the American people? Is it possible to calculate the damages incurred from fear and panic?
American citizens lived in constant fear of fresh attacks that could come at any moment and in any place. They felt insecure in the streets, in their place of work and at home. Who would be happy with this situation? Why was the media, instead of conveying a feeling of security and providing peace of mind, giving rise to a feeling of insecurity?
Some believe that the hype paved the way -- and was the justification --for an attack on Afghanistan. Again I need to refer to the role of media.
In media charters, correct dissemination of information and honest reporting of a story are established tenets. I express my deep regret about the disregard shown by certain Western media for these principles. The main pretext for an attack on Iraq was the existence of WMDs. This was repeated incessantly -- for the public to finally believe -- and the ground set for an attack on Iraq.
Will the truth not be lost in a contrived and deceptive climate?
Again, if the truth is allowed to be lost, how can that be reconciled with the earlier mentioned values? Is the truth known to the Almighty lost as well?
Mr. President,
In countries around the world, citizens provide for the expenses of governments so that their governments in turn are able to serve them.
The question here is “what has the hundreds of billions of dollars, spent every year to pay for the Iraqi campaign, produced for the citizens?”
As Your Excellency is aware, in some states of your country, people are living in poverty. Many thousands are homeless and unemployment is a huge problem. Of course these problems exist – to a larger or lesser extent -- in other countries as well. With these conditions in mind, can the gargantuan expenses of the campaign – paid from the public treasury – be explained and be consistent with the aforementioned principles?
What has been said, are some of the grievances of the people around the world, in our region and in your country. But my main contention – which I am hoping you will agree to some of it – is:
Those in power have a specific time in office and do not rule indefinitely, but their names will be recorded in history and will be constantly judged in the immediate and distant futures.
The people will scrutinize our presidencies.
Did we mange to bring peace, security and prosperity for the people or insecurity and unemployment?
Did we intend to establish justice or just supported especial interest groups, and by forcing many people to live in poverty and hardship, made a few people rich and powerful -- thus trading the approval of the people and the Almighty with theirs’?
Did we defend the rights of the underprivileged or ignore them?
Did we defend the rights of all people around the world or imposed wars on them, interfered illegally in their affairs, established hellish prisons and incarcerated some of them?
Did we bring the world peace and security or raised the specter of intimidation and threats?
Did we tell the truth to our nation and others around the world or presented an inverted version of it?
Were we on the side of people or the occupiers and oppressors?
Did our administrations set out to promote rational behavior, logic, ethics, peace, fulfilling obligations, justice, service to the people, prosperity, progress and respect for human dignity or the force of guns, intimidation, insecurity, disregard for the people, delaying the progress and excellence of other nations, and trample on people’s rights?
And finally, they will judge us on whether we remained true to our oath of office – to serve the people, which is our main task, and the traditions of the prophets -- or not?
Mr. President,
How much longer can the world tolerate this situation?
Where will this trend lead the world to?
How long must the people of the world pay for the incorrect decisions of some rulers?
How much longer will the specter of insecurity – raised from the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction -- hunt the people of the world?
How much longer will the blood of the innocent men, women and children be spilled on the streets, and people’s houses destroyed over their heads?
Are you pleased with the current condition of the world?
Do you think present policies can continue?
If billions of dollars spent on security, military campaigns and troop movement were instead spent on investment and assistance for poor countries, promotion of health, combating different diseases, education and improvement of mental and physical fitness, assistance to the victims of natural disasters, creation of employment opportunities and production, development projects and poverty alleviation, establishment of peace, mediation between disputing states, and extinguishing the flames of racial, ethnic and other conflicts, were would the world be today? Would not your government and people be justifiably proud?
Would not your administration’s political and economic standing have been stronger?
And I am most sorry to say, would there have been an ever increasing global hatred of the American government?
Mr. President, it is not my intention to distress anyone.
If Prophet Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ishmael, Joseph, or Jesus Christ (PBUH) were with us today, how would they have judged such behavior? Will we be given a role to play in the promised world, where justice will become universal and Jesus Christ (PBUH) will be present? Will they even accept us?
My basic question is this: Is there no better way to interact with the rest of the world? Today there are hundreds of millions of Christians, hundreds of millions of Muslims and millions of people who follow the teachings of Moses (PBUH). All divine religions share and respect one word and that is “monotheism” or belief in a single God and no other in the world.
The Holy Koran stresses this common word and calls on all followers of divine religions and says: [3.64] Say: O followers of the Book! Come to an equitable proposition between us and you that we shall not serve any but Allah and (that) we shall not associate aught with Him, and (that) some of us shall not take others for lords besides Allah; but if they turn back, then say: Bear witness that we are Muslims. (The Family of Imran)
Mr. President,
According to divine verses, we have all been called upon to worship one God and follow the teachings of divine Prophets.
“To worship a God which is above all powers in the world and can do all He pleases.” “The Lord which knows that which is hidden and visible, the past and the future, knows what goes on in the Hearts of His servants and records their deeds.”
“The Lord who is the possessor of the heavens and the earth and all universe is His court” “planning for the universe is done by His hands, and gives His servants the glad tidings of mercy and forgiveness of sins” “He is the companion of the oppressed and the enemy of oppressors” “He is the Compassionate, the Merciful” “He is the recourse of the faithful and guides them towards the light from darkness” “He is witness to the actions of His servants” “He calls on servants to be faithful and do good deeds, and asks them to stay on the path of righteousness and remain steadfast” “Calls on servants to heed His prophets and He is a witness to their deeds” “A bad ending belongs only to those who have chosen the life of this world and disobey Him and oppress His servants” and “A good end and eternal paradise belong to those servants who fear His majesty and do not follow their lascivious selves.”
We believe a return to the teachings of the divine prophets is the only road leading to salvation. I have been told that Your Excellency follows the teachings of Jesus (PBUH) and believes in the divine promise of the rule of the righteous on Earth.
We also believe that Jesus Christ (PBUH) was one of the great prophets of the Almighty. He has been repeatedly praised in the Koran. Jesus (PBUH) has been quoted in Koran as well: [19.36] And surely Allah is my Lord and your Lord, therefore serve Him; this is the right path. Marium
Service to and obedience of the Almighty is the credo of all divine messengers.
The God of all people in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the Pacific and the rest of the world is one. He is the Almighty who wants to guide and give dignity to all His servants. He has given greatness to Humans.
We again read in the Holy Book: “The Almighty God sent His prophets with miracles and clear signs to guide the people and show them divine signs and purify them from sins and pollutions. And He sent the Book and the balance so that the people display justice and avoid the rebellious”.
All of the above verses can be seen, one way or the other, in the Good Book as well.
Divine prophets have promised:
The day will come when all humans will congregate before the court of the Almighty, so that their deeds are examined. The good will be directed towards Haven and evildoers will meet divine retribution. I trust both of us believe in such a day, but it will not be easy to calculate the actions of rulers, because we must be answerable to our nations and all others whose lives have been directly or indirectly affected by our actions.
All prophets, speak of peace and tranquility for man -- based on monotheism, justice and respect for human dignity.
Do you not think that if all of us come to believe in and abide by these principles, that is, monotheism, worship of God, justice, respect for the dignity of man, belief in the Last Day, we can overcome the present problems of the world -- that are the result of disobedience to the Almighty and the teachings of prophets – and improve our performance?
Do you not think that belief in these principles promotes and guarantees peace, friendship and justice?
Do you not think that the aforementioned written or unwritten principles are universally respected?
Will you not accept this invitation? That is, a genuine return to the teachings of prophets, to monotheism and justice, to preserve human dignity and obedience to the Almighty and His prophets?
Mr. President,
History tells us that repressive and cruel governments do not survive. God has entrusted the fate of men to them. The Almighty has not left the universe and humanity to their own devices.
Many things have happened contrary to the wishes and plans of governments. These tell us that there is a higher power at work and all events are determined by Him.
Can one deny the signs of change in the world today?
Is the situation of the world today comparable to that of ten years ago? Changes happen fast and come at a furious pace.
The people of the world are not happy with the status quo and pay little heed to the promises and comments made by a number of influential world leaders. Many people around the world feel insecure and oppose the spreading of insecurity and war and do not approve of and accept dubious policies.
The people are protesting the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots and the rich and poor countries.
The people are disgusted with increasing corruption.
The people of many countries are angry about the attacks on their cultural foundations and the disintegration of families. They are equally dismayed with the fading of care and compassion. The people of the world have no faith in international organizations, because their rights are not advocated by these organizations.
Liberalism and Western style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the Liberal democratic systems.
We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point -- that is the Almighty God. Undoubtedly through faith in God and the teachings of the prophets, the people will conquer their problems. My question for you is: “Do you not want to join them?”
Mr. President,
Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the
Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.
Vasalam Ala Man Ataba’al hoda
Mahmood Ahmadi-Nejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
© Copyright 2006 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com
By Iranian Republic News Angency (IRNA)
Updated May 9, 2006, 08:13 pm
Iranian President Ahmadinejad opens dialogue with President Bush. Graphic: http://www.president.ir/
The Iranian Government has released to the public, the full text of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to President George Bush.
"The letter to US President George Bush carries the Iranian nation's views and comments on international issues as well as suggestions for resolving the many problems facing humanity," said the Iranian president.
The letter was submitted to President Bush on Monday, May 9, 2006 via the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which takes care of the US interest section in Iran and acts as a liason between the two countries.
The following is the full text of President Ahmadinejad's letter to President George Bush:
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,
Mr George Bush,
President of the United States of America,
For sometime now I have been thinking, how one can justify the undeniable contradictions that exist in the international arena -- which are being constantly debated, especially in political forums and amongst university students. Many questions remain unanswered. These have prompted me to discuss some of the contradictions and questions, in the hope that it might bring about an opportunity to redress them.
Can one be a follower of Jesus Christ (PBUH), the great Messenger of God, feel obliged to respect human rights, present liberalism as a civilization model, announce one’s opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and WMDs, make “War on Terror” his slogan, and finally, work towards the establishment of a unified international community – a community which Christ and the virtuous of the Earth will one day govern, but at the same time, have countries attacked. The lives, reputations and possessions of people destroyed and on the slight chance of the presence of a few criminals in a village, city, or convoy for example, the entire village, city or convoy (are) set ablaze.
Or because of the possibility of the existence of WMDs in one country, it is occupied, around one hundred thousand people killed, its water sources, agriculture and industry destroyed, close to 180,000 foreign troops put on the ground, sanctity of private homes of citizens broken, and the country pushed back perhaps fifty years. At what price? Hundreds of billions of dollars spent from the treasury of one country and certain other countries and tens of thousands of young men and women – as occupation troops – put in harms way, taken away from family and loved ones, their hands stained with the blood of others, subjected to so much psychological pressure that everyday some commit suicide and those returning home suffer depression, become sickly and grapple with all sorts of ailments; while some are killed and their bodies handed to their families.
On the pretext of the existence of WMDs, this great tragedy came to engulf both the peoples of the occupied and the occupying country. Later it was revealed that no WMDs existed to begin with.
Of course Saddam was a murderous dictator. But the war was not waged to topple him, the announced goal of the war was to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction. He was toppled along the way towards another goal; nevertheless the people of the region are happy about it. I point out that throughout the many years of the imposed war on Iran Saddam was supported by the West.
Mr. President,
You might know that I am a teacher. My students ask me how can these actions be reconciled with the values outlined at the beginning of this letter and duty to the tradition of Jesus Christ (PBUH), the Messenger of peace and forgiveness?
There are prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that have not been tried, have no legal representation, their families cannot see them and are obviously kept in a strange land outside their own country. There is no international monitoring of their conditions and fate. No one knows whether they are prisoners, POWs, accused or criminals.
European investigators have confirmed the existence of secret prisons in Europe too. I could not correlate the abduction of a person, and him or her being kept in secret prisons, with the provisions of any judicial system. For that matter, I fail to understand how such actions correspond to the values outlined in the beginning of this letter, i.e. the teachings of Jesus Christ (PBUH), human rights and liberal values.
Young people, university students, and ordinary people have many questions about the phenomenon of Israel. I am sure you are familiar with some of them.
Throughout history many countries have been occupied, but I think the establishment of a new country with a new people, is a new phenomenon that is exclusive to our times.
Students are saying that sixty years ago such a country did not exist. They show old documents and globes and say try as we have, we have not been able to find a country named Israel.
I tell them to study the history of WWI and II. One of my students told me that during WWII, which more than tens of millions of people perished in, news about the war, was quickly disseminated by the warring parties. Each touted their victories and the most recent battlefront defeat of the other party. After the war they claimed that six million Jews had been killed. Six million people that were surely related to at least two million families.
Again let us assume that these events are true. Does that logically translate into the establishment of the state of Israel in the Middle East or support for such a state? How can this phenomenon be rationalized or explained?
Mr. President,
I am sure you know how – and at what cost – Israel was established:
-Many thousands were killed in the process.
-Millions of indigenous people were made refugees.
-Hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland, olive plantations, towns and villages were destroyed.
This tragedy is not exclusive to the time of establishment; unfortunately it has been ongoing for sixty years now.
A regime has been established which does not show mercy even to kids, destroys houses while the occupants are still in them, announces beforehand its list and plans to assassinate Palestinian figures, and keeps thousands of Palestinians in prison. Such a phenomenon is unique – or at the very least extremely rare – in recent memory.
Another big question asked by the people is “why is this regime being supported?”
Is support for this regime in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ (PBUH) or Moses (PBUH) or liberal values?
Or are we to understand that allowing the original inhabitants of these lands – inside and outside Palestine -- whether they are Christian, Moslem or Jew, to determine their fate, runs contrary to principles of democracy, human rights and the teachings of prophets? If not, why is there so much opposition to a referendum?
The newly elected Palestinian administration recently took office. All independent observers have confirmed that this government represents the electorate. Unbelievingly, they have put the elected government under pressure and have advised it to recognize the Israeli regime, abandon the struggle and follow the programs of the previous government.
If the current Palestinian government had run on the above platform, would the Palestinian people have voted for it? Again, can such position taken in opposition to the Palestinian government be reconciled with the values outlined earlier? The people are also asking “Why are all UNSC resolutions in condemnation of Israel vetoed?”
Mr. President,
As you are well aware, I live amongst the people and am in constant contact with them -- many people from around the Middle East manage to contact me as well. They do not have faith in these dubious policies either. There is evidence that the people of the region are becoming increasingly angry with such policies.
It is not my intention to pose too many questions, but I need to refer to other points as well.
Why is it that any technological and scientific achievement reached in the Middle East region is translated into and portrayed as a threat to the Zionist regime? Is not scientific R&D [Research & Development] one of the basic rights of nations?
You are familiar with history. Aside from the Middle Ages, in what other point in history has scientific and technical progress been a crime? Can the possibility of scientific achievements being utilized for military purposes be reason enough to oppose science and technology altogether? If such a supposition is true, then all scientific disciplines, including physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, engineering, etc. must be opposed.
Lies were told in the Iraqi matter. What was the result? I have no doubt that telling lies is reprehensible in any culture, and you do not like to be lied to.
Mr. President,
Don’t Latin Americans have the right to ask why their elected governments are being opposed and coup leaders supported? Or, Why must they constantly be threatened and live in fear?
The people of Africa are hardworking, creative and talented. They can play an important and valuable role in providing for the needs of humanity and contribute to its material and spiritual progress. Poverty and hardship in large parts of Africa are preventing this from happening. Don’t they have the right to ask why their enormous wealth – including minerals – is being looted, despite the fact that they need it more than others?
Again, do such actions correspond to the teachings of Christ and the tenets of human rights?
The brave and faithful people of Iran too have many questions and grievances, including: the coup d’etat of 1953 and the subsequent toppling of the legal government of the day, opposition to the Islamic revolution, transformation of an Embassy into a headquarters supporting the activities of those opposing the Islamic Republic (many thousands of pages of documents corroborate this claim), support for Saddam in the war waged against Iran, the shooting down of the Iranian passenger plane, freezing the assets of the Iranian nation, increasing threats, anger and displeasure vis-Ã -vis the scientific and nuclear progress of the Iranian nation (just when all Iranians are jubilant and celebrating their country’s progress), and many other grievances that I will not refer to in this letter.
Mr. President,
September Eleven was a horrendous incident. The killing of innocents is deplorable and appalling in any part of the world. Our government immediately declared its disgust with the perpetrators and offered its condolences to the bereaved and expressed its sympathies.
All governments have a duty to protect the lives, property and good standing of their citizens. Reportedly your government employs extensive security, protection and intelligence systems – and even hunts its opponents abroad. September eleven was not a simple operation. Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services – or their extensive infiltration? Of course this is just an educated guess. Why have the various aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And, why aren’t those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial?
All governments have a duty to provide security and peace of mind for their citizens. For some years now, the people of your country and neighbors of world trouble spots do not have peace of mind. After 9.11, instead of healing and tending to the emotional wounds of the survivors and the American people -- who had been immensely traumatized by the attacks -- some Western media only intensified the climate of fear and insecurity – some constantly talked about the possibility of new terror attacks and kept the people in fear. Is that service to the American people? Is it possible to calculate the damages incurred from fear and panic?
American citizens lived in constant fear of fresh attacks that could come at any moment and in any place. They felt insecure in the streets, in their place of work and at home. Who would be happy with this situation? Why was the media, instead of conveying a feeling of security and providing peace of mind, giving rise to a feeling of insecurity?
Some believe that the hype paved the way -- and was the justification --for an attack on Afghanistan. Again I need to refer to the role of media.
In media charters, correct dissemination of information and honest reporting of a story are established tenets. I express my deep regret about the disregard shown by certain Western media for these principles. The main pretext for an attack on Iraq was the existence of WMDs. This was repeated incessantly -- for the public to finally believe -- and the ground set for an attack on Iraq.
Will the truth not be lost in a contrived and deceptive climate?
Again, if the truth is allowed to be lost, how can that be reconciled with the earlier mentioned values? Is the truth known to the Almighty lost as well?
Mr. President,
In countries around the world, citizens provide for the expenses of governments so that their governments in turn are able to serve them.
The question here is “what has the hundreds of billions of dollars, spent every year to pay for the Iraqi campaign, produced for the citizens?”
As Your Excellency is aware, in some states of your country, people are living in poverty. Many thousands are homeless and unemployment is a huge problem. Of course these problems exist – to a larger or lesser extent -- in other countries as well. With these conditions in mind, can the gargantuan expenses of the campaign – paid from the public treasury – be explained and be consistent with the aforementioned principles?
What has been said, are some of the grievances of the people around the world, in our region and in your country. But my main contention – which I am hoping you will agree to some of it – is:
Those in power have a specific time in office and do not rule indefinitely, but their names will be recorded in history and will be constantly judged in the immediate and distant futures.
The people will scrutinize our presidencies.
Did we mange to bring peace, security and prosperity for the people or insecurity and unemployment?
Did we intend to establish justice or just supported especial interest groups, and by forcing many people to live in poverty and hardship, made a few people rich and powerful -- thus trading the approval of the people and the Almighty with theirs’?
Did we defend the rights of the underprivileged or ignore them?
Did we defend the rights of all people around the world or imposed wars on them, interfered illegally in their affairs, established hellish prisons and incarcerated some of them?
Did we bring the world peace and security or raised the specter of intimidation and threats?
Did we tell the truth to our nation and others around the world or presented an inverted version of it?
Were we on the side of people or the occupiers and oppressors?
Did our administrations set out to promote rational behavior, logic, ethics, peace, fulfilling obligations, justice, service to the people, prosperity, progress and respect for human dignity or the force of guns, intimidation, insecurity, disregard for the people, delaying the progress and excellence of other nations, and trample on people’s rights?
And finally, they will judge us on whether we remained true to our oath of office – to serve the people, which is our main task, and the traditions of the prophets -- or not?
Mr. President,
How much longer can the world tolerate this situation?
Where will this trend lead the world to?
How long must the people of the world pay for the incorrect decisions of some rulers?
How much longer will the specter of insecurity – raised from the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction -- hunt the people of the world?
How much longer will the blood of the innocent men, women and children be spilled on the streets, and people’s houses destroyed over their heads?
Are you pleased with the current condition of the world?
Do you think present policies can continue?
If billions of dollars spent on security, military campaigns and troop movement were instead spent on investment and assistance for poor countries, promotion of health, combating different diseases, education and improvement of mental and physical fitness, assistance to the victims of natural disasters, creation of employment opportunities and production, development projects and poverty alleviation, establishment of peace, mediation between disputing states, and extinguishing the flames of racial, ethnic and other conflicts, were would the world be today? Would not your government and people be justifiably proud?
Would not your administration’s political and economic standing have been stronger?
And I am most sorry to say, would there have been an ever increasing global hatred of the American government?
Mr. President, it is not my intention to distress anyone.
If Prophet Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ishmael, Joseph, or Jesus Christ (PBUH) were with us today, how would they have judged such behavior? Will we be given a role to play in the promised world, where justice will become universal and Jesus Christ (PBUH) will be present? Will they even accept us?
My basic question is this: Is there no better way to interact with the rest of the world? Today there are hundreds of millions of Christians, hundreds of millions of Muslims and millions of people who follow the teachings of Moses (PBUH). All divine religions share and respect one word and that is “monotheism” or belief in a single God and no other in the world.
The Holy Koran stresses this common word and calls on all followers of divine religions and says: [3.64] Say: O followers of the Book! Come to an equitable proposition between us and you that we shall not serve any but Allah and (that) we shall not associate aught with Him, and (that) some of us shall not take others for lords besides Allah; but if they turn back, then say: Bear witness that we are Muslims. (The Family of Imran)
Mr. President,
According to divine verses, we have all been called upon to worship one God and follow the teachings of divine Prophets.
“To worship a God which is above all powers in the world and can do all He pleases.” “The Lord which knows that which is hidden and visible, the past and the future, knows what goes on in the Hearts of His servants and records their deeds.”
“The Lord who is the possessor of the heavens and the earth and all universe is His court” “planning for the universe is done by His hands, and gives His servants the glad tidings of mercy and forgiveness of sins” “He is the companion of the oppressed and the enemy of oppressors” “He is the Compassionate, the Merciful” “He is the recourse of the faithful and guides them towards the light from darkness” “He is witness to the actions of His servants” “He calls on servants to be faithful and do good deeds, and asks them to stay on the path of righteousness and remain steadfast” “Calls on servants to heed His prophets and He is a witness to their deeds” “A bad ending belongs only to those who have chosen the life of this world and disobey Him and oppress His servants” and “A good end and eternal paradise belong to those servants who fear His majesty and do not follow their lascivious selves.”
We believe a return to the teachings of the divine prophets is the only road leading to salvation. I have been told that Your Excellency follows the teachings of Jesus (PBUH) and believes in the divine promise of the rule of the righteous on Earth.
We also believe that Jesus Christ (PBUH) was one of the great prophets of the Almighty. He has been repeatedly praised in the Koran. Jesus (PBUH) has been quoted in Koran as well: [19.36] And surely Allah is my Lord and your Lord, therefore serve Him; this is the right path. Marium
Service to and obedience of the Almighty is the credo of all divine messengers.
The God of all people in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, the Pacific and the rest of the world is one. He is the Almighty who wants to guide and give dignity to all His servants. He has given greatness to Humans.
We again read in the Holy Book: “The Almighty God sent His prophets with miracles and clear signs to guide the people and show them divine signs and purify them from sins and pollutions. And He sent the Book and the balance so that the people display justice and avoid the rebellious”.
All of the above verses can be seen, one way or the other, in the Good Book as well.
Divine prophets have promised:
The day will come when all humans will congregate before the court of the Almighty, so that their deeds are examined. The good will be directed towards Haven and evildoers will meet divine retribution. I trust both of us believe in such a day, but it will not be easy to calculate the actions of rulers, because we must be answerable to our nations and all others whose lives have been directly or indirectly affected by our actions.
All prophets, speak of peace and tranquility for man -- based on monotheism, justice and respect for human dignity.
Do you not think that if all of us come to believe in and abide by these principles, that is, monotheism, worship of God, justice, respect for the dignity of man, belief in the Last Day, we can overcome the present problems of the world -- that are the result of disobedience to the Almighty and the teachings of prophets – and improve our performance?
Do you not think that belief in these principles promotes and guarantees peace, friendship and justice?
Do you not think that the aforementioned written or unwritten principles are universally respected?
Will you not accept this invitation? That is, a genuine return to the teachings of prophets, to monotheism and justice, to preserve human dignity and obedience to the Almighty and His prophets?
Mr. President,
History tells us that repressive and cruel governments do not survive. God has entrusted the fate of men to them. The Almighty has not left the universe and humanity to their own devices.
Many things have happened contrary to the wishes and plans of governments. These tell us that there is a higher power at work and all events are determined by Him.
Can one deny the signs of change in the world today?
Is the situation of the world today comparable to that of ten years ago? Changes happen fast and come at a furious pace.
The people of the world are not happy with the status quo and pay little heed to the promises and comments made by a number of influential world leaders. Many people around the world feel insecure and oppose the spreading of insecurity and war and do not approve of and accept dubious policies.
The people are protesting the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots and the rich and poor countries.
The people are disgusted with increasing corruption.
The people of many countries are angry about the attacks on their cultural foundations and the disintegration of families. They are equally dismayed with the fading of care and compassion. The people of the world have no faith in international organizations, because their rights are not advocated by these organizations.
Liberalism and Western style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the Liberal democratic systems.
We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point -- that is the Almighty God. Undoubtedly through faith in God and the teachings of the prophets, the people will conquer their problems. My question for you is: “Do you not want to join them?”
Mr. President,
Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the
Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.
Vasalam Ala Man Ataba’al hoda
Mahmood Ahmadi-Nejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
© Copyright 2006 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
America’s Superpower Days are Over
by Paul Craig Roberts
Thursday, January 12, 2006
President George W. Bush has destroyed America’s economy, along with America’s reputation as a truthful, compassionate, peace-loving nation that values civil liberties and human rights.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes have calculated the cost to Americans of Bush’s Iraq war to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. This figure is 5 to 10 times higher than the $200 billion that Bush’s economic adviser Larry Lindsey estimated.
Lindsey was fired by Bush because his estimate was three times higher than the $70 billion figure that the Bush administration used to mislead Congress and the American voters about the burden of the war. You can’t work in the Bush administration unless you are willing to lie for dub-ya.
Americans need to ask themselves if the White House is in competent hands when a $70 billion war becomes a $2 trillion war. Bush sold his war by understating its cost by a factor of 28.57. Any financial officer anywhere in the world whose project was 2,857 percent over budget would instantly be fired for utter incompetence.
Bush’s war cost almost 30 times more than he said it would because the moronic neoconservatives that he stupidly appointed to policy positions told him the invasion would be a cakewalk. Neocons promised minimal U.S. casualties. Iraq already has cost 2,200 dead Americans and 16,000 seriously wounded—and Bush’s war is not over yet. The cost of lifetime care and disability payments for the thousands of U.S. troops who have suffered brain and spinal damage was not part of the unrealistic rosy picture that Bush painted.
Stiglitz’s $2 trillion estimate is OK as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough. My own estimate is a multiple of Stiglitz’s.
Stiglitz correctly includes the cost of lifetime care of the wounded, the economic value of destroyed and lost lives, and the opportunity cost of the resources diverted to war destruction. What he leaves out is the war’s diversion of the nation’s attention away from the ongoing erosion of the U.S. economy. War and the accompanying domestic police state have filled the attention span of Americans and their government. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has been rapidly deteriorating into Third World status.
In 2005, for the first time on record, consumer, business and government spending exceeded the total income of the country. Net national savings actually fell.
America can consume more than it produces only if foreigners supply the difference. China recently announced that it intends to diversify its foreign exchange holdings away from the U.S. dollar. If this is not merely a threat in order to extort even more concessions from Bush, Americans’ ability to consume will be brought up short by a fall in the dollar’s value, as China ceases to be a sponge that is absorbing an excessive outpouring of dollars. Oil-producing countries might follow China’s lead.
Now that Americans are dependent on imports for their clothing, manufactured goods and even high technology products, a decline in the dollar’s value will make all these products much more expensive. American living standards, which have been treading water, will sink.
A decline in living standards is an enormous cost and will make existing debt burdens unbearable. Stiglitz did not include this cost in his estimate.
Even more serious is the war’s diversion of attention from the disappearance of middle-class jobs for university graduates. The ladders of upward mobility are being rapidly dismantled by offshore production for U.S. markets, job outsourcing and importation of foreign professionals on work visas. In almost every U.S. corporation, U.S. employees are being dismissed and replaced by foreigners who work for lower pay. Even American public school teachers and hospital nurses are being replaced by foreigners imported on work visas.
The American Dream has become a nightmare for college graduates who cannot find meaningful work.
This fact is made abundantly clear from the payroll jobs data over the past five years. December’s numbers, released on Jan. 6, show the same pattern that I have reported each month for years. Under pressure from offshore outsourcing, the U.S. economy only creates low-productivity jobs in low-pay domestic services.
Only a paltry number of private sector jobs were created—94,000. Of these 94,000 jobs, 35,800—or 38 percent—are for waitresses and bartenders. Health care and social assistance account for 28 percent of the new jobs, and temporary workers account for 10 percent. These three categories of low-tech, nontradable domestic services account for 76 percent of the new jobs. This is the jobs pattern of a poor Third World economy that consumes more than it produces.
America’s so-called First World superpower economy was only able to create in December a measly 12,000 jobs in goods-producing industries, of which 77 percent are accounted for by wood products and fabricated metal products—the furniture and roofing metal of the housing boom that has now come to an end. U.S. employment declined in machinery, electronic instruments, and motor vehicles and parts.
Two thousand six hundred jobs were created in computer systems design and related services, depressing news for the several hundred thousand unemployed American computer and software engineers.
When manufacturing leaves a country, engineering, R&D and innovation rapidly follow. Now that outsourcing has killed employment opportunities for U.S. citizens and even General Motors and Ford are failing, U.S. economic growth depends on how much longer the rest of the world will absorb our debt and finance our consumption.
How much longer will it be before “the world’s only remaining superpower” is universally acknowledged as a debt-ridden, hollowed-out economy desperately in need of IMF bailout?
COPYRIGHT 2006 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
President George W. Bush has destroyed America’s economy, along with America’s reputation as a truthful, compassionate, peace-loving nation that values civil liberties and human rights.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes have calculated the cost to Americans of Bush’s Iraq war to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. This figure is 5 to 10 times higher than the $200 billion that Bush’s economic adviser Larry Lindsey estimated.
Lindsey was fired by Bush because his estimate was three times higher than the $70 billion figure that the Bush administration used to mislead Congress and the American voters about the burden of the war. You can’t work in the Bush administration unless you are willing to lie for dub-ya.
Americans need to ask themselves if the White House is in competent hands when a $70 billion war becomes a $2 trillion war. Bush sold his war by understating its cost by a factor of 28.57. Any financial officer anywhere in the world whose project was 2,857 percent over budget would instantly be fired for utter incompetence.
Bush’s war cost almost 30 times more than he said it would because the moronic neoconservatives that he stupidly appointed to policy positions told him the invasion would be a cakewalk. Neocons promised minimal U.S. casualties. Iraq already has cost 2,200 dead Americans and 16,000 seriously wounded—and Bush’s war is not over yet. The cost of lifetime care and disability payments for the thousands of U.S. troops who have suffered brain and spinal damage was not part of the unrealistic rosy picture that Bush painted.
Stiglitz’s $2 trillion estimate is OK as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough. My own estimate is a multiple of Stiglitz’s.
Stiglitz correctly includes the cost of lifetime care of the wounded, the economic value of destroyed and lost lives, and the opportunity cost of the resources diverted to war destruction. What he leaves out is the war’s diversion of the nation’s attention away from the ongoing erosion of the U.S. economy. War and the accompanying domestic police state have filled the attention span of Americans and their government. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has been rapidly deteriorating into Third World status.
In 2005, for the first time on record, consumer, business and government spending exceeded the total income of the country. Net national savings actually fell.
America can consume more than it produces only if foreigners supply the difference. China recently announced that it intends to diversify its foreign exchange holdings away from the U.S. dollar. If this is not merely a threat in order to extort even more concessions from Bush, Americans’ ability to consume will be brought up short by a fall in the dollar’s value, as China ceases to be a sponge that is absorbing an excessive outpouring of dollars. Oil-producing countries might follow China’s lead.
Now that Americans are dependent on imports for their clothing, manufactured goods and even high technology products, a decline in the dollar’s value will make all these products much more expensive. American living standards, which have been treading water, will sink.
A decline in living standards is an enormous cost and will make existing debt burdens unbearable. Stiglitz did not include this cost in his estimate.
Even more serious is the war’s diversion of attention from the disappearance of middle-class jobs for university graduates. The ladders of upward mobility are being rapidly dismantled by offshore production for U.S. markets, job outsourcing and importation of foreign professionals on work visas. In almost every U.S. corporation, U.S. employees are being dismissed and replaced by foreigners who work for lower pay. Even American public school teachers and hospital nurses are being replaced by foreigners imported on work visas.
The American Dream has become a nightmare for college graduates who cannot find meaningful work.
This fact is made abundantly clear from the payroll jobs data over the past five years. December’s numbers, released on Jan. 6, show the same pattern that I have reported each month for years. Under pressure from offshore outsourcing, the U.S. economy only creates low-productivity jobs in low-pay domestic services.
Only a paltry number of private sector jobs were created—94,000. Of these 94,000 jobs, 35,800—or 38 percent—are for waitresses and bartenders. Health care and social assistance account for 28 percent of the new jobs, and temporary workers account for 10 percent. These three categories of low-tech, nontradable domestic services account for 76 percent of the new jobs. This is the jobs pattern of a poor Third World economy that consumes more than it produces.
America’s so-called First World superpower economy was only able to create in December a measly 12,000 jobs in goods-producing industries, of which 77 percent are accounted for by wood products and fabricated metal products—the furniture and roofing metal of the housing boom that has now come to an end. U.S. employment declined in machinery, electronic instruments, and motor vehicles and parts.
Two thousand six hundred jobs were created in computer systems design and related services, depressing news for the several hundred thousand unemployed American computer and software engineers.
When manufacturing leaves a country, engineering, R&D and innovation rapidly follow. Now that outsourcing has killed employment opportunities for U.S. citizens and even General Motors and Ford are failing, U.S. economic growth depends on how much longer the rest of the world will absorb our debt and finance our consumption.
How much longer will it be before “the world’s only remaining superpower” is universally acknowledged as a debt-ridden, hollowed-out economy desperately in need of IMF bailout?
COPYRIGHT 2006 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre
by Prof Edward S. Herman
July 7, 2005
Znet
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"Srebrenica" has become the symbol of evil, and specifically Serb evil. It is commonly described as "a horror without parallel in the history of Europe since the Second World War" in which there was a cold-blooded execution "of at least 8,000 Muslim men and boys." [1] The events in question took place in or near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica between July 10 and 19, 1995, as the Bosnian Serb army (BSA) occupied that town and fought with and killed many Bosnian Muslims, unknown numbers dying in the fighting and by executions. There is no question but that there were executions, and that many Bosnian Muslim men died during the evacuation of Srebrenica and its aftermath. But even though only rarely discussed there is a major issue of how many were executed, as numerous bodies found in local grave sites were victims of fighting, and many Bosnian Muslim men who fled Srebrenica reached Bosnian Muslim territory safely. Some bodies were also those of the many Serbs killed in the forays by the Bosnian Muslims out of Srebrenica in the years before July 1995.
The Srebrenica massacre has played a special role in the politics of Western treatment of the restructuring of the former-Yugoslavia and in Western interventionism more broadly, and it is receiving renewed attention and memorialization at its tenth anniversary in July 2005. It is regularly cited as proof of Serb evil and genocidal intent and helped justify a focus on punishing the Serbs and Milosevic and NATO's 1999 war on Serbia. It has also provided important moral support for the further Western wars of vengeance, power projection, and "liberation," having shown that there is evil that the West can and must deal with forcibly.
However, there are three matters that should have raised serious questions about the massacre at the time and since, but didn't and haven't. One was that the massacre was extremely convenient to the political needs of the Clinton administration, the Bosnian Muslims, and the Croats (see Section 1 below). A second was that there had been (and were after Srebrenica) a series of claimed Serb atrocities, that were regularly brought forth at strategic moments when forcible intervention by the United States and NATO bloc was in the offing but needed some solid public relations support, but which were later shown to be fraudulent (Section 2). A third is that the evidence for a massacre, certainly of one in which 8,000 men and boys were executed, has always been problematic, to say the least (Sections 3 and 4).
1. Political Convenience
The events of Srebrenica and claims of a major massacre were extremely helpful to the Clinton administration, the Bosnian Muslim leadership, and Croatian authorities. Clinton was under political pressure in 1995 both from the media and from Bob Dole to take more forceful action in favor of the Bosnian Muslims, [2] and his administration was eager to find a justification for more aggressive policies. Clinton officials rushed to the Srebrenica scene to confirm and publicize the claims of a massacre, just as William Walker did later at Racak in January 1999. Walker's immediate report to Madeleine Albright caused her to exult that "spring has come early this year." [3] Srebrenica allowed the "fall to come early" for the Clinton administration in the summer of 1995.
Bosnian Muslim leaders had been struggling for several years to persuade the NATO powers to intervene more forcibly on their behalf, and there is strong evidence that they were prepared not only to lie but also to sacrifice their own citizens and soldiers to serve the end of inducing intervention (matters discussed further in Section 2). Bosnian Muslim officials have claimed that their leader, Alija Izetbegovic, told them that Clinton had advised him that U.S. intervention would only occur if the Serbs killed at least 5,000 at Srebrenica. [4] The abandonment of Srebrenica by a military force much larger than that of the attackers, and a retreat that made that larger force vulnerable and caused it to suffer heavy casualties in fighting and vengeance executions, helped produce numbers that would meet the Clinton criterion, by hook or by crook. There is other evidence that the retreat from Srebrenica was not based on any military necessity but was strategic, with the personnel losses incurred considered a necessary sacrifice for a larger purpose. [5]
Croatian authorities were also delighted with the claims of a Srebrenica massacre, as this deflected attention from their prior devastating ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Bosnian Muslims in Western Bosnia (almost entirely ignored by the Western media), [6] and it provided a cover for their already planned removal of several hundred thousand Serbs from the Krajina area in Croatia. This massive ethnic cleansing operation was carried out with U.S. approval and logistical support within a month of the Srebrenica events, and it may well have involved the killing of more Serb civilians than Bosnian Muslim civilians killed in the Srebrenica area in July: most of the Bosnian Muslim victims were fighters, not civilians, as the Bosnian Serbs bused the Srebrenica women and children to safety; the Croatians made no such provision and many women, children and old people were slaughtered in Krajina. [7] The ruthlessness of the Croats was impressive: "UN troops watched horrified as Croat soldiers dragged the bodies of dead Serbs along the road outside the UN compound and then pumped them full of rounds from the AK-47s. They then crushed the bullet-ridden bodies under the tracks of a tank." [8] But this was hardly noticed in the wake of the indignation and propaganda generated around Srebrenica with the aid of the mainstream media, whose co-belligerency role in the Balkan wars was already well-entrenched. [9]
The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) and UN also had an important role to play in the consolidation of the standard Srebrenica massacre narrative. From its inception the ICTY served as an arm of the NATO powers, who created it, funded it, served as its police arm and main information source, and expected and got responsive service from the organization. [10] The ICTY focused intensively on Srebrenica and provided important and nominally independent corroboration of the massacre claims along with citable "judicial" claims of planned "genocide." The UN is less thoroughly integrated into NATO-power demands, but it is highly responsive and in the Srebrenica case it came through just as the United States and its main allies desired. [11]
This political interest in the Srebrenica massacre hardly proves that the establishment narrative is wrong. It does, however, suggest the need for caution and an awareness of the possibility of falsification and inflated claims. That awareness has been entirely absent from mainstream treatment of Srebrenica.
2. The Serial Lying Before and After Srebrenica
At each stage in the dismantlement of Yugoslavia, its ethnic cleansing, and before and during the NATO war over the Kosovo province of Serbia in 1999, propaganda lies played a very important role in forwarding conflict and anti-Serb actions. There were lies of omission and lies that directly conveyed false impressions and information. An important form of lie of omission was the regular presentation of Serb misbehavior as unique to the Serbs, not also characteristic of the behavior of the Muslims and Croatians or of the conflict overall. In case after case the media would report on Serb attacks and atrocities, having neglected to report the prior assaults on Serbs in those same towns and making the Serb behavior seem like unprovoked acts of aggression and barbarity.
This was evident from the very start of the serious fighting in 1991 in the republic of Croatia. In their treatment of the Eastern Croatian city of Vukovar, for example, the media (and ICTY) focused exclusively on the federal Yugoslav army's capture of the town in the fall of 1991, completely ignoring the prior spring and summer's slaughter by Croatian National Guard troops and paramilitaries of hundreds of ethnic Serbs who had lived in the Vukovar area. According to Raymond K. Kent, "a substantial Serb population in the major Slavonian city of Vukovar disappeared without having fled, leaving traces of torture in the old Austrian the spring catacombs under the city along with evidence of murder and rape. The Western media, whose demonization of the Serbs was well underway, chose to overlook these events…" [12] This selective and misleading focus was standard media and ICTY practice.
Lies of omission were also clear in the attention given Bosnian Serb prison camps like Omarska, which the media focused on intensively and with indignation, when in fact the Muslims and Croats had very similar prison camps-at Celebici, Tarcin, Livno, Bradina, Odzak, and in the Zetra camp in Sarajevo, among other sites-[13] with roughly comparable numbers, facilities, and certainly no worse treatment of prisoners; [14] but in contrast with the Serbs, the Muslims and Croats hired competent PR firms and refused permission to inspect their facilities-and the already well-developed structure of bias made the media little interested in any but Serb camps.
Wild allegations of Auschwitz-like conditions in Serb "concentration camps" were spread by "journalists of attachment" who lapped up propaganda handouts by Muslim and Croat officials and PR hirlings. Roy Gutman, who won a Pulitzer prize jointly with John Burns for Bosnia reporting in 1993, depended heavily on Croat and Muslim officials and witnesses with suspect credentials and implausible claims, and he was a major source of inflated, one-sided, and false "concentration camp" propaganda. [15] John Burns' Pulitzer award was based on an extended interview with Boris Herak, a captured Bosnian Serb supplied to him and a Soros-funded film-maker by the Bosnian Muslims. Several years later Herak admitted that his extremely implausible confession had been coerced and that he had been forced to memorize many pages of lies. Two of his alleged victims also turned up alive in later years. In reporting on Herak, John Burns and the New York Times (and the Soros-funded film) suppressed the credibility-damaging fact that Herak had also accused former UNPROFOR commandant, Canadian General Lewis Mackenzie, of having raped young Muslim women at a Serb-run bordello. [16] These scandalous awards are symptomatic of the media bias that was already overwhelming in 1992 and 1993.
In a recent development of interest, on a visit to the dying Alija Izetbegovic, Bernard Kouchner asked him about the Bosnian Serb concentration camps, whereupon Izetbegovic, surprisingly, admitted that these claims had been inflated with the aim of getting NATO to bomb the Serbs. [17] This important confession has not been mentioned in the U.S. or British mainstream media.
One of the most important propaganda lies of the 1990s featured the Serb-run Trnopolje camp, visited by Britain's ITN reporters in August 1992. These reporters photographed the resident Fikret Alic, showing him emaciated and seemingly inside a concentration camp fence. In fact, Fikret Alic was in a transit camp, was a sick man (and was sick with tuberculosis long before reaching the camp), was not in any way representative of others in the camp, and was soon able to move to Sweden. Furthermore, the fence was around the photographers, not the man photographed. [18] But this hugely dishonest photo was featured everywhere in the West as proving a Serb-organized Auschwitz, was denounced by NATO high officials, and helped provide the moral basis for the creation of the ICTY and its clear focus on Serb evil.
In the case of the siege of Sarajevo, as with conflict around many "safe haven" towns, the Bosnian Muslim government engaged in a steady program of provoking the Serbs, blaming them for the ensuing response, lying about casualties, and trying-usually successfully-to place the blame on the Serbs. As Tim Fenton has said, "Massacre allegations by the Bosnian Muslims followed any reported conflict as night followed day: most notoriously Muslim Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic claimed the UN was responsible for the deaths of 70,000 in Bihac in early 1995, when in fact there had barely been any fighting and casualties were small." [19]
A remarkable feature of the Bosnian Muslim struggle to demonize the Serbs, in order to get NATO to come to Bosnian Muslim aid with bombs, was their willingness to kill their own people. This was most notable in the case of the ruthless bombing of Sarajevo civilians in three massacres: in 1992 (the "Breadline Massacre"), 1994 (the Markale "Market Massacre") and a "Second Market Massacre" in 1995. In the standard narrative the Serbs were responsible for these massacres, and it is admittedly not easy to believe that the Muslim leadership would kill their own for political advantage even if the evidence points strongly in that direction. But these massacres were all extremely well timed to influence imminent NATO and UN decisions to intervene more forcibly on behalf of the Bosnian Muslims. More important, numerous UN officials and senior Western military officials have claimed that the evidence is strong in all three cases that the actions were planned and executed by Bosnian Muslims. [20] U.S. Army officer John E. Sray, who was on the scene in Bosnia during these and other massacres and was head of the U.S. intelligence section in Sarajevo, even suggested that the incidents, and probable Bosnian Muslim official connivance in these atrocities, "deserve a thorough scrutiny by the International War Crimes Tribunal." [21] Needless to say no such scrutiny was forthcoming. In short, this view of the three massacres is not conspiracy theory, it is a conclusion based on serious and substantial evidence, but not even debated in the party-line dominated accounts of recent Balkan history. [22]
Both before and after Srebrenica lying about numbers killed was also standard practice, helpful in sustaining the dominant narrative. For Bosnia, in December 1992 the Bosnian Muslim government claimed 128,444 deaths of their forces and people, a number which grew to 200,000 by June 1993, rising to 250,000 in 1994. [23] These figures were swallowed without a qualm by Western politicians, media, and intellectual war-campaigners (e.g., David Rieff), with Clinton himself using the 250,000 figure in a speech in November 1995. Former State Department official George Kenney has long questioned these figures and marveled at media gullibility in accepting these claims without the least interest in verification. His own estimate ran between 25,000 and 60,000. [24] More recently, a study sponsored by the Norwegian government estimated the Bosnian war dead as 80,000, and one sponsored by the Hague Tribunal itself came up with a figure of 102,000 dead. [25] Neither of these studies has been reported on in the U.S. media, which had regularly offered its readers/listeners the inflated numbers.
A similar inflation process took place during the 78-day NATO bombing war in 1999, with high U.S. officials at various moments claiming 100,000, 250,000 and 500,000 Serb killings of Kosovo Albanians, along with the lavish use of the word "genocide" to describe Serb actions in Kosovo. [26] This figure gradually shrank to 11,000, and has remained there despite the fact that only some 4,000 bodies were found in one of the most intense forensic searches in history, and with unknown numbers of those bodies combatants, Serbs, and civilian victims of U.S. bombing. But the 11,000 must be valid because the NATO governments and ICTY say it is, and Michael Ignatieff assured readers of the New York Times that "whether those 11,334 bodies will be found depends on whether the Serb military and the police removed them." [27]
This record of systematic disinformation certainly does not disprove the truth of the standard narrative on the Srebrenica massacre. It does, however, suggest the need for a close look at the claims, which have proved so convenient, a close look that the mainstream has steadily refused to provide.
3. The Problematic Massacre Claims
By the time of the Srebrenica events of July 1995 the stage had been well set for making massacre claims effective. The serial lying had been largely unchallenged in the mainstream, the demonization process and good-versus-evil dichotomy had been well established, the ICTY and UN leadership were closely following the agenda of the United States and its NATO allies, and the media were on board as co-belligerents.
In this environment, context-stripping was easy. One element of context was the fact that the "safe area" concept was a fraud, as the safe areas were supposed to have been disarmed, but weren't, and with UN connivance. [28] They were therefore used by the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and other safe havens as launching pads for attacks on nearby Serb villages. In the three years prior to the massacre well over a thousand Serb civilians were killed by Muslim forces in scores of devastated nearby villages; [29] and well before July 1995 the Srebrenica Muslim commander Nasir Oric proudly showed Western reporters videos of some of his beheaded Serb victims and bragged about his killings. [30] Testifying before the Tribunal on February 12, 2004, UN military commander in Bosnia in 1992 and 1993, General Philippe Morillon, stated his conviction that the attack on Srebrenica was a "direct reaction" to the massacres of Serbs by Nasir Oric and his forces in 1992 and 1993, massacres with which Morillon was closely familiar. [31] Morillon's testimony was of no interest to the Western media, and when the ICTY finally got around to indicting Nasir Oric on March 28, 2003, very possibly to create the image of judicial balance, he was charged with killing only seven Serbs who were tortured and beaten to death after capture, and with the "wanton destruction" of nearby villages. Although he openly bragged to Western reporters of slaughtering Serb civilians, the ICTY reportedly "found no evidence that there were civilian casualties in the attacks on Serb villages in his theater of operations." [32]
When the Bosnian Serbs captured Srebrenica in July 1995, it was reported that the 28th regiment of the Bosnian Muslim Army (BMA), comprising several thousand men, had just fled the town. [33] The media failed to ask how such a large force could have been present in a disarmed "safe area." Having also succeeded in ignoring the prior abuses emanating from the safe area, this allowed them to follow a quickly established party line of a planned "genocide" and inexplicable brutality rather than the vengeance which the media allow as semi-exoneration of violence by "worthy" victims (e.g., Kosovo Albanians driving out and killing Serbs and Roma after the NATO takeover of Kosovo).
A second element of context was the possible political basis for the surrender of Srebrenica by a force in a good defensive position, outnumbering the attacking BSA by a 6-1 or 8-1 ratio, but retreating in advance of the assault, their leaders having been withdrawn previously by order of the Bosnian Muslim leadership. [34] This left the population unprotected, and made the BMA cadres vulnerable as they retreated in disarray toward Bosnian Muslim lines. Could this have been another self-sacrificing maneuver by the leadership to produce victims, perhaps designed to help meet the Clinton 5,000 target and induce more forcible NATO intervention? These questions never arose in the mainstream media.
The Srebrenica events had a number of features that made it possible to claim 8,000 "men and boys" executed. One was the confusion and uncertainty about the fate of the fleeing Bosnian Muslim forces, some reaching Tuzla safely, some killed in the fighting, and some captured. The 8,000 figure was first provided by the Red Cross, based on their crude estimate that the BSA had captured 3,000 men and that 5,000 were reported "missing." [35] It is well established that thousands of those "missing" had reached Tuzla or were killed in the fighting, [36] but in an amazing transformation displaying the eagerness to find the Bosnian Serbs evil and the Muslims victims, the "reaching safety/killed-in-action" basis of being missing was ignored and the missing were taken as executed! This misleading conclusion was helped along by the Red Cross's reference to the 5,000 as having "simply disappeared," and its failure to correct this politically biased usage and claim despite its own recognition that "several thousand" refugees had reached Central Bosnia. [37]
It was also helped along by the Bosnian Muslim leadership's refusal to disclose the names and numbers of those reaching safety, [38] but there was a remarkable readiness in the Western establishment not only to ignore those reaching safety, but also to disregard deaths in fighting and to take dead bodies as proving executions. The will to believe here was limitless: reporter David Rohde saw a bone sticking up in a grave site near Srebrenica, which he just knew by instinct was a remnant of an execution and serious evidence of a "massacre." [39] It was standard media practice to move from an asserted and unproven claim of thousands missing, or a report of the uncovering of bodies in a grave site, to the conclusion that the claim of 8,000 executed was thereby demonstrated. [40]
With 8,000 executed and thousands killed in the fighting there should have been huge grave sites and satellite evidence of both executions, burials, and any body removals. But the body searches in the Srebrenica vicinity were painfully disappointing, with only some two thousand bodies found in searches through 1999, including bodies killed in action and possibly Serb bodies, some pre-dating July 1995. The sparseness of these findings led to claims of body removal and reburial, but this was singularly unconvincing as the Bosnian Serbs were under intense military pressure after July 1995. This was the period when NATO was bombing Serb positions and Croat/Muslim armies were driving towards Banja Luka. The BSA was on the defensive and was extremely short of equipment and resources, including gasoline. To have mounted an operation of the magnitude required to exhume, transport and rebury thousands of corpses would have been far beyond the BSA's capacity at that time. Furthermore, in carrying out such a program they could hardly hope to escape observation from OSCE personnel, local civilians, and satellite observations.
On August 10, 1995, Madeleine Albright showed some satellite photos at a closed session of the Security Council, as part of a denunciation of the Bosnian Serbs, including one photo showing people--allegedly Bosnian Muslims near Srebrenica--assembled in a stadium, and one allegedly taken shortly thereafter showing a nearby field with "disturbed" soil. These photos have never been publicly released, but even if they are genuine they don't prove either executions or burials. Furthermore, although the ICTY speaks of "an organized and comprehensive effort" to hide bodies, and David Rohde claimed a "huge Serb effort to hide bodies," [41] neither Albright nor anyone else has ever shown a satellite photo of people actually being executed, buried, or dug up for reburial, or of trucks conveying thousands of bodies elsewhere. This evidence blank occurred despite Albright's warning the Serbs that "We will be watching," and with satellites at that time making at least eight passes per day and geostationary drones able to hover and take finely detailed pictures in position over Bosnia during the summer of 1995. [42] The mainstream media have found this failure to confirm of no interest.
There have been a great many bodies gathered at Tuzla, some 7,500 or more, many in poor condition or parts only, their collection and handling incompatible with professional forensic standards, their provenance unclear and link to the July 1995 events in Srebrenica unproven and often unlikely, [43] and the manner of their death usually uncertain. Interestingly, although the Serbs were regularly accused of trying to hide bodies, there has never been any suggestion that the Bosnian Muslims, long in charge of the body search, might shift bodies around and otherwise manipulate evidence, despite their substantial record of dissembling. A systematic attempt to use DNA to trace connections to Srebrenica is underway, but entails many problems, apart from that of the integrity of the material studied and process of investigation, and will not resolve the question of differentiating executions from deaths in combat. There are also lists of missing, but these lists are badly flawed, with duplications, individuals listed who had died before July 1995, who fled to avoid BSA service, or who registered to vote in 1997, and they include individuals who died in battle or reached safety or were captured and assumed a new existence elsewhere. [44]
The 8,000 figure is also incompatible with the basic arithmetic of Srebrenica numbers before and after July 1995. Displaced persons from Srebrenica-that is, massacre survivors-- registered with the World Health Organization and Bosnian government in early August 1995, totalled 35,632. Muslim men who reached Muslim lines "without their families being informed" totaled at least 2,000, and some 2,000 were killed in the fighting. That gives us 37,632 survivors plus the 2,000 combat deaths, which would require the prewar population of Srebrenica to have been 47,000 if 8,000 were executed, whereas the population before July was more like 37-40,000 (Tribunal judge Patricia Wald gave 37,000 as her estimate). The numbers don't add up. [45]
There were witnesses to killings at Srebrenica, or those who claimed to be witnesses. There were not many of these, and some had a political axe to grind or were otherwise not credible, [46] but several were believable and were probably telling of real and ugly events. But we are talking here of evidence of hundreds of executions, not 8,000 or anything close to it. The only direct participant witness claim that ran to a thousand was that of Drazen Erdemovic, an ethnic Croat associated with a mercenary group of killers whose members were paid 12 kilos of gold for their Bosnian service (according to Erdemovic himself) and ended up working in the Congo on behalf of French intelligence. His testimony was accepted despite its vagueness and inconsistencies, lack of corroboration, and his suffering from mental problems sufficient to disqualify him from trial--but not from testifying before the Tribunal, free of cross-examination. within two weeks of this disqualification from trial. This and other witness evidence suffered from serious abuse of the plea-bargaining process whereby witnesses could receive mitigating sentences if they cooperated sufficiently with the prosecution. [47]
It is also noteworthy how many relatively impartial observers in or near Srebrenica in July 1995 didn't see any evidence of massacres, including the members of the Dutch forces present in the "safe area" and people like Henry Wieland, the chief UN investigator into alleged human rights abuses, who could find no eyewitnesses to atrocities after five days of interviewing among the 20,000 Srebrenica survivors gathered at the Tuzla airport refugee camp. [48]
4. Anomalies
One anomaly connected with Srebrenica has been the stability of the figure of Bosnian Muslim victims-8,000 in July 1995 and 8,000 today, despite the crudity of the initial estimate, the evidence that many or most of the 5,000 "missing" reached Bosnian Muslim territory or were killed in the fighting, and the clear failure to produce supportive physical evidence despite a massive effort. In other cases, like the 9/11 fatality estimate, and even the Bosnian killings and Kosovo bombing war estimates, the original figures were radically scaled down as evidence of body counts made the earlier inflated numbers unsustainable. [49] But because of its key political role for the United States, Bosnian Muslims and Croats, and an almost religious ardour of belief in this claim, Sebrenica has been immune to evidence. From the beginning until today the number has been taken as a given, a higher truth, the questioning of which would show a lack of faith and very likely "apologetics" for the demon.
Another anomaly also showing the sacred, untouchable, and politicized character of the massacre in Western ideology has been the ready designation of the killings as a case of "genocide." The Tribunal played an important role here, with hard-to-match gullibility, unrestrained psychologizing, and incompetent legal reasoning, which the judges have applied to Serb-related cases only. On gullibility, one Tribunal judge accepted as fact the witness claim that Serb soldiers had forced an old Muslim man to eat the liver of his grandson; [50] and the judges repeatedly stated as an established fact that 7-8,000 Muslim men had been executed, while simultaneously acknowledging that the evidence only "suggested" that "a majority" of the 7-8,000 missing had not been killed in combat, which yields a number substantially lower than 7-8,000. [51]
The Tribunal dealt with the awkward problem of the genocide-intent Serbs bussing Bosnian Muslim women and children to safety by arguing that they did this for public relations reasons, but as Michael Mandel points out, failing to do some criminal act despite your desire is called "not committing a crime." [52] The Tribunal never asked why the genocidal Serbs failed to surround the town before its capture to prevent thousands of males from escaping to safety, or why the Bosnian Muslim soldiers were willing to leave their women and children as well as many wounded comrades to the mercies of the Serbs; [53] and they failed to confront the fact that 10,000 mainly Muslim residents of Zvornik sought refugee from the civil war in Serbia itself, as prosecution witness Borislav Jovic testified. [54]
Among the other idiocies in the Tribunal judges' argument, it was genocide if you killed many males in a group in order to reduce the future population of that group, thereby making it unviable in that area. Of course, you might want to kill them to prevent their killing you in the future, but the court knows Serb psychology better-that couldn't be the sole reason, there must have been a more sinister aim. The Tribunal reasoning holds forth the possibility that with only a little prosecution-friendly judicial psychologizing any case of killing enemy soldiers can be designated genocide.
There is also the problem of definition of the group. Were the Serbs trying to eliminate all the Muslims in Bosnia, or Muslims globally? Or just in Srebrenica? The judges suggested that pushing them out of the Srebrenica area was itself genocide, and they essentially equated genocide with ethnic cleansing. [55] It is notable that the ICTY has never called the Croat ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Krajina Serbs "genocide" although in that case many women and children were killed and the ethnic cleansing applied to a larger area and larger victim population than in Srebrenica. [56] (On August 10, 1995, Madeleine Albright cried out to the Security Council that "as many as 13,000 men, women and children were driven from their homes" in Srebrenica.) [57] Perhaps the ICTY had accepted Richard Holbrooke's comic designation of Krajina as a case of "involuntary expulsions." [58] The bias is blatant; the politicization of a purported judicial enterprise is extreme.
Media treatment of the Srebrenica and Krajina cases followed the same pattern and illustrates well how the media make some victims worthy and others unworthy in accord with a political agenda. With the Serbs their government's target, and their government actively aiding the massive Croat ethnic cleansing program in Krajina, the media gave huge and indignant treatment to the first, with invidious language, calls for action, and little context. With Krajina, attention was slight and passing, indignation was absent, detailed reporting on the condition of the victims was minimal, descriptive language was neutral, and there was context offered that made the events understandable. The contrast is so gross as to be droll: the attack on Srebrenica "chilling," "murderous," "savagery," "cold-blooded killing," "genocidal," "aggression,"and of course "ethnic cleansing." With Krajina, the media used no such strong language-even ethnic cleansing was too much for them. The Croat assault was merely a big "upheaval" that is "softening up the enemy," "a lightning offensive," explained away as a "response to Srebrenica" and a result of Serb leaders "overplaying their hand." The Washington Post even cited U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith saying the "the Serb exodus was not 'ethnic cleansing'." [59] The paper does not allow a challenge to that judgment. In fact, however, the Croat operations in Krajina left Croatia as the most ethnically purified of all the former components of the former Yugoslavia, although the NATO occupation of Kosovo has allowed an Albanian ethnic cleansing that is rivalling that of Croatia in ethnic purification.
Another anomaly in the Srebrenica case is the insistence on bringing all the criminals (Serb) to trial and getting the willing executioners (Serb) to admit guilt as necessary for justice and essential for reconciliation. A problem is that justice cannot be one-sided or it ceases to be justice, and shows its true face as vengeance and a cover for other political ends. Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia was by no means one-sided, and deaths by nationality were not far off from population proportionality; [60] the Serbs claim and have documented thousands of deaths at the hands of the Bosnian Muslims and their imported Mujahedin cadres, and by the Croatians, and they have their own group examining and trying to identify bodies at an estimated 73 mass graves. [61] This victimization has hardly been noticed by the Western media or ICTY-the distinguished Yugoslav forensic expert Dr. Zoran Stankovic observed back in 1996 that "the fact that his team had previously identified the bodies of 1,000 Bosnian Serbs in the [Srebrenica] region had not interested prosecutor Richard Goldstone." [62] Instead, there is a steady refrain about the Serbs tendency to whine, whereas Bosnian Muslim complaints are taken as those of true victims and are never designated whining.
Rather than producing reconciliation the steady focus on Srebrenica victims and killers makes for more intense hatred and nationalism, just as the Kosovo war and its violence exacerbated hatred and tensions there and showed that Clinton's claimed objective of a tolerant multi-ethnic Kosovo was a fraud. In Kosovo, this one-sided propaganda and NATO control has unleashed serious and unremitting anti-Serb-along with anti-Roma, anti-Turk, anti-dissident-Albanian-- violence, helped along by the willingness of the NATO authorities to look the other way as their allies-the purported victims-take their revenge and pursue their long-standing aim of ethnic purification. [63] In Bosnia and Serbia the Serbs have been under steady attack, humiliated, and their leaders and military personnel punished, while the criminals among the Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and NATO powers (e.g., Clinton, Blair, Albright, Holbrooke) suffer no penalties [64] and may even be portrayed as dispensers of justice (Clinton et al.).
.
It is clear that the objectives of the retribution-pushers are not justice and reconciliation-they are to unify and strengthen the position of the Bosnian Muslims, to crush the Republica Srpska, and possibly even eliminate it as an independent entity in Bosnia, to keep Serbia disorganized, weak and dependent on the West, and to continue to put the U.S. and NATO attack and dismantlement of Yugoslavia in a favorable light. The last objective requires diverting attention from the Clinton/Bosnian Muslim role in giving Al Qaeda a foothold in the Balkans, Izetbegovic's close alliance with Osama bin Laden, his Islamic Declaration declaring hostility to a multi-ethnic state, [65] the importation of 4,000 Mujahaden to fight a holy war in Bosnia, with active Clinton administration aid, and the KLA-Al Qaeda connection.
These aspects of the siding with the Bosnian Muslims have always been awkward for the war propagandists, and they became more so after 9/11-the U.S. 9/11 Commission Report claims that two of the 19 hijackers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, and a "mastermind" of the attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, "fought" in Bosnia, and that bin Laden had "service" offices in Zagreb and Sarajevo. [66] Despite the huge focus on 9/11 and Al Qaeda these links have not been featured in the mainstream media and have not influenced Bosnian proconsul Paddy Ashdown, who attended Izetbegovic's funeral and continues to push Bosnian Muslim interests. The Serbs, of course, were complaining about the brutality (and beheadings) of the Mujahaden in 1993, but the media and ICTY were not interested then and remain uninterested. Let's just talk about Srebrenica, the Bosnian Muslims as unique victims, and Clinton's and the West's generous if belated service to those victimized underdogs.
But didn't the Bosnian Serbs "confess" that they had murdered 8,000 civilians? This has been the take of the Western media, but again demonstrating their subservience to their leaders' political agenda. The Bosnian Serbs actually did put out a report on Srebrenica in September 2002, [67] but this report was rejected by Paddy Ashdown for failing to come up with the proper conclusions. He therefore forced a further report by firing a stream of Republica Srpska politicians and analysts, threatening the RS government, and eventually extracting a report prepared by people who would come to the officially approved conclusions. [68] This report, issued on June 11, 2004, was then greeted in the Western media as a meaningful validation of the official line-the refrain was, the Bosnian Serbs "admit" the massacre, which should finally settle any questions. Amusingly, even this coerced and imposed report didn't come near acknowledging 8,000 executions (it speaks of "several thousand" executions). What this episode "proves" is that the Western campaign to make the defeated Serbia grovel is not yet terminated, and the media's continuing gullibility and propaganda service.
Conclusion
The "Srebrenica massacre" is the greatest triumph of propaganda to emerge from the Balkan wars. Other claims and outright lies have played their role in the Balkan conflicts, but while some have retained a modest place in the propaganda repertoire despite challenge (Racak, the Markale massacre, the Serb refusal to negotiate at Rambouillet, 250,000 Bosnian dead, the aim of a Greater Serbia as the driving force in the Balkan wars), [69] the Srebrenica massacre reigns supreme for symbolic power. It is the symbol of Serb evil and Bosnian Muslim victimhood, and the justice of the Western dismantling of Yugoslavia and intervention there at many levels, including a bombing war and colonial occupations of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.
But the link of this propaganda triumph to truth and justice is non-existent. The disconnection with truth is epitomized by the fact that the original estimate of 8,000, including 5,000 "missing"--who had left Srebrenica for Bosnian Muslim lines-was maintained even after it had been quickly established that several thousand had reached those lines and that several thousand more had perished in battle. This nice round number lives on today in the face of a failure to find the executed bodies and despite the absence of a single satellite photo showing executions, bodies, digging, or trucks transporting bodies for reburial. The media have carefully refrained from asking questions on this point, despite Albright's August 1995 promise that "We will be watching."
That Albright statement, and the photos she did display at the time, helped divert attention from the ongoing "Krajina massacre" of Serbs in Croatian Krajina, an ethnic cleansing process of great brutality and wider scope than that at Srebrenica, in which there was less real fighting than at Srebrenica, mainly attacks on and the killing and removal of defenseless civilians. At Srebrenica the Bosnian Serbs moved women and children to safety, and there is no evidence of any of them being murdered; [70] whereas in Krajina there was no such separation and an estimated 368 women and children were killed, along with many too old and infirm to flee. [71] One measure of the propaganda success of the "Srebrenica massacre" is that the possibility that the intense focus on the Srebrenica massacre was serving as a cover for the immediately following "Krajina massacre," supported by the United States, was outside the orbit of thought of the media. For the media, Srebrenica helped bring about Krajina, and the Serbs had it coming. [72]
The media have played an important role in making the Srebrenica massacre a propaganda triumph. As noted earlier, the media had become a co-belligerent by 1991, and all standards of objectivity disappeared in their subservience to the pro-Bosnian Muslim and anti-Serb agenda. Describing the reporting of Christine Amanpour and others on a battle around Goradze, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel John Sray wrote back in October 1995 that these news reports "were devoid of any semblance of truth," that Americans were suffering from "a cornucopia of disinformation," that "America has not been so pathetically deceived" since the Vietnam War, and that popular perceptions of Bosnia "have been forged by a prolific propaganda machine..[that has] managed to manipulate illusions to further Muslim goals." [73]
That propaganda machine also conquered the liberals and much of the left in the United States, who swallowed the dominant narrative of the evil Serbs seeking hegemony, employing uniquely brutal and genocidal strategies, and upsetting a previous multi-cultural haven in Bosnia-run by Osama bin Laden's friend and ally Alija Izetbegovic, and with rectification brought belatedly by Clinton, Holbrooke and Albright working closely with Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia! The liberal/left war coalition needed to find the Serbs demons in order to justify imperial warfare, and they did so by accepting and internalizing a set of lies and myths that make up the dominant narrative. [74] This liberal/"cruise missile left" (CML) combo was important in helping develop the "humanitarian intervention" rationale for attacking Serbia on behalf of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and in fact preparing the ground for Bush's eventual basing of his own wars on the quest for "liberation." [75] The Srebrenica massacre helped make the liberals and CML true believers in the crusade in the Balkans and gave moral backup to their servicing the expanding imperial role of their country and its allies.
Former UN official Cedric Thornberry, writing in 1996, noted that "prominently in parts of the international liberal media" the position is "that the Serbs were the only villains," and back at UN headquarters in the spring of 1993 he was warned: "Take cover-the fix is on." [76] The fix was on, even if only tacit and built-in to the government-media-Tribunal relationship. It helped make the Srebrenica massacre the symbol of evil and, with the help of Tribunal "justice," and support of liberals and CML, provided a cover for the U.S.-NATO attack on and dismantling of Yugoslavia, colonial occupations in Bosnia and Kosovo, and justification for "humanitarian intervention" more broadly. What more could be asked of a propaganda system?
Notes:
*This paper is partly drawn from and cites chapters in a forthcoming book on the Srerbrenica massacre, Srebrenica: The Politics of War Crimes, written by George Bogdanich, Tim Fenton, Philip Hammond, Edward S. Herman, Michael Mandel, Jonathan Rooper, and George Szamuely. This book is referred to in the notes below as Politics of War Crimes. The author and his colleagues are indebted to Diana Johnstone, David Peterson, Vera Vratusa-Zunjic, Milan Bulajic, Milivoje Ivanisevic, Konstantin Kilibarda, and George Pumphrey for advice. Johnstone's Fools Crusade is a fine basic statement of an alternative perspective on the Balkan Wars; George Pumphrey's "Srebrenica: Three Years Later, And Still Searching," is a classic critique of the establishment Srebrenica massacre narrative and repeatedly hit the target with facts and analyses still not rebutted.
1. "Bosnia: 2 Officials Dismissed for Obstructing Srebrenica Inquiry," AP Report, New York Times, April 17, 2004; Marlise Simons, "Bosnian Serb Leader Taken Before War Crimes Tribunal," New York Times, April 8, 2000; UN, The Fall of Srebrenica (A/54/549), Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35, November 15, 1999, par. 506 (http://www.un.org/News/ossg/srebrenica.pdf )
2. See Ivo Pukanic, "US Role In Storm: Thrilled With Operation Flash, President Clinton Gave the Go Ahead to Operation Storm," Nacional (Zagreb), May 24, 2005.
3. Barton Gellman, "The Path to Crisis: How the United States and Its Allies Went to War," Washington Post, April 18, 1999
4. "Some surviving members of the Srebrenica delegation have stated that President Izetbegovic also told that he had learned that a NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina was possible, but could occur only if the Serbs were to break into Srebrenica, killing at least 5,000 of its people. President Izetbegovic has flatly denied making such a statement." The Fall of Srebrenica (A/54/549), Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35, November 15, 1999, par. 115, (http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports/UNsrebrenicareport.htm)
The UN report does not mention that there were nine others present at that meeting, and that one of them, Hakija Meholijic, former Srebrenica chief of police, has stated that eight of them (all those living) "can confirm" the Clinton suggestion. (Dani, June 22, 1998: http://cdsp.neu.edu/info/students/marko/dani/dani2.html)
5. Politics of War Crimes, Bogdanich, chapter 2, "Prelude to Capture," and Fenton, chapter 3, "Military Context." See also Tim Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force (Center for Defence and Security Studies: 1999), p. 145.
6. In his Balkan Odyssey, Lord David Owen stated that "By acquiescing in the Croatian government's seizure of Western Slavonia, the Contact Group had in effect given the green light to the Bosnian Serbs to attack Srebrenica and Zepa" (pp. 199-200). Owen was mistaken; the Contact Group was serving one side only, and the media's failure to report on and criticize the approved aggression made it possible to present the takeover of Srebrenica as a unique and unprovoked evil.
7. Veritas estimated that 1,205 civilians were killed in Operation Storm, including 358 women and 10 children. In the graves around Srebrenica through 1999, among the 1,895 bodies only one was identified as female. See "Croatian Serb Exodus Commemorated," Agence France Press, Aug. 4, 2004; also, Veritas at www.veritas.org.yu.
8. Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force, p. 192. See also footnotes 56 and 70.
9. The co-belligerency role was described by Peter Brock in "Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press," Foreign Policy, Winter 1993-94. A forthcoming book by Brock, on Media Cleansing: UNcovering Yugoslavia's Civil Wars, shows this partisanship in greater and effective detail. In his autobiography, U. S. Secretary of State James Baker says that he instructed his press secretary, Margaret Tutweiler to help Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajzdic utilize the Western media to further the Bosnian Muslim cause, noting that he "had her talk to her contacts at the four television networks, the Washington Post and the New York Times." James A. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy (Putnam: 1995), pp. 643-4.
10. As NATO PR spokesman Jamie Shea stated on May 16, 1999, when asked about NATO's vulnerability to Tribunal charges, he was not worried. The prosecutor, he said, will start her investigation "because we will allow her to." Further, "NATO countries are those that have provided the finance," and on the need to build a second chamber "so that prosecutions can be speeded up...we and the Tribunal are all one on this, we want to see war criminals brought to justice." http://www.nato.int/kosovo/press/p990516b.htm
See Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder (London: Pluto, 2004), chaps. 4-5; Edward Herman, "The Milosevic Trial, Part 1," Z Magazine, April 2002.
11. See Politics of War Crimes, chap. 7, Bogdanich, "UN Report on Srebrenica-A distorted Picture of Events."
12. Raymond K. Kent, "Contextualizing Hate: The Hague Tribunal, the Clinton Administration and the Serbs," Dialogue (Paris), v. 5, no. 20, December, 1996 (as posted to the Emperor's Clothes website, http://www.emperors-clothes.com/misc/kent.htm)
13. Carl Savitch, "Celebici," http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/047.shtml.
14. It would be hard to surpass the savagery of the Bosnian Muslims at the Celebici camp, described in ibid. See also, Diana Johnstone, Fools' Crusade (Pluto: 2002), pp. 71-72.
15. See the two works by Peter Brock, note 9 above; also Johnstone, Fools' Crusade, pp. 70-83.
16. For details and citations see Brock's article and book (note 9 above).
17. Bernard Kouchner, Les Guerriers de la Paix (Paris: Grasset, 2004), pp. 372-4.
18. Johnstone, Fools' Crusade, pp, 72-73; Thomas Deichmann, "Misinformation: TV Coverage of a Bosnian Camp," Covert Action Quarterly, Fall, 1998, pp. 52-55.
19. In a private communication dated November 21, 2003.
20. For a good summary of the case that these were "Self-Inflicted Atrocities," with further references, see the Senate Staff Report of January 16, 1997, on "Clinton Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia Into Militant Islamic Base," http://www.senate.gov/%7erpc/releases/1997/iran.htm#top. See also Cees Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia, 1992 - 1995, London: Lit Verlag, 2003, pp. 68-69: http://213.222.3.5/srebrenica/toc/p6_c02_s004_b01.html ).
21. John E. Sray, "Selling the Bosnian Myth to America: Buyer Beware," Foreign Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, October, 1995,.
22. For exceptions to this rule, Leonard Doyle, "Muslims 'slaughter their own people.'" The Independent, Aug. 22, 1992; Hugh Manners, "Serbs 'Not Guilty' of Massacre," The Sunday Times [London], Oct. 1, 1995. David Binder was unable to get his own paper, the New York Times, to publish analyses of possible Muslim involvement in Sarajevo massacres; he had to publish these elsewhere. See David Binder, "The Balkan Tragedy: Anatomy of a Massacre," Foreign Policy, No. 97, Winter, 1994-1995; David Binder, "Bosnia's Bombers," The Nation, October 2, 1995
23. For a good summary, Srdja Trifkovic, "Une spectaculaire revision de chiffres," Balkan Infos (B.I.), February 2005.
24. George Kenney, "The Bosnian Calculation," New York Times Magazine, April 23, 1995.
25. See Trifkovic, supra note 23; also, http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2004/12/death-tolls-part-3.html.
26. See Edward Herman and David Peterson, "The NATO-Media Lie Machine: 'Genocide' in Kosovo," Z Magazine, May 2000: http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/hermanmay2000.htm
27. Michael Ignatieff, "Counting Bodies in Kosovo," New York Times, November 21, 1999.
28. Politics of War Crimes, Bogdanovich, chap. 2, "Prelude to Capture."
29. Detailed evidence was presented to the UN on "War Crimes and Crimes of Genocide in Eastern Bosnia (Communes of Bratunac Skelani, and Srebrenica) Committed Against the Serbian Population from April 1982 to April 1993," by the Yugoslav Ambassador to the UN; see also Joan Phillips, "Victims and Villains in Bosnia's War," Southern Slav Journal, Spring-Summer 1992.
30. Bill Schiller, "Muslims' hero vows he'll fight to the last man," Toronto Star, January 31, 1994; John Pomfret, "Weapons, Cash and Chaos Lend Clout to Srebrenica's Tough Guy," Washington Post, February 16, 1994.
31. Carl Savich, "Srebrenica and Naser Oric: An Analysis of General Philippe Morillon's Testimony at the ICTY," http:/www.serbianna.co.
32. "No Evidence of Civilian Casualties in Operations By Bosnian Commander," BBC Monitoring International Reports, April 11, 2003; for a review of Oric's operations and a critical analysis of the ICTY decision, Carl Savitch, "Srebrenica: The Untold Story," http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/o51.html.
33. Politics of War Crimes, chaps 2-3. The UN estimated that there had been 3-4,000 Bosnian Muslim soldiers in Srebrenica just before its fall.
34. Ibid.
35. Politics of War Crimes, chap. 2.
36. "Conflict in the Balkans, 8000 Muslims Missing," AP, New York Times, Sept. 15, 1995.
37. One Red Cross official told a German interviewer that the Muslims who reached safety "cannot be removed from the list of missing….because we have not received their names," quoted in Pumphrey, "Srebrenica: Three Years Later, And Still Searching." See also, "Former Yugoslavia: Srebrenica: help for families still awaiting news," International Committee of the Red Cross, September 13, 1995 http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList74/7609D560283849CFC1256B6600595006
38. Ibid.
39. Johnstone, Fools' Crusade, p. 76.
40. This jump from a few bodies to 8,000 was recently illustrated in the treatment by Tim Judah and Daniel Sunter in the London Observer of the video of six killings of Bosnian Muslims, given heavy publicity in June 2005-it is the "smoking gun,…the final, incontrovertible proof of Serbia's part in the Srebrenica massacres in which more than 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered." ("How the video that put Serbia in dock was brought to light," June 5).
.
41. ICTY, Amended Joinder Indictment, May 27, 2002, Par. 51: http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/nik-ai020527c.htm.; David Rohde, "The World Five Years Later: The Battle of Srebrenica Is Now Over The Truth," New York Times, July 9, 2000.
42. Steven Lee Meyers, "Making Sure War Crimes Aren't Forgotten," New York Times, September 22, 1997. In fact, one U.S. official acknowledged in late July 1995 that "satellites have produced nothing." Paul Quinn-Judge, "Reports of Atrocities Unconfirmed So Far: U.S. Aerial Surveillance Reveals Little," Boston Globe, July 27, 1995.
43. The web site of the International Commission on Missing Persons in the Former Yugoslavia acknowledges that the bodies "have been exhumed from various gravesites in northeast HiH," not just in the Srebrenica region; quoted in a 2003 Statement by ICMP Chief of Staff Concerning Persons Reported Missing from Srebrenica in July 1995, Gordon Bacon.
44. Politics of War Crimes, Rooper, chap. 4, "The Numbers Game."
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.; also, Politics of War Crimes, Szamuely, chap. 5, "Witness Evidence."
47. Szamuely, "Witness Evidence."
48. Tim Butcher, "Serb Atrocities in Srebrenica are Unproven," The Daily Telegraph, July 24, 1995.
49. Politics of War Crimes, Rooper, chap. 4, "The Numbers Game."
50. This claim appears in the November 1995 indictments of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic; it was recounted by the French policeman, Jean-Rene Ruez, and first surfaced at the ICTY in early July, 1996, during a seven-day publicity-stunt-type hearing into the charges against Karadzic and Mladic. As Associated Press reported Ruez's liver-eating testimony at the time (Jennifer Chao, July 3, 1996):
"Amid the feverish mass murder was throat-gagging sadism. Ruez cited an incident where a soldier forced a man to cut open his grandson's stomach and eat part of his liver. "He took the old man and put a knife in his hand ... and cut open the stomach of the little boy and then with the tip of his knife took out an organ from the inside of the child's stomach and he forced the man to eat that part,' Ruez told the court."
51. Politics of War Crimes, Mandel, chap. 6, "The ICTY Calls It 'Genocide'."
52. Ibid.
53. Chris Hedges, "Bosnian Troops Cite Gassing At Zepa," New York Times, July 27, 1995.
54. Jovic testified in the Milosevic trial on November 18, 2003-www.slobodan-milosevic.org- November 18, 2003.
55. Politics of War Crimes, Mandel, chap. 6; also, Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder (Pluto: 2004), pp. 157-8.
56. Carlos Martins Branco, a former UN military observer in Bosnia, contended that it was in Krajina rather than Srebrenica that one can identify a pre-meditated genocidal process "when the Croatian army implemented the mass murder of all Serbians found there. In this instance, the media maintained an absolute silence, despite the fact that this genocide occurred over a three month period. The objective of Srebrenica was ethnic cleansing and not genocide, unlike what happened in Krajina, in which, although there was not military action, the Croatian army decimated villages." "Was Srebrenica A Hoax? Eye-Witness Account of a Former UN Military Observer in Bosnia," http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BRA403A.html
57. Madeleine Albright, again before the Security Council (The Situation in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (S/PV.3564), UN Security Council, August 10, 1995, 5.30 p.m., pp. 6-7):
58. Richard Holbrooke, on The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, Transcript #5300, August 24, 1995.
59. "U.N. Report: Bosnian Serbs Massacred Srebrenica Muslims," Washington Post, Aug. 12, 1995; John Pomfret, "Investigators Begin Exhuming Group of Mass Graves in Bosnia," Washington Post, July 8, 1996. Biggest "upheaval" is in "Softening Up The Enemy," Newsweek, Aug. 21, 1995.
60. See the evidence drawn from the Norwegian study of Bosnia casualties in: http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2004/12/death-tolls-part-3.html.
61. Slavisa Sabijic, "The Trade in Bodies in Bosnia-Herzegovina": http://www.serbianna.com/press/010.html; Joan Phillips, "Victims and Villains in Bosnia's War," Southern Slav Journal, Spring-Summer 1992.
62. "Yugoslav Forensic Expert Says No Proof About Srebrenica Mass Grave," BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, July 15, 1996.
63. Kosta Christitch, "Les veritable raisons d'une faillite," B.I., March 2005. As Diana Johnstone has said, "by endorsing every accusation against Serbs, and ignoring crimes against Serbs, the United States and its NATO allies have given carte blanche to violence against them. Ethnic Albanian children are growing up in the belief that nobody really blames them for hunting down elderly 'Skrinje' (the ethnic slur for Serbs) and beating them to death." "The OSCE Report: Things Told and Things Seen," ZNet Commentary, Dec. 26, 1999.
64. There have been a modest number of exceptions, mainly Muslim and Croat small fry, usually indicted at a time when the imbalance appeared exceptionally gross and some PR offset was needed. None of the leaders of Croatia or Bosnia were indicted, although it was alleged that indictments were near soon after Tudjman's and Izetbegovic's deaths, although the long delays were never explained. No leader or anybody else in NATO was ever indicted. For a good discussion of the deep bias, Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, Part II.
65. In his 1970 Islamic Declaration, never repudiated by him, Izetbegovic said: "There is neither peace nor coexistence between the 'Islamic religion' and non-Islamic social and political institutions…Having the right to govern its own world, Islam clearly excludes the right and possibility of putting a foreign ideology into practice on its territory." Quoted in Johnstone, Fools' Crusade, p. 58.
66. The 9/11 Commission Report, Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Official Government Edition, pp. 58, 146-147, 155, 238-239.
67. Documentation Centre of Republic of Srpska, Report About Case Srebrenica (The First Part), (Banja Luka, Sept. 2002).
68. Gregory Copley, "US Official Implicated With Bosnian High Representative Ashdown in Attempting to Force Fabricated Report on Srebrenica," Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, September 8, 2003: http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/ssi09082003.htm; Nebojsa Malic, "Srebrenica Revisited: Reports, Confessions and the Elusive Truth," Antiwar.com, June 24, 2004: http://antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=2865
69. On the fallacies of the claims regarding Racak, Rambouillet and the Serb drive for a Greater Serbia as a reality and causal force, see Johnstone, Fools' Crusade, and Mandel, How America Gets Away with Murder.
70. Only one body found around Srebrenica in the graves explored through 1999 was identified as female.
71. See note 7 above. Tim Ripley says that "Thousands of people, those too old or infirm to flee,…remained behind. UN patrols soon found hundreds had been murdered by Croat soldiers and civilians. Almost every home had been looted." (p. 192).
72. Serb refugees in Srebrenica in 1997 are explained as "coming from neighborhoods elsewhere that Croat and Muslim armies emptied in retaliation for the Srebrenica atrocities and other such killings." Dana Priest, "U.S. Troops Extend a Hand To Refugees Tainted by War," Washington Post, Feb. 18, 1997.
73. Sray, "Selling the Bosnian Myth."
74. For an account and critique of these humanitarian interventionists, see Edward Herman and David Peterson, "Morality's Avenging Angels: The New Humanitarian Crusaders," in David Chandler, ed., Rethinking Human Rights (Palgrave: 2002). For a more extensive dismantling of their arguments, see Johnstone's Fools' Crusade and Mandel's How America Gets Away With Murder.
75. On the meaning and application of "cruise missile left" (my phrase), see my "The Cruise Missile Left: Aligning with Power," Z Magazine, November, 2002; and "The Cruise Missile Left (part 5): Samantha Power And The Genocide Gambit," ZNet Commentaries, May 17, 2004.
76. Cedric Thornberry, "Saving the War Crimes Tribunal; Bosnia Herzegovina," Foreign Policy, September 1996.
.
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"Srebrenica" has become the symbol of evil, and specifically Serb evil. It is commonly described as "a horror without parallel in the history of Europe since the Second World War" in which there was a cold-blooded execution "of at least 8,000 Muslim men and boys." [1] The events in question took place in or near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica between July 10 and 19, 1995, as the Bosnian Serb army (BSA) occupied that town and fought with and killed many Bosnian Muslims, unknown numbers dying in the fighting and by executions. There is no question but that there were executions, and that many Bosnian Muslim men died during the evacuation of Srebrenica and its aftermath. But even though only rarely discussed there is a major issue of how many were executed, as numerous bodies found in local grave sites were victims of fighting, and many Bosnian Muslim men who fled Srebrenica reached Bosnian Muslim territory safely. Some bodies were also those of the many Serbs killed in the forays by the Bosnian Muslims out of Srebrenica in the years before July 1995.
The Srebrenica massacre has played a special role in the politics of Western treatment of the restructuring of the former-Yugoslavia and in Western interventionism more broadly, and it is receiving renewed attention and memorialization at its tenth anniversary in July 2005. It is regularly cited as proof of Serb evil and genocidal intent and helped justify a focus on punishing the Serbs and Milosevic and NATO's 1999 war on Serbia. It has also provided important moral support for the further Western wars of vengeance, power projection, and "liberation," having shown that there is evil that the West can and must deal with forcibly.
However, there are three matters that should have raised serious questions about the massacre at the time and since, but didn't and haven't. One was that the massacre was extremely convenient to the political needs of the Clinton administration, the Bosnian Muslims, and the Croats (see Section 1 below). A second was that there had been (and were after Srebrenica) a series of claimed Serb atrocities, that were regularly brought forth at strategic moments when forcible intervention by the United States and NATO bloc was in the offing but needed some solid public relations support, but which were later shown to be fraudulent (Section 2). A third is that the evidence for a massacre, certainly of one in which 8,000 men and boys were executed, has always been problematic, to say the least (Sections 3 and 4).
1. Political Convenience
The events of Srebrenica and claims of a major massacre were extremely helpful to the Clinton administration, the Bosnian Muslim leadership, and Croatian authorities. Clinton was under political pressure in 1995 both from the media and from Bob Dole to take more forceful action in favor of the Bosnian Muslims, [2] and his administration was eager to find a justification for more aggressive policies. Clinton officials rushed to the Srebrenica scene to confirm and publicize the claims of a massacre, just as William Walker did later at Racak in January 1999. Walker's immediate report to Madeleine Albright caused her to exult that "spring has come early this year." [3] Srebrenica allowed the "fall to come early" for the Clinton administration in the summer of 1995.
Bosnian Muslim leaders had been struggling for several years to persuade the NATO powers to intervene more forcibly on their behalf, and there is strong evidence that they were prepared not only to lie but also to sacrifice their own citizens and soldiers to serve the end of inducing intervention (matters discussed further in Section 2). Bosnian Muslim officials have claimed that their leader, Alija Izetbegovic, told them that Clinton had advised him that U.S. intervention would only occur if the Serbs killed at least 5,000 at Srebrenica. [4] The abandonment of Srebrenica by a military force much larger than that of the attackers, and a retreat that made that larger force vulnerable and caused it to suffer heavy casualties in fighting and vengeance executions, helped produce numbers that would meet the Clinton criterion, by hook or by crook. There is other evidence that the retreat from Srebrenica was not based on any military necessity but was strategic, with the personnel losses incurred considered a necessary sacrifice for a larger purpose. [5]
Croatian authorities were also delighted with the claims of a Srebrenica massacre, as this deflected attention from their prior devastating ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Bosnian Muslims in Western Bosnia (almost entirely ignored by the Western media), [6] and it provided a cover for their already planned removal of several hundred thousand Serbs from the Krajina area in Croatia. This massive ethnic cleansing operation was carried out with U.S. approval and logistical support within a month of the Srebrenica events, and it may well have involved the killing of more Serb civilians than Bosnian Muslim civilians killed in the Srebrenica area in July: most of the Bosnian Muslim victims were fighters, not civilians, as the Bosnian Serbs bused the Srebrenica women and children to safety; the Croatians made no such provision and many women, children and old people were slaughtered in Krajina. [7] The ruthlessness of the Croats was impressive: "UN troops watched horrified as Croat soldiers dragged the bodies of dead Serbs along the road outside the UN compound and then pumped them full of rounds from the AK-47s. They then crushed the bullet-ridden bodies under the tracks of a tank." [8] But this was hardly noticed in the wake of the indignation and propaganda generated around Srebrenica with the aid of the mainstream media, whose co-belligerency role in the Balkan wars was already well-entrenched. [9]
The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) and UN also had an important role to play in the consolidation of the standard Srebrenica massacre narrative. From its inception the ICTY served as an arm of the NATO powers, who created it, funded it, served as its police arm and main information source, and expected and got responsive service from the organization. [10] The ICTY focused intensively on Srebrenica and provided important and nominally independent corroboration of the massacre claims along with citable "judicial" claims of planned "genocide." The UN is less thoroughly integrated into NATO-power demands, but it is highly responsive and in the Srebrenica case it came through just as the United States and its main allies desired. [11]
This political interest in the Srebrenica massacre hardly proves that the establishment narrative is wrong. It does, however, suggest the need for caution and an awareness of the possibility of falsification and inflated claims. That awareness has been entirely absent from mainstream treatment of Srebrenica.
2. The Serial Lying Before and After Srebrenica
At each stage in the dismantlement of Yugoslavia, its ethnic cleansing, and before and during the NATO war over the Kosovo province of Serbia in 1999, propaganda lies played a very important role in forwarding conflict and anti-Serb actions. There were lies of omission and lies that directly conveyed false impressions and information. An important form of lie of omission was the regular presentation of Serb misbehavior as unique to the Serbs, not also characteristic of the behavior of the Muslims and Croatians or of the conflict overall. In case after case the media would report on Serb attacks and atrocities, having neglected to report the prior assaults on Serbs in those same towns and making the Serb behavior seem like unprovoked acts of aggression and barbarity.
This was evident from the very start of the serious fighting in 1991 in the republic of Croatia. In their treatment of the Eastern Croatian city of Vukovar, for example, the media (and ICTY) focused exclusively on the federal Yugoslav army's capture of the town in the fall of 1991, completely ignoring the prior spring and summer's slaughter by Croatian National Guard troops and paramilitaries of hundreds of ethnic Serbs who had lived in the Vukovar area. According to Raymond K. Kent, "a substantial Serb population in the major Slavonian city of Vukovar disappeared without having fled, leaving traces of torture in the old Austrian the spring catacombs under the city along with evidence of murder and rape. The Western media, whose demonization of the Serbs was well underway, chose to overlook these events…" [12] This selective and misleading focus was standard media and ICTY practice.
Lies of omission were also clear in the attention given Bosnian Serb prison camps like Omarska, which the media focused on intensively and with indignation, when in fact the Muslims and Croats had very similar prison camps-at Celebici, Tarcin, Livno, Bradina, Odzak, and in the Zetra camp in Sarajevo, among other sites-[13] with roughly comparable numbers, facilities, and certainly no worse treatment of prisoners; [14] but in contrast with the Serbs, the Muslims and Croats hired competent PR firms and refused permission to inspect their facilities-and the already well-developed structure of bias made the media little interested in any but Serb camps.
Wild allegations of Auschwitz-like conditions in Serb "concentration camps" were spread by "journalists of attachment" who lapped up propaganda handouts by Muslim and Croat officials and PR hirlings. Roy Gutman, who won a Pulitzer prize jointly with John Burns for Bosnia reporting in 1993, depended heavily on Croat and Muslim officials and witnesses with suspect credentials and implausible claims, and he was a major source of inflated, one-sided, and false "concentration camp" propaganda. [15] John Burns' Pulitzer award was based on an extended interview with Boris Herak, a captured Bosnian Serb supplied to him and a Soros-funded film-maker by the Bosnian Muslims. Several years later Herak admitted that his extremely implausible confession had been coerced and that he had been forced to memorize many pages of lies. Two of his alleged victims also turned up alive in later years. In reporting on Herak, John Burns and the New York Times (and the Soros-funded film) suppressed the credibility-damaging fact that Herak had also accused former UNPROFOR commandant, Canadian General Lewis Mackenzie, of having raped young Muslim women at a Serb-run bordello. [16] These scandalous awards are symptomatic of the media bias that was already overwhelming in 1992 and 1993.
In a recent development of interest, on a visit to the dying Alija Izetbegovic, Bernard Kouchner asked him about the Bosnian Serb concentration camps, whereupon Izetbegovic, surprisingly, admitted that these claims had been inflated with the aim of getting NATO to bomb the Serbs. [17] This important confession has not been mentioned in the U.S. or British mainstream media.
One of the most important propaganda lies of the 1990s featured the Serb-run Trnopolje camp, visited by Britain's ITN reporters in August 1992. These reporters photographed the resident Fikret Alic, showing him emaciated and seemingly inside a concentration camp fence. In fact, Fikret Alic was in a transit camp, was a sick man (and was sick with tuberculosis long before reaching the camp), was not in any way representative of others in the camp, and was soon able to move to Sweden. Furthermore, the fence was around the photographers, not the man photographed. [18] But this hugely dishonest photo was featured everywhere in the West as proving a Serb-organized Auschwitz, was denounced by NATO high officials, and helped provide the moral basis for the creation of the ICTY and its clear focus on Serb evil.
In the case of the siege of Sarajevo, as with conflict around many "safe haven" towns, the Bosnian Muslim government engaged in a steady program of provoking the Serbs, blaming them for the ensuing response, lying about casualties, and trying-usually successfully-to place the blame on the Serbs. As Tim Fenton has said, "Massacre allegations by the Bosnian Muslims followed any reported conflict as night followed day: most notoriously Muslim Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic claimed the UN was responsible for the deaths of 70,000 in Bihac in early 1995, when in fact there had barely been any fighting and casualties were small." [19]
A remarkable feature of the Bosnian Muslim struggle to demonize the Serbs, in order to get NATO to come to Bosnian Muslim aid with bombs, was their willingness to kill their own people. This was most notable in the case of the ruthless bombing of Sarajevo civilians in three massacres: in 1992 (the "Breadline Massacre"), 1994 (the Markale "Market Massacre") and a "Second Market Massacre" in 1995. In the standard narrative the Serbs were responsible for these massacres, and it is admittedly not easy to believe that the Muslim leadership would kill their own for political advantage even if the evidence points strongly in that direction. But these massacres were all extremely well timed to influence imminent NATO and UN decisions to intervene more forcibly on behalf of the Bosnian Muslims. More important, numerous UN officials and senior Western military officials have claimed that the evidence is strong in all three cases that the actions were planned and executed by Bosnian Muslims. [20] U.S. Army officer John E. Sray, who was on the scene in Bosnia during these and other massacres and was head of the U.S. intelligence section in Sarajevo, even suggested that the incidents, and probable Bosnian Muslim official connivance in these atrocities, "deserve a thorough scrutiny by the International War Crimes Tribunal." [21] Needless to say no such scrutiny was forthcoming. In short, this view of the three massacres is not conspiracy theory, it is a conclusion based on serious and substantial evidence, but not even debated in the party-line dominated accounts of recent Balkan history. [22]
Both before and after Srebrenica lying about numbers killed was also standard practice, helpful in sustaining the dominant narrative. For Bosnia, in December 1992 the Bosnian Muslim government claimed 128,444 deaths of their forces and people, a number which grew to 200,000 by June 1993, rising to 250,000 in 1994. [23] These figures were swallowed without a qualm by Western politicians, media, and intellectual war-campaigners (e.g., David Rieff), with Clinton himself using the 250,000 figure in a speech in November 1995. Former State Department official George Kenney has long questioned these figures and marveled at media gullibility in accepting these claims without the least interest in verification. His own estimate ran between 25,000 and 60,000. [24] More recently, a study sponsored by the Norwegian government estimated the Bosnian war dead as 80,000, and one sponsored by the Hague Tribunal itself came up with a figure of 102,000 dead. [25] Neither of these studies has been reported on in the U.S. media, which had regularly offered its readers/listeners the inflated numbers.
A similar inflation process took place during the 78-day NATO bombing war in 1999, with high U.S. officials at various moments claiming 100,000, 250,000 and 500,000 Serb killings of Kosovo Albanians, along with the lavish use of the word "genocide" to describe Serb actions in Kosovo. [26] This figure gradually shrank to 11,000, and has remained there despite the fact that only some 4,000 bodies were found in one of the most intense forensic searches in history, and with unknown numbers of those bodies combatants, Serbs, and civilian victims of U.S. bombing. But the 11,000 must be valid because the NATO governments and ICTY say it is, and Michael Ignatieff assured readers of the New York Times that "whether those 11,334 bodies will be found depends on whether the Serb military and the police removed them." [27]
This record of systematic disinformation certainly does not disprove the truth of the standard narrative on the Srebrenica massacre. It does, however, suggest the need for a close look at the claims, which have proved so convenient, a close look that the mainstream has steadily refused to provide.
3. The Problematic Massacre Claims
By the time of the Srebrenica events of July 1995 the stage had been well set for making massacre claims effective. The serial lying had been largely unchallenged in the mainstream, the demonization process and good-versus-evil dichotomy had been well established, the ICTY and UN leadership were closely following the agenda of the United States and its NATO allies, and the media were on board as co-belligerents.
In this environment, context-stripping was easy. One element of context was the fact that the "safe area" concept was a fraud, as the safe areas were supposed to have been disarmed, but weren't, and with UN connivance. [28] They were therefore used by the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and other safe havens as launching pads for attacks on nearby Serb villages. In the three years prior to the massacre well over a thousand Serb civilians were killed by Muslim forces in scores of devastated nearby villages; [29] and well before July 1995 the Srebrenica Muslim commander Nasir Oric proudly showed Western reporters videos of some of his beheaded Serb victims and bragged about his killings. [30] Testifying before the Tribunal on February 12, 2004, UN military commander in Bosnia in 1992 and 1993, General Philippe Morillon, stated his conviction that the attack on Srebrenica was a "direct reaction" to the massacres of Serbs by Nasir Oric and his forces in 1992 and 1993, massacres with which Morillon was closely familiar. [31] Morillon's testimony was of no interest to the Western media, and when the ICTY finally got around to indicting Nasir Oric on March 28, 2003, very possibly to create the image of judicial balance, he was charged with killing only seven Serbs who were tortured and beaten to death after capture, and with the "wanton destruction" of nearby villages. Although he openly bragged to Western reporters of slaughtering Serb civilians, the ICTY reportedly "found no evidence that there were civilian casualties in the attacks on Serb villages in his theater of operations." [32]
When the Bosnian Serbs captured Srebrenica in July 1995, it was reported that the 28th regiment of the Bosnian Muslim Army (BMA), comprising several thousand men, had just fled the town. [33] The media failed to ask how such a large force could have been present in a disarmed "safe area." Having also succeeded in ignoring the prior abuses emanating from the safe area, this allowed them to follow a quickly established party line of a planned "genocide" and inexplicable brutality rather than the vengeance which the media allow as semi-exoneration of violence by "worthy" victims (e.g., Kosovo Albanians driving out and killing Serbs and Roma after the NATO takeover of Kosovo).
A second element of context was the possible political basis for the surrender of Srebrenica by a force in a good defensive position, outnumbering the attacking BSA by a 6-1 or 8-1 ratio, but retreating in advance of the assault, their leaders having been withdrawn previously by order of the Bosnian Muslim leadership. [34] This left the population unprotected, and made the BMA cadres vulnerable as they retreated in disarray toward Bosnian Muslim lines. Could this have been another self-sacrificing maneuver by the leadership to produce victims, perhaps designed to help meet the Clinton 5,000 target and induce more forcible NATO intervention? These questions never arose in the mainstream media.
The Srebrenica events had a number of features that made it possible to claim 8,000 "men and boys" executed. One was the confusion and uncertainty about the fate of the fleeing Bosnian Muslim forces, some reaching Tuzla safely, some killed in the fighting, and some captured. The 8,000 figure was first provided by the Red Cross, based on their crude estimate that the BSA had captured 3,000 men and that 5,000 were reported "missing." [35] It is well established that thousands of those "missing" had reached Tuzla or were killed in the fighting, [36] but in an amazing transformation displaying the eagerness to find the Bosnian Serbs evil and the Muslims victims, the "reaching safety/killed-in-action" basis of being missing was ignored and the missing were taken as executed! This misleading conclusion was helped along by the Red Cross's reference to the 5,000 as having "simply disappeared," and its failure to correct this politically biased usage and claim despite its own recognition that "several thousand" refugees had reached Central Bosnia. [37]
It was also helped along by the Bosnian Muslim leadership's refusal to disclose the names and numbers of those reaching safety, [38] but there was a remarkable readiness in the Western establishment not only to ignore those reaching safety, but also to disregard deaths in fighting and to take dead bodies as proving executions. The will to believe here was limitless: reporter David Rohde saw a bone sticking up in a grave site near Srebrenica, which he just knew by instinct was a remnant of an execution and serious evidence of a "massacre." [39] It was standard media practice to move from an asserted and unproven claim of thousands missing, or a report of the uncovering of bodies in a grave site, to the conclusion that the claim of 8,000 executed was thereby demonstrated. [40]
With 8,000 executed and thousands killed in the fighting there should have been huge grave sites and satellite evidence of both executions, burials, and any body removals. But the body searches in the Srebrenica vicinity were painfully disappointing, with only some two thousand bodies found in searches through 1999, including bodies killed in action and possibly Serb bodies, some pre-dating July 1995. The sparseness of these findings led to claims of body removal and reburial, but this was singularly unconvincing as the Bosnian Serbs were under intense military pressure after July 1995. This was the period when NATO was bombing Serb positions and Croat/Muslim armies were driving towards Banja Luka. The BSA was on the defensive and was extremely short of equipment and resources, including gasoline. To have mounted an operation of the magnitude required to exhume, transport and rebury thousands of corpses would have been far beyond the BSA's capacity at that time. Furthermore, in carrying out such a program they could hardly hope to escape observation from OSCE personnel, local civilians, and satellite observations.
On August 10, 1995, Madeleine Albright showed some satellite photos at a closed session of the Security Council, as part of a denunciation of the Bosnian Serbs, including one photo showing people--allegedly Bosnian Muslims near Srebrenica--assembled in a stadium, and one allegedly taken shortly thereafter showing a nearby field with "disturbed" soil. These photos have never been publicly released, but even if they are genuine they don't prove either executions or burials. Furthermore, although the ICTY speaks of "an organized and comprehensive effort" to hide bodies, and David Rohde claimed a "huge Serb effort to hide bodies," [41] neither Albright nor anyone else has ever shown a satellite photo of people actually being executed, buried, or dug up for reburial, or of trucks conveying thousands of bodies elsewhere. This evidence blank occurred despite Albright's warning the Serbs that "We will be watching," and with satellites at that time making at least eight passes per day and geostationary drones able to hover and take finely detailed pictures in position over Bosnia during the summer of 1995. [42] The mainstream media have found this failure to confirm of no interest.
There have been a great many bodies gathered at Tuzla, some 7,500 or more, many in poor condition or parts only, their collection and handling incompatible with professional forensic standards, their provenance unclear and link to the July 1995 events in Srebrenica unproven and often unlikely, [43] and the manner of their death usually uncertain. Interestingly, although the Serbs were regularly accused of trying to hide bodies, there has never been any suggestion that the Bosnian Muslims, long in charge of the body search, might shift bodies around and otherwise manipulate evidence, despite their substantial record of dissembling. A systematic attempt to use DNA to trace connections to Srebrenica is underway, but entails many problems, apart from that of the integrity of the material studied and process of investigation, and will not resolve the question of differentiating executions from deaths in combat. There are also lists of missing, but these lists are badly flawed, with duplications, individuals listed who had died before July 1995, who fled to avoid BSA service, or who registered to vote in 1997, and they include individuals who died in battle or reached safety or were captured and assumed a new existence elsewhere. [44]
The 8,000 figure is also incompatible with the basic arithmetic of Srebrenica numbers before and after July 1995. Displaced persons from Srebrenica-that is, massacre survivors-- registered with the World Health Organization and Bosnian government in early August 1995, totalled 35,632. Muslim men who reached Muslim lines "without their families being informed" totaled at least 2,000, and some 2,000 were killed in the fighting. That gives us 37,632 survivors plus the 2,000 combat deaths, which would require the prewar population of Srebrenica to have been 47,000 if 8,000 were executed, whereas the population before July was more like 37-40,000 (Tribunal judge Patricia Wald gave 37,000 as her estimate). The numbers don't add up. [45]
There were witnesses to killings at Srebrenica, or those who claimed to be witnesses. There were not many of these, and some had a political axe to grind or were otherwise not credible, [46] but several were believable and were probably telling of real and ugly events. But we are talking here of evidence of hundreds of executions, not 8,000 or anything close to it. The only direct participant witness claim that ran to a thousand was that of Drazen Erdemovic, an ethnic Croat associated with a mercenary group of killers whose members were paid 12 kilos of gold for their Bosnian service (according to Erdemovic himself) and ended up working in the Congo on behalf of French intelligence. His testimony was accepted despite its vagueness and inconsistencies, lack of corroboration, and his suffering from mental problems sufficient to disqualify him from trial--but not from testifying before the Tribunal, free of cross-examination. within two weeks of this disqualification from trial. This and other witness evidence suffered from serious abuse of the plea-bargaining process whereby witnesses could receive mitigating sentences if they cooperated sufficiently with the prosecution. [47]
It is also noteworthy how many relatively impartial observers in or near Srebrenica in July 1995 didn't see any evidence of massacres, including the members of the Dutch forces present in the "safe area" and people like Henry Wieland, the chief UN investigator into alleged human rights abuses, who could find no eyewitnesses to atrocities after five days of interviewing among the 20,000 Srebrenica survivors gathered at the Tuzla airport refugee camp. [48]
4. Anomalies
One anomaly connected with Srebrenica has been the stability of the figure of Bosnian Muslim victims-8,000 in July 1995 and 8,000 today, despite the crudity of the initial estimate, the evidence that many or most of the 5,000 "missing" reached Bosnian Muslim territory or were killed in the fighting, and the clear failure to produce supportive physical evidence despite a massive effort. In other cases, like the 9/11 fatality estimate, and even the Bosnian killings and Kosovo bombing war estimates, the original figures were radically scaled down as evidence of body counts made the earlier inflated numbers unsustainable. [49] But because of its key political role for the United States, Bosnian Muslims and Croats, and an almost religious ardour of belief in this claim, Sebrenica has been immune to evidence. From the beginning until today the number has been taken as a given, a higher truth, the questioning of which would show a lack of faith and very likely "apologetics" for the demon.
Another anomaly also showing the sacred, untouchable, and politicized character of the massacre in Western ideology has been the ready designation of the killings as a case of "genocide." The Tribunal played an important role here, with hard-to-match gullibility, unrestrained psychologizing, and incompetent legal reasoning, which the judges have applied to Serb-related cases only. On gullibility, one Tribunal judge accepted as fact the witness claim that Serb soldiers had forced an old Muslim man to eat the liver of his grandson; [50] and the judges repeatedly stated as an established fact that 7-8,000 Muslim men had been executed, while simultaneously acknowledging that the evidence only "suggested" that "a majority" of the 7-8,000 missing had not been killed in combat, which yields a number substantially lower than 7-8,000. [51]
The Tribunal dealt with the awkward problem of the genocide-intent Serbs bussing Bosnian Muslim women and children to safety by arguing that they did this for public relations reasons, but as Michael Mandel points out, failing to do some criminal act despite your desire is called "not committing a crime." [52] The Tribunal never asked why the genocidal Serbs failed to surround the town before its capture to prevent thousands of males from escaping to safety, or why the Bosnian Muslim soldiers were willing to leave their women and children as well as many wounded comrades to the mercies of the Serbs; [53] and they failed to confront the fact that 10,000 mainly Muslim residents of Zvornik sought refugee from the civil war in Serbia itself, as prosecution witness Borislav Jovic testified. [54]
Among the other idiocies in the Tribunal judges' argument, it was genocide if you killed many males in a group in order to reduce the future population of that group, thereby making it unviable in that area. Of course, you might want to kill them to prevent their killing you in the future, but the court knows Serb psychology better-that couldn't be the sole reason, there must have been a more sinister aim. The Tribunal reasoning holds forth the possibility that with only a little prosecution-friendly judicial psychologizing any case of killing enemy soldiers can be designated genocide.
There is also the problem of definition of the group. Were the Serbs trying to eliminate all the Muslims in Bosnia, or Muslims globally? Or just in Srebrenica? The judges suggested that pushing them out of the Srebrenica area was itself genocide, and they essentially equated genocide with ethnic cleansing. [55] It is notable that the ICTY has never called the Croat ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Krajina Serbs "genocide" although in that case many women and children were killed and the ethnic cleansing applied to a larger area and larger victim population than in Srebrenica. [56] (On August 10, 1995, Madeleine Albright cried out to the Security Council that "as many as 13,000 men, women and children were driven from their homes" in Srebrenica.) [57] Perhaps the ICTY had accepted Richard Holbrooke's comic designation of Krajina as a case of "involuntary expulsions." [58] The bias is blatant; the politicization of a purported judicial enterprise is extreme.
Media treatment of the Srebrenica and Krajina cases followed the same pattern and illustrates well how the media make some victims worthy and others unworthy in accord with a political agenda. With the Serbs their government's target, and their government actively aiding the massive Croat ethnic cleansing program in Krajina, the media gave huge and indignant treatment to the first, with invidious language, calls for action, and little context. With Krajina, attention was slight and passing, indignation was absent, detailed reporting on the condition of the victims was minimal, descriptive language was neutral, and there was context offered that made the events understandable. The contrast is so gross as to be droll: the attack on Srebrenica "chilling," "murderous," "savagery," "cold-blooded killing," "genocidal," "aggression,"and of course "ethnic cleansing." With Krajina, the media used no such strong language-even ethnic cleansing was too much for them. The Croat assault was merely a big "upheaval" that is "softening up the enemy," "a lightning offensive," explained away as a "response to Srebrenica" and a result of Serb leaders "overplaying their hand." The Washington Post even cited U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith saying the "the Serb exodus was not 'ethnic cleansing'." [59] The paper does not allow a challenge to that judgment. In fact, however, the Croat operations in Krajina left Croatia as the most ethnically purified of all the former components of the former Yugoslavia, although the NATO occupation of Kosovo has allowed an Albanian ethnic cleansing that is rivalling that of Croatia in ethnic purification.
Another anomaly in the Srebrenica case is the insistence on bringing all the criminals (Serb) to trial and getting the willing executioners (Serb) to admit guilt as necessary for justice and essential for reconciliation. A problem is that justice cannot be one-sided or it ceases to be justice, and shows its true face as vengeance and a cover for other political ends. Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia was by no means one-sided, and deaths by nationality were not far off from population proportionality; [60] the Serbs claim and have documented thousands of deaths at the hands of the Bosnian Muslims and their imported Mujahedin cadres, and by the Croatians, and they have their own group examining and trying to identify bodies at an estimated 73 mass graves. [61] This victimization has hardly been noticed by the Western media or ICTY-the distinguished Yugoslav forensic expert Dr. Zoran Stankovic observed back in 1996 that "the fact that his team had previously identified the bodies of 1,000 Bosnian Serbs in the [Srebrenica] region had not interested prosecutor Richard Goldstone." [62] Instead, there is a steady refrain about the Serbs tendency to whine, whereas Bosnian Muslim complaints are taken as those of true victims and are never designated whining.
Rather than producing reconciliation the steady focus on Srebrenica victims and killers makes for more intense hatred and nationalism, just as the Kosovo war and its violence exacerbated hatred and tensions there and showed that Clinton's claimed objective of a tolerant multi-ethnic Kosovo was a fraud. In Kosovo, this one-sided propaganda and NATO control has unleashed serious and unremitting anti-Serb-along with anti-Roma, anti-Turk, anti-dissident-Albanian-- violence, helped along by the willingness of the NATO authorities to look the other way as their allies-the purported victims-take their revenge and pursue their long-standing aim of ethnic purification. [63] In Bosnia and Serbia the Serbs have been under steady attack, humiliated, and their leaders and military personnel punished, while the criminals among the Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and NATO powers (e.g., Clinton, Blair, Albright, Holbrooke) suffer no penalties [64] and may even be portrayed as dispensers of justice (Clinton et al.).
.
It is clear that the objectives of the retribution-pushers are not justice and reconciliation-they are to unify and strengthen the position of the Bosnian Muslims, to crush the Republica Srpska, and possibly even eliminate it as an independent entity in Bosnia, to keep Serbia disorganized, weak and dependent on the West, and to continue to put the U.S. and NATO attack and dismantlement of Yugoslavia in a favorable light. The last objective requires diverting attention from the Clinton/Bosnian Muslim role in giving Al Qaeda a foothold in the Balkans, Izetbegovic's close alliance with Osama bin Laden, his Islamic Declaration declaring hostility to a multi-ethnic state, [65] the importation of 4,000 Mujahaden to fight a holy war in Bosnia, with active Clinton administration aid, and the KLA-Al Qaeda connection.
These aspects of the siding with the Bosnian Muslims have always been awkward for the war propagandists, and they became more so after 9/11-the U.S. 9/11 Commission Report claims that two of the 19 hijackers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, and a "mastermind" of the attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, "fought" in Bosnia, and that bin Laden had "service" offices in Zagreb and Sarajevo. [66] Despite the huge focus on 9/11 and Al Qaeda these links have not been featured in the mainstream media and have not influenced Bosnian proconsul Paddy Ashdown, who attended Izetbegovic's funeral and continues to push Bosnian Muslim interests. The Serbs, of course, were complaining about the brutality (and beheadings) of the Mujahaden in 1993, but the media and ICTY were not interested then and remain uninterested. Let's just talk about Srebrenica, the Bosnian Muslims as unique victims, and Clinton's and the West's generous if belated service to those victimized underdogs.
But didn't the Bosnian Serbs "confess" that they had murdered 8,000 civilians? This has been the take of the Western media, but again demonstrating their subservience to their leaders' political agenda. The Bosnian Serbs actually did put out a report on Srebrenica in September 2002, [67] but this report was rejected by Paddy Ashdown for failing to come up with the proper conclusions. He therefore forced a further report by firing a stream of Republica Srpska politicians and analysts, threatening the RS government, and eventually extracting a report prepared by people who would come to the officially approved conclusions. [68] This report, issued on June 11, 2004, was then greeted in the Western media as a meaningful validation of the official line-the refrain was, the Bosnian Serbs "admit" the massacre, which should finally settle any questions. Amusingly, even this coerced and imposed report didn't come near acknowledging 8,000 executions (it speaks of "several thousand" executions). What this episode "proves" is that the Western campaign to make the defeated Serbia grovel is not yet terminated, and the media's continuing gullibility and propaganda service.
Conclusion
The "Srebrenica massacre" is the greatest triumph of propaganda to emerge from the Balkan wars. Other claims and outright lies have played their role in the Balkan conflicts, but while some have retained a modest place in the propaganda repertoire despite challenge (Racak, the Markale massacre, the Serb refusal to negotiate at Rambouillet, 250,000 Bosnian dead, the aim of a Greater Serbia as the driving force in the Balkan wars), [69] the Srebrenica massacre reigns supreme for symbolic power. It is the symbol of Serb evil and Bosnian Muslim victimhood, and the justice of the Western dismantling of Yugoslavia and intervention there at many levels, including a bombing war and colonial occupations of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.
But the link of this propaganda triumph to truth and justice is non-existent. The disconnection with truth is epitomized by the fact that the original estimate of 8,000, including 5,000 "missing"--who had left Srebrenica for Bosnian Muslim lines-was maintained even after it had been quickly established that several thousand had reached those lines and that several thousand more had perished in battle. This nice round number lives on today in the face of a failure to find the executed bodies and despite the absence of a single satellite photo showing executions, bodies, digging, or trucks transporting bodies for reburial. The media have carefully refrained from asking questions on this point, despite Albright's August 1995 promise that "We will be watching."
That Albright statement, and the photos she did display at the time, helped divert attention from the ongoing "Krajina massacre" of Serbs in Croatian Krajina, an ethnic cleansing process of great brutality and wider scope than that at Srebrenica, in which there was less real fighting than at Srebrenica, mainly attacks on and the killing and removal of defenseless civilians. At Srebrenica the Bosnian Serbs moved women and children to safety, and there is no evidence of any of them being murdered; [70] whereas in Krajina there was no such separation and an estimated 368 women and children were killed, along with many too old and infirm to flee. [71] One measure of the propaganda success of the "Srebrenica massacre" is that the possibility that the intense focus on the Srebrenica massacre was serving as a cover for the immediately following "Krajina massacre," supported by the United States, was outside the orbit of thought of the media. For the media, Srebrenica helped bring about Krajina, and the Serbs had it coming. [72]
The media have played an important role in making the Srebrenica massacre a propaganda triumph. As noted earlier, the media had become a co-belligerent by 1991, and all standards of objectivity disappeared in their subservience to the pro-Bosnian Muslim and anti-Serb agenda. Describing the reporting of Christine Amanpour and others on a battle around Goradze, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel John Sray wrote back in October 1995 that these news reports "were devoid of any semblance of truth," that Americans were suffering from "a cornucopia of disinformation," that "America has not been so pathetically deceived" since the Vietnam War, and that popular perceptions of Bosnia "have been forged by a prolific propaganda machine..[that has] managed to manipulate illusions to further Muslim goals." [73]
That propaganda machine also conquered the liberals and much of the left in the United States, who swallowed the dominant narrative of the evil Serbs seeking hegemony, employing uniquely brutal and genocidal strategies, and upsetting a previous multi-cultural haven in Bosnia-run by Osama bin Laden's friend and ally Alija Izetbegovic, and with rectification brought belatedly by Clinton, Holbrooke and Albright working closely with Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia! The liberal/left war coalition needed to find the Serbs demons in order to justify imperial warfare, and they did so by accepting and internalizing a set of lies and myths that make up the dominant narrative. [74] This liberal/"cruise missile left" (CML) combo was important in helping develop the "humanitarian intervention" rationale for attacking Serbia on behalf of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and in fact preparing the ground for Bush's eventual basing of his own wars on the quest for "liberation." [75] The Srebrenica massacre helped make the liberals and CML true believers in the crusade in the Balkans and gave moral backup to their servicing the expanding imperial role of their country and its allies.
Former UN official Cedric Thornberry, writing in 1996, noted that "prominently in parts of the international liberal media" the position is "that the Serbs were the only villains," and back at UN headquarters in the spring of 1993 he was warned: "Take cover-the fix is on." [76] The fix was on, even if only tacit and built-in to the government-media-Tribunal relationship. It helped make the Srebrenica massacre the symbol of evil and, with the help of Tribunal "justice," and support of liberals and CML, provided a cover for the U.S.-NATO attack on and dismantling of Yugoslavia, colonial occupations in Bosnia and Kosovo, and justification for "humanitarian intervention" more broadly. What more could be asked of a propaganda system?
Notes:
*This paper is partly drawn from and cites chapters in a forthcoming book on the Srerbrenica massacre, Srebrenica: The Politics of War Crimes, written by George Bogdanich, Tim Fenton, Philip Hammond, Edward S. Herman, Michael Mandel, Jonathan Rooper, and George Szamuely. This book is referred to in the notes below as Politics of War Crimes. The author and his colleagues are indebted to Diana Johnstone, David Peterson, Vera Vratusa-Zunjic, Milan Bulajic, Milivoje Ivanisevic, Konstantin Kilibarda, and George Pumphrey for advice. Johnstone's Fools Crusade is a fine basic statement of an alternative perspective on the Balkan Wars; George Pumphrey's "Srebrenica: Three Years Later, And Still Searching," is a classic critique of the establishment Srebrenica massacre narrative and repeatedly hit the target with facts and analyses still not rebutted.
1. "Bosnia: 2 Officials Dismissed for Obstructing Srebrenica Inquiry," AP Report, New York Times, April 17, 2004; Marlise Simons, "Bosnian Serb Leader Taken Before War Crimes Tribunal," New York Times, April 8, 2000; UN, The Fall of Srebrenica (A/54/549), Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35, November 15, 1999, par. 506 (http://www.un.org/News/ossg/srebrenica.pdf )
2. See Ivo Pukanic, "US Role In Storm: Thrilled With Operation Flash, President Clinton Gave the Go Ahead to Operation Storm," Nacional (Zagreb), May 24, 2005.
3. Barton Gellman, "The Path to Crisis: How the United States and Its Allies Went to War," Washington Post, April 18, 1999
4. "Some surviving members of the Srebrenica delegation have stated that President Izetbegovic also told that he had learned that a NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina was possible, but could occur only if the Serbs were to break into Srebrenica, killing at least 5,000 of its people. President Izetbegovic has flatly denied making such a statement." The Fall of Srebrenica (A/54/549), Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35, November 15, 1999, par. 115, (http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports/UNsrebrenicareport.htm)
The UN report does not mention that there were nine others present at that meeting, and that one of them, Hakija Meholijic, former Srebrenica chief of police, has stated that eight of them (all those living) "can confirm" the Clinton suggestion. (Dani, June 22, 1998: http://cdsp.neu.edu/info/students/marko/dani/dani2.html)
5. Politics of War Crimes, Bogdanich, chapter 2, "Prelude to Capture," and Fenton, chapter 3, "Military Context." See also Tim Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force (Center for Defence and Security Studies: 1999), p. 145.
6. In his Balkan Odyssey, Lord David Owen stated that "By acquiescing in the Croatian government's seizure of Western Slavonia, the Contact Group had in effect given the green light to the Bosnian Serbs to attack Srebrenica and Zepa" (pp. 199-200). Owen was mistaken; the Contact Group was serving one side only, and the media's failure to report on and criticize the approved aggression made it possible to present the takeover of Srebrenica as a unique and unprovoked evil.
7. Veritas estimated that 1,205 civilians were killed in Operation Storm, including 358 women and 10 children. In the graves around Srebrenica through 1999, among the 1,895 bodies only one was identified as female. See "Croatian Serb Exodus Commemorated," Agence France Press, Aug. 4, 2004; also, Veritas at www.veritas.org.yu.
8. Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force, p. 192. See also footnotes 56 and 70.
9. The co-belligerency role was described by Peter Brock in "Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press," Foreign Policy, Winter 1993-94. A forthcoming book by Brock, on Media Cleansing: UNcovering Yugoslavia's Civil Wars, shows this partisanship in greater and effective detail. In his autobiography, U. S. Secretary of State James Baker says that he instructed his press secretary, Margaret Tutweiler to help Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajzdic utilize the Western media to further the Bosnian Muslim cause, noting that he "had her talk to her contacts at the four television networks, the Washington Post and the New York Times." James A. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy (Putnam: 1995), pp. 643-4.
10. As NATO PR spokesman Jamie Shea stated on May 16, 1999, when asked about NATO's vulnerability to Tribunal charges, he was not worried. The prosecutor, he said, will start her investigation "because we will allow her to." Further, "NATO countries are those that have provided the finance," and on the need to build a second chamber "so that prosecutions can be speeded up...we and the Tribunal are all one on this, we want to see war criminals brought to justice." http://www.nato.int/kosovo/press/p990516b.htm
See Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder (London: Pluto, 2004), chaps. 4-5; Edward Herman, "The Milosevic Trial, Part 1," Z Magazine, April 2002.
11. See Politics of War Crimes, chap. 7, Bogdanich, "UN Report on Srebrenica-A distorted Picture of Events."
12. Raymond K. Kent, "Contextualizing Hate: The Hague Tribunal, the Clinton Administration and the Serbs," Dialogue (Paris), v. 5, no. 20, December, 1996 (as posted to the Emperor's Clothes website, http://www.emperors-clothes.com/misc/kent.htm)
13. Carl Savitch, "Celebici," http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/047.shtml.
14. It would be hard to surpass the savagery of the Bosnian Muslims at the Celebici camp, described in ibid. See also, Diana Johnstone, Fools' Crusade (Pluto: 2002), pp. 71-72.
15. See the two works by Peter Brock, note 9 above; also Johnstone, Fools' Crusade, pp. 70-83.
16. For details and citations see Brock's article and book (note 9 above).
17. Bernard Kouchner, Les Guerriers de la Paix (Paris: Grasset, 2004), pp. 372-4.
18. Johnstone, Fools' Crusade, pp, 72-73; Thomas Deichmann, "Misinformation: TV Coverage of a Bosnian Camp," Covert Action Quarterly, Fall, 1998, pp. 52-55.
19. In a private communication dated November 21, 2003.
20. For a good summary of the case that these were "Self-Inflicted Atrocities," with further references, see the Senate Staff Report of January 16, 1997, on "Clinton Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia Into Militant Islamic Base," http://www.senate.gov/%7erpc/releases/1997/iran.htm#top. See also Cees Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia, 1992 - 1995, London: Lit Verlag, 2003, pp. 68-69: http://213.222.3.5/srebrenica/toc/p6_c02_s004_b01.html ).
21. John E. Sray, "Selling the Bosnian Myth to America: Buyer Beware," Foreign Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, October, 1995,
22. For exceptions to this rule, Leonard Doyle, "Muslims 'slaughter their own people.'" The Independent, Aug. 22, 1992; Hugh Manners, "Serbs 'Not Guilty' of Massacre," The Sunday Times [London], Oct. 1, 1995. David Binder was unable to get his own paper, the New York Times, to publish analyses of possible Muslim involvement in Sarajevo massacres; he had to publish these elsewhere. See David Binder, "The Balkan Tragedy: Anatomy of a Massacre," Foreign Policy, No. 97, Winter, 1994-1995; David Binder, "Bosnia's Bombers," The Nation, October 2, 1995
23. For a good summary, Srdja Trifkovic, "Une spectaculaire revision de chiffres," Balkan Infos (B.I.), February 2005.
24. George Kenney, "The Bosnian Calculation," New York Times Magazine, April 23, 1995.
25. See Trifkovic, supra note 23; also, http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2004/12/death-tolls-part-3.html.
26. See Edward Herman and David Peterson, "The NATO-Media Lie Machine: 'Genocide' in Kosovo," Z Magazine, May 2000: http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/hermanmay2000.htm
27. Michael Ignatieff, "Counting Bodies in Kosovo," New York Times, November 21, 1999.
28. Politics of War Crimes, Bogdanovich, chap. 2, "Prelude to Capture."
29. Detailed evidence was presented to the UN on "War Crimes and Crimes of Genocide in Eastern Bosnia (Communes of Bratunac Skelani, and Srebrenica) Committed Against the Serbian Population from April 1982 to April 1993," by the Yugoslav Ambassador to the UN; see also Joan Phillips, "Victims and Villains in Bosnia's War," Southern Slav Journal, Spring-Summer 1992.
30. Bill Schiller, "Muslims' hero vows he'll fight to the last man," Toronto Star, January 31, 1994; John Pomfret, "Weapons, Cash and Chaos Lend Clout to Srebrenica's Tough Guy," Washington Post, February 16, 1994.
31. Carl Savich, "Srebrenica and Naser Oric: An Analysis of General Philippe Morillon's Testimony at the ICTY," http:/www.serbianna.co.
32. "No Evidence of Civilian Casualties in Operations By Bosnian Commander," BBC Monitoring International Reports, April 11, 2003; for a review of Oric's operations and a critical analysis of the ICTY decision, Carl Savitch, "Srebrenica: The Untold Story," http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/o51.html.
33. Politics of War Crimes, chaps 2-3. The UN estimated that there had been 3-4,000 Bosnian Muslim soldiers in Srebrenica just before its fall.
34. Ibid.
35. Politics of War Crimes, chap. 2.
36. "Conflict in the Balkans, 8000 Muslims Missing," AP, New York Times, Sept. 15, 1995.
37. One Red Cross official told a German interviewer that the Muslims who reached safety "cannot be removed from the list of missing….because we have not received their names," quoted in Pumphrey, "Srebrenica: Three Years Later, And Still Searching." See also, "Former Yugoslavia: Srebrenica: help for families still awaiting news," International Committee of the Red Cross, September 13, 1995 http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList74/7609D560283849CFC1256B6600595006
38. Ibid.
39. Johnstone, Fools' Crusade, p. 76.
40. This jump from a few bodies to 8,000 was recently illustrated in the treatment by Tim Judah and Daniel Sunter in the London Observer of the video of six killings of Bosnian Muslims, given heavy publicity in June 2005-it is the "smoking gun,…the final, incontrovertible proof of Serbia's part in the Srebrenica massacres in which more than 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered." ("How the video that put Serbia in dock was brought to light," June 5).
.
41. ICTY, Amended Joinder Indictment, May 27, 2002, Par. 51: http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/nik-ai020527c.htm.; David Rohde, "The World Five Years Later: The Battle of Srebrenica Is Now Over The Truth," New York Times, July 9, 2000.
42. Steven Lee Meyers, "Making Sure War Crimes Aren't Forgotten," New York Times, September 22, 1997. In fact, one U.S. official acknowledged in late July 1995 that "satellites have produced nothing." Paul Quinn-Judge, "Reports of Atrocities Unconfirmed So Far: U.S. Aerial Surveillance Reveals Little," Boston Globe, July 27, 1995.
43. The web site of the International Commission on Missing Persons in the Former Yugoslavia acknowledges that the bodies "have been exhumed from various gravesites in northeast HiH," not just in the Srebrenica region; quoted in a 2003 Statement by ICMP Chief of Staff Concerning Persons Reported Missing from Srebrenica in July 1995, Gordon Bacon.
44. Politics of War Crimes, Rooper, chap. 4, "The Numbers Game."
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.; also, Politics of War Crimes, Szamuely, chap. 5, "Witness Evidence."
47. Szamuely, "Witness Evidence."
48. Tim Butcher, "Serb Atrocities in Srebrenica are Unproven," The Daily Telegraph, July 24, 1995.
49. Politics of War Crimes, Rooper, chap. 4, "The Numbers Game."
50. This claim appears in the November 1995 indictments of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic; it was recounted by the French policeman, Jean-Rene Ruez, and first surfaced at the ICTY in early July, 1996, during a seven-day publicity-stunt-type hearing into the charges against Karadzic and Mladic. As Associated Press reported Ruez's liver-eating testimony at the time (Jennifer Chao, July 3, 1996):
"Amid the feverish mass murder was throat-gagging sadism. Ruez cited an incident where a soldier forced a man to cut open his grandson's stomach and eat part of his liver. "He took the old man and put a knife in his hand ... and cut open the stomach of the little boy and then with the tip of his knife took out an organ from the inside of the child's stomach and he forced the man to eat that part,' Ruez told the court."
51. Politics of War Crimes, Mandel, chap. 6, "The ICTY Calls It 'Genocide'."
52. Ibid.
53. Chris Hedges, "Bosnian Troops Cite Gassing At Zepa," New York Times, July 27, 1995.
54. Jovic testified in the Milosevic trial on November 18, 2003-www.slobodan-milosevic.org- November 18, 2003.
55. Politics of War Crimes, Mandel, chap. 6; also, Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder (Pluto: 2004), pp. 157-8.
56. Carlos Martins Branco, a former UN military observer in Bosnia, contended that it was in Krajina rather than Srebrenica that one can identify a pre-meditated genocidal process "when the Croatian army implemented the mass murder of all Serbians found there. In this instance, the media maintained an absolute silence, despite the fact that this genocide occurred over a three month period. The objective of Srebrenica was ethnic cleansing and not genocide, unlike what happened in Krajina, in which, although there was not military action, the Croatian army decimated villages." "Was Srebrenica A Hoax? Eye-Witness Account of a Former UN Military Observer in Bosnia," http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BRA403A.html
57. Madeleine Albright, again before the Security Council (The Situation in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (S/PV.3564), UN Security Council, August 10, 1995, 5.30 p.m., pp. 6-7):
58. Richard Holbrooke, on The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, Transcript #5300, August 24, 1995.
59. "U.N. Report: Bosnian Serbs Massacred Srebrenica Muslims," Washington Post, Aug. 12, 1995; John Pomfret, "Investigators Begin Exhuming Group of Mass Graves in Bosnia," Washington Post, July 8, 1996. Biggest "upheaval" is in "Softening Up The Enemy," Newsweek, Aug. 21, 1995.
60. See the evidence drawn from the Norwegian study of Bosnia casualties in: http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2004/12/death-tolls-part-3.html.
61. Slavisa Sabijic, "The Trade in Bodies in Bosnia-Herzegovina": http://www.serbianna.com/press/010.html; Joan Phillips, "Victims and Villains in Bosnia's War," Southern Slav Journal, Spring-Summer 1992.
62. "Yugoslav Forensic Expert Says No Proof About Srebrenica Mass Grave," BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, July 15, 1996.
63. Kosta Christitch, "Les veritable raisons d'une faillite," B.I., March 2005. As Diana Johnstone has said, "by endorsing every accusation against Serbs, and ignoring crimes against Serbs, the United States and its NATO allies have given carte blanche to violence against them. Ethnic Albanian children are growing up in the belief that nobody really blames them for hunting down elderly 'Skrinje' (the ethnic slur for Serbs) and beating them to death." "The OSCE Report: Things Told and Things Seen," ZNet Commentary, Dec. 26, 1999.
64. There have been a modest number of exceptions, mainly Muslim and Croat small fry, usually indicted at a time when the imbalance appeared exceptionally gross and some PR offset was needed. None of the leaders of Croatia or Bosnia were indicted, although it was alleged that indictments were near soon after Tudjman's and Izetbegovic's deaths, although the long delays were never explained. No leader or anybody else in NATO was ever indicted. For a good discussion of the deep bias, Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, Part II.
65. In his 1970 Islamic Declaration, never repudiated by him, Izetbegovic said: "There is neither peace nor coexistence between the 'Islamic religion' and non-Islamic social and political institutions…Having the right to govern its own world, Islam clearly excludes the right and possibility of putting a foreign ideology into practice on its territory." Quoted in Johnstone, Fools' Crusade, p. 58.
66. The 9/11 Commission Report, Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Official Government Edition, pp. 58, 146-147, 155, 238-239.
67. Documentation Centre of Republic of Srpska, Report About Case Srebrenica (The First Part), (Banja Luka, Sept. 2002).
68. Gregory Copley, "US Official Implicated With Bosnian High Representative Ashdown in Attempting to Force Fabricated Report on Srebrenica," Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, September 8, 2003: http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/ssi09082003.htm; Nebojsa Malic, "Srebrenica Revisited: Reports, Confessions and the Elusive Truth," Antiwar.com, June 24, 2004: http://antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=2865
69. On the fallacies of the claims regarding Racak, Rambouillet and the Serb drive for a Greater Serbia as a reality and causal force, see Johnstone, Fools' Crusade, and Mandel, How America Gets Away with Murder.
70. Only one body found around Srebrenica in the graves explored through 1999 was identified as female.
71. See note 7 above. Tim Ripley says that "Thousands of people, those too old or infirm to flee,…remained behind. UN patrols soon found hundreds had been murdered by Croat soldiers and civilians. Almost every home had been looted." (p. 192).
72. Serb refugees in Srebrenica in 1997 are explained as "coming from neighborhoods elsewhere that Croat and Muslim armies emptied in retaliation for the Srebrenica atrocities and other such killings." Dana Priest, "U.S. Troops Extend a Hand To Refugees Tainted by War," Washington Post, Feb. 18, 1997.
73. Sray, "Selling the Bosnian Myth."
74. For an account and critique of these humanitarian interventionists, see Edward Herman and David Peterson, "Morality's Avenging Angels: The New Humanitarian Crusaders," in David Chandler, ed., Rethinking Human Rights (Palgrave: 2002). For a more extensive dismantling of their arguments, see Johnstone's Fools' Crusade and Mandel's How America Gets Away With Murder.
75. On the meaning and application of "cruise missile left" (my phrase), see my "The Cruise Missile Left: Aligning with Power," Z Magazine, November, 2002; and "The Cruise Missile Left (part 5): Samantha Power And The Genocide Gambit," ZNet Commentaries, May 17, 2004.
76. Cedric Thornberry, "Saving the War Crimes Tribunal; Bosnia Herzegovina," Foreign Policy, September 1996.
.
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