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Edited on Thu Jun-24-04 03:34 PM by Tinoire
for years. If you comb throught the DU archives BEFORE Clark entered the race and BEFORE people decided that it was treasonous to step out of the DLC's corporate-supportine line, this war was denounced at DU. To people who followed it from the start, it was clear that the war against Yugoslavia was based on flimsy lies from a PR firm that had been hired to raise outrage in the states. The media, unsurpisingly, cooperated with the corporate agenda and spun so many lies that to this day, most Americans have no idea what the hell happened over there. And just like this time, the New York Times, the New Republic and the Washington Post led the charge. Most of us were so asleep back then because it was OUR guys in charge that we didn't pay any attention and of course, the freeper populace could have cared less. That's no effing excuse. It's time to wake up. ================================== <snip> The reporting of rumours and exorbitant figures that are impossible to check by certain western political and military officials, and their use of aggressive vocabulary, have strengthened doubts about their goodwill. "Nato should drop this information strategy", Pascal Boniface, director of the Paris-based Institute of International and Strategic Relations, said on 29 March. Other observers have been even more critical, putting the blame squarely on both sides. "What the Serbs and their television are currently doing is absolutely repulsive", said an analyst with the Mass Media Research Centre at the University of Leicester, England, "but the propaganda put out by Nato is scarcely better."
Many journalists who have attended the Nato press conferences in Brussels are also very sceptical about the truth and accuracy of the informations supplied by officials of the organisation. "What London and Brussels offer to journalists as facts are usually only rumours", Kevin McEderry of the French news agency AFP wrote on 22 April. On the same day the French daily Libération summed up the situation as follows: "Since the start of the air strikes, at press conference after press conference, Nato officials have put out false reports and rumours."
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http://www.softmakers.com/fry/docs/reporters.htm
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But launching a NATO air war against Milosevic was the triumph of threat over thought. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had blustered so much about bombing that when Milosevic refused to budge, she and the United States and NATO were left with the option of losing face or carrying out the threat-even though the consequences of carrying out that threat had not yet been calculated.
That was just one in a series of blunders and blusters that led to this fiasco. First, at the Dayton Accords in 1995, the United States kept Kosovo off the table and whisked the problem under the rug. But the problem did not go away.
After the settlement, NATO troops should have arrested the butchers of Bosnia, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, and tried them for crimes against humanity. They've been under indictment by the world court at the Hague, but for years have been living in Bosnia, which is under the protection of NATO troops. What signal did this send to Milosevic or other thugs under his command?
For almost ten years, Kosovo had one of the most active nonviolent resistance movements since Gandhi's time. But the United States and NATO did not do enough to support this effort. Only when some Kosovars took up arms did Washington pay serious attention. Albright could barely exert influence over the Kosovo Liberation Army, and she used every bit of leverage to get the KLA to sign the agreement at Rambouillet. She did so not to assure a peace agreement (Milosevic was already on record rejecting Rambouillet), but to justify war. She needed the KLA's signature as the start-your-engines sign for NATO bombers. Within days, NATO ordered its unarmed observers to leave Kosovo. And as soon as they left, the Serbs marched in.
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But instead of trying a myriad of peaceful options, Clinton, Albright, and NATO reached for the old, unreliable one: Send in the bombers. They didn't bother themselves with international law. They flouted it. International law clearly states that one country can attack another one only when it is itself under attack, about to be attacked, or when the U.N. Security Council grants permission. Belgrade was not attacking the United States or any of the NATO countries involved in the bombings. And the United States intentionally avoided the Security Council because Russia and China were likely to veto any military action.
Nor, for that matter, was the bombing in accordance with U.S. Iaw: Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the sole power to declare war, and there was no formal declaration of war in this case. Congress shirked its responsibilities by approving a measure that fell short of a war declaration but supported the President's decision to send in the bombers.
And liberals vanished. Only four Democrats in all of Congress bothered to protest. In the House, there was only one, Barbara Lee of California. In the Senate, just three: Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico.
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http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Yugoslavia/BillClintonsWar_Yugo.html
This war was widely protested in Europe where, unlike our corporate media, their media exposed the lies that had been used to spin it, because it stunk as badly as Bush's war in Iraq and it's time people screaming about the war in Iraq became effing consistent. We can NOT just sweep it under the rug and pretend our shit smells like roses because we are more concerned with being partisan than we are about standing up for truth and justice. To do so is to give Republicans EVERY justification to call us hypocrites. Sorry but I call us hypocrites & blind partisans for this.
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