kosovo

not engaged in genocide

antarchi's picture

Personally I did not share some of the emphases of the press conferences. The use of the word "genocide", which came up very often, I thought was quite misplaced because I do not think Mr Milosevic, whatever else he was doing, was engaged in genocide, he was just trying to kick people out. He used very unpleasant methods to do it but he was not actually trying to exterminate them all. That was unfortunate.

, Minister of State in the MoD from 1997-1999 (Evidence to the Select Committee on Defence, June 2000)

Minister of State in the MoD from 1997-1999 (Evidence to the Select Committee on Defence, June 2000)

provoking a fight

antarchi's picture

I think certain people were spoiling for a fight in NATO at that time, ***. If you ask my personal view, I think the terms put to Milosevic at Rambouillet were absolutely intolerable; how could he possibly accept them; it was quite deliberate. That does not excuse an awful lot of other things, but we were at a point when some people felt that something had to be done, so you just provoked a fight."

, Minister of State in the MoD from 1997-1999 (Evidence to the Select Committee on Defence, June 2000)

Minister of State in the MoD from 1997-1999 (Evidence to the Select Committee on Defence, June 2000)

not designed to block ethnic cleansing

antarchi's picture

A month after the bombing [of Kosovo] began, General [Wesley] Clark reported that ... the NATO operation planned by the political leadership 'was not designed as a means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing. It was not designed as a means of waging war against the Serb and MUP forces in Kosovo. Not in any way. There was never any intent to do that. That was not the idea.'

an entirely predictable reaction

antarchi's picture

On March 27, US-NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark announced that it was 'entirely predictable' that Serb terror and violence would intensify after the NATO bombing. Shortly after, Clark reported again that he was not surprised by the sharp escalation of Serb terror after the bombing: 'the military authorities fully anticipated the vicious approach that Milosevic would adopt, as well as the terrible efficiency with which he would carry it out'.

genocide inflation: kosovo

antarchi's picture

[Genocide inflation] occurred before and during NATO’s 78-day bombing war on Yugoslavia and takeover of Kosovo. The pre-bombing propaganda barrage claiming Serb misbehavior was massive, and then during the war itself there was a stream of hysterical claims of indiscriminate killing, official U.S. claims of Bosnian Muslim deaths reaching 500,000, with a very profuse use of the word “genocide.” After the war, the claimed deaths quickly fell to 11,000, and one of the greatest forensic body searches in history produced only 4,000 bodies (with some 2,000 still reportedly missing).

DEPLETED URANIUM

antarchi's picture
If you have the stomach, and can bear to see the effects of the WMD we have taken into Iraq and other countries, look at some of the pictures on this page.

In fact - everyone should look, even if it makes you retch and cry. The world must sit up to this horror. The biggest armies of the world are shooting nuclear poisons at the poorest countries of the world, and their people breathe in radiation day by day.

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