Are you really suggesting that the tens even hundreds of thousands of people massacred in Kosovo was just lies and propaganda by the west? I was there before, during and after and NATO went in and I can tell you it was very, very real - There were a number of times where we were forced to evacuate certain areas because of government troops moving in on us.
Why do you think there were so many succesful war crime prosecutions against the army and government?
You are also very wrong to think it all started with just a few issolated shootings by "terrorist" organisations. The history of this conflict goes back hundreds even thousands of years. There was only peace in the region because the Russians flooded the area with troops and kept the sides apart. When the USSR fell the troops withdrew and everything basically carried on where it left off pre-Russian days.
BTW Those lightly armed soldiers that NATO were bombing were in the process of ethnic cleansing. I have been to sites where they rounded the men up from towns and shot them for no reason. I have been to the scene where they rounded a village in to a basketball court, kept them there for 3 days with no food and water before they decided to throw grenades in. I have been to villages where all the women were raped by the army. Does that sound like an army that needed protecting from the heavy weapons of NATO? They were told by the international community to stop but they carried on.
While we are on it, how was it a mission to destroy Yugoslavia? Yugoslavia was already destroying its self. Why put NATO troops in to do that when it was already doing that to its self anyway?
As for a legitimate government, how is it legitimate if it is not one its people wants and that has been imposed on them with the violence? It maybe the legally installed government but as one that is not wanted by its people and is incrasingly alienated from the rest of the world, is it still safe to class it as a legitimate?
Everybody's personal war is the only one they see; it's almost impossible to be objective. You visited sites after incidents were supposed to have happened; but you didn't witness them personally. You had to evacuate because government troops were closing in; please relate to us a single incident in Kosovo where aid workers were attacked or killed in Kosovo?
You have been to villages where all the women claim to have been raped yet various commissions have failed to find any proof that any such incidents but here are a few to be going on with courtesy of Wickipedia.
Incomplete list of massacres:
Lake Radonjić massacre - 34 Serbs and a few Albanian moderates were murdered by Albanian militants (UÇK).
Gnjilane massacre The remains of 80 Serbs were discovered in mass graves after they were killed by Albanian militants.[13]
Orahovac Massacre - More than 100 Serbian and Roma civilians were kidnapped and placed in concentration camps, 47 were killed.[14]
Staro Gračko massacre 14 Serbian farmers were murdered by Albanian militants.[15]
Glodjane massacre 37 Serbs were found in mass graves having been massacred by the UÇK.[16]
Klečka massacre 22 Serb women were raped, murdered and mutilated by the Albanians.[15][17]
Panda Bar Massacre in 1998 6 Kosovo Serb teenagers were killed in a café in the town of Peć.[18]
Ugljare massacre 15 Serbs were murdered by Albanian separatists.[15]
Peć massacre 20 Serbs were murdered and their corpses were thrown down wells. Ramush Hardinaj is currently on trial for this, amongst other crimes.
[edit]Destruction of settlements, churches and cemeteries
In the days after Yugoslav forces withdrew from Kosovo, over 200,000 homes that belonged to Serbs were demolished[19] by ethnic Albanians with the help of the UÇK. Since the war ended, many graves containing the bodies of Serbs have been desecrated by ethnic Albanians. No one has ever been brought to justice for these crimes.[20][21]
Trials for war crimes are held by the victors; if Yugoslavia had come out on top there's every possibility that there would be warrants out for the arrest of Blair and Bush to be tried as war criminals should the Yugoslavs ever managed to get their hands on them.
Yugoslavia was not destroying itself it was multi-ethnic and socialist, it had a a growing economy coupled with a decent standard of living. It also had free medical care and education. The government guaranteed everyone a job, literacy levels were over 90%, life expectancy over 72 years and it boasted affordable transportation, housing and utilities.
The Bush administration changed all that when it passed the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Law. It cut off all funding including that of the IMF and World bank for any part of Yugoslavia that didnt declare independence within six months.
The Americans and the British backed a terrorist group called the KLA which was outlawed by the UN and sent recruits to be trained by Bin Laden while helping them to kill rivals who opposed any separatist movement in Kosovo.
By 1997 the KLA led by the USA and Britain was recruiting mercenaries from all over the world and providing them with lots of money and weapons. This is when the KLA started serious military operations, attacking government buildings and police stations.
There are two things that stand out, one was a German fact finding mission for the UN that reported security forces in Kosovo were not acting against Albanians as an ethnic group, but only against the KLA.
The second is the report of the so called "Racak Massacre" by the Kosovo Verification Mission. How many people know that the KVM was led by William Walker? That's right the same William Walker who run the Contra war against Nicaragua for Oliver North; the same man who was ambassador to San Salvador and head of the CIA there during the infamous death squads. It's now accepted that the massacre never happened and that it was staged.
In 1999 during the
"Rambouillet Negotiations" Milosevic accepted all of the Rambouillet demands except for NATO occupation of Yugoslavia itself. He wanted the troops to be under UN command. This was rejected by the Americans and the British and they bombed Yugoslavia to smithereens.
Milosevic was elected by a majority of Serbians in fair and free elections scrutinised by the international community; Kosovo was and still is part of Serbia technically because it is still not recognised as anything else by countries who are not prepared to break international law.
The recognition by NATO countries of Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia, and the attempted secession of Kosovo are against the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which guarantee territorial frontiers of states in Europe.
Why did they do it?
To destroy the largest remaining socialist nation refusing to cooperate with the ultinational Corporations who rule the New World Order.
To get access to Kosovos rich natural resources and more importantly to gain control of the oil and gas pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan.
It was a war that was entirely avoidable and we are going there again because we are led by political midgets and megalomaniacs.
