Greece faces shame of role in Serb massacre

[Bereta_Eder]

oh yes the poor little idiot americans.
all good intentions, bad implimentation

youre not fooling anybody buster!

the US/UK had been lobbying long and hard for the bombings to take place

it was copuntries like france russia and greece (as best as it could, we are a small country) that tried to keep your bombs back enough to reach a political decision

which WAS REACHED!

in Athens when for the 1st time ALL parties (alb, croat. serb) sat on the same table and discussed
but you dont know anything about that do you?
CNN didnt talk about that huh?


so what happened?

basically a double boycott attempt

US/UK pushinh slobo (who is not apolite person) so far he would crack and OTOH bosnian serbs not trusting that alb terrorists could be quited down.


again if there was a will by all for a political solution it would have been found.


youre not idiots, youre murderers.


simple as that.

unfotunately youre not the only ones. just themost poewrful

[Bereta_Eder]

you disgust me!
and the killings you have done.
and thats not "views"
thats blood.

[Bereta_Eder]

but as i said.
bye

[Arrian]

I searched the Washington Post archives for the 4/28/99 story cited, but unfortunately, in order to read more than the lead-in, you have to pay. I'll try one of the other citations.

-Arrian

[VetLegion]

I'm starting to think that this Paiktis is Serbian or Croatian or Muslim and not Greek. Actually he HAS to be, since those are the only people in the world I know of that hate so blindly and completely.

Being a Croat, I find this comment offensive.

[Bereta_Eder]

and i dont hate. (honestly i dont)

i PRESS the points

[Bereta_Eder]

if you want hate go to croatia or bosnia
serbia is justified to hate

[Flatlander Fox]

[SIZE=1] Originally posted by VetLegion

Being a Croat, I find this comment offensive.

I apologize. That WAS out of line. Just as a comment about ethnically cleansing all Croats was out of line IMO.

I only hope that this poor ignorant is just posting this stuff for the shock value of it all.

[Flatlander Fox]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/balkans/overview/kosovo.htm

Of course this is a "Great Satan" newspaper, but it provides a decent overview.

[VetLegion]

By the way, all this talk about Kosovo, UK/US, Croatia and saving the arctic wildlife is completely missing the point of the thread.

Paiktis, your bewildered attempts to threadjack in any and all directions possible seem to have met some sucess.

[Bereta_Eder]

an american soldier is calling me an ingorant?



thats so rich, im gonna make a plate out of it.

and what about all the comments written here about greeks.

do u think I dont find them offensive?

youre all (those how made it) the lowelest of the low

and the croat is offended by one simple comment

and the yankee is apologizing

oh dobery di do


bye

[Arrian]

Ok, I found a March 11, 2001 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as cited.

Here is the full text:

Seven people were killed and 43 injured Feb. 15 when terrorists blew up a bus carrying families making a pilgrimage to visit the graves of their ancestors. It was the worst violence in Kosovo in more than a year.



Jack Kelly is national affairs writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com).



The massacre at Podujevo illustrates the morass into which President Clinton plunged the United States by making war on Serbia over Kosovo.

The victims were the purported bad guys, the Serbs.

NATO, at the instigation of Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, bombed Serbia in 1999, allegedly to prevent a "humanitarian catastrophe" being imposed by the minions of Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic upon Kosovar Albanians. But from the moment they set foot in Kosovo, peacekeepers have spent more effort protecting Serbs from Albanians.

The picture got muddier last October, when Milosevic was overthrown in a bloodless coup. Serbia's new president, Vojislav Kostunica, is as close to a democrat as the Balkans are likely to produce, so the Serbs aren't bad guys anymore.

Clinton and Blair say the Kosovo war hastened Milosevic's departure. But Kostunica says the bombing prolonged Milosevic's stay.

The terrorists are ethnic Albanians associated with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Clinton and Blair said the KLA were the good guys, but they've turned out not to be so swell. More a crime family than a political organization, the KLA has become the leading supplier of illegal narcotics in Europe, and is muscling into other rackets.

To the extent the KLA has politics, they are Islamic fundamentalist. The goal of the KLA and of more moderate Albanians is an independent Kosovo. But that is not an ambition NATO is willing to recognize, for fear it would be the first step in an attempt to create a "Greater Albania," which would include big chunks of the neighboring nations of Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia . . . and another slice of Serbia. U.S. troops were rushed to the Macedonian border earlier this week in an effort to keep an ethnic Albanian insurgency from spreading.

"Propelled by a confused mixture of good intention and a frantic desire to adapt itself to a post-Cold War world, [NATO] has made itself the errand boy of ethnic secessionism in the Balkans," wrote Carl Hodge, a Canadian professor who concentrates on European security and military affairs.

By intervening in a civil war, NATO violated the United Nations charter, and its own. It's clear now the "humanitarian catastrophe" the bombing was supposed to prevent was grossly exaggerated, and that such suffering as the Kosovar Albanians did endure increased by orders of magnitude after the bombs began to fall.

The bombing of Serbia over Kosovo angered and frightened the Russians, and our relations with the Chinese were not improved when we blew up their embassy in Belgrade.

An adviser to China's foreign ministry quoted by William Ratliff in an article in the Harvard International Review said the Kosovo war "sets a dangerous precedent by violating national sovereignty on the pretext of humanitarian intervention."

NATO declared victory because Serbia capitulated, and no NATO pilots were lost. But Brig. Gen. Ronald Mangum, writing in the journal of the Army War College, thinks the victory was pyrrhic. He noted the high- altitude bombing did very little damage to the Serb military. It was only after NATO began deliberately attacking civilian targets that the Serbs sued for peace. In order to prevent a mostly mythical humanitarian disaster in Kosovo, we created a real one in Serbia . . . and stuck our feet firmly in the tar pit.

No end is in sight to peacekeeping missions in either Bosnia or Kosovo, on which the United States will spend at least $3.1 billion this year. Substantial numbers of Army reservists are being used in both countries, because there aren't enough active-duty troops to perform the peacekeeping missions and maintain our other commitments worldwide.

In 1995, just after President Clinton had promised U.S. troops would be home by Christmas, the general who commanded U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia at the height of the fighting there was asked by a congressional committee how long he thought American troops would be in Bosnia. "If I were you, I'd start training your grandchildren as Bosnia peacekeepers," replied Canadian Maj. Gen. Lewis MacKenzie.

The Bush administration should ease America out of the "muddled" peacekeeping missions in which the Clinton administration has involved the military, he thinks.

"The United States should not risk further erosion of its warfighting capabilities," Mackenzie said. "It should not allow its military forces to be drawn into small wars and peacekeeping missions that . . . can last for years or even decades."

A couple of things to note:

1) I'm reasonably certain (but not sure) that this was an editorial.

2) It supports Paiktis' claims re: bombing did more damage than the ethnic cleansing.

3) However, Paiktis may do well to note that it specifically mentions US troops being rushed to the FYROM border to try and contain the KLA.

4) I want to do some more searching. The article did not cite any primary source material. I expected to find something that included references. This article makes many of the claims Paiktis makes, but there is no backup documentation cited.

-Arrian

[Flatlander Fox]

Well, the point of the thread has sort of been reached.

And we have determined:

A few Greeks helped ethnically cleanse people in Serbia.

Most of us agree that this is the work of crackpots, and doesn't really reflect upon Greece itself. But most of us wonder why Greece doesn't distance itself from this action.

THEN:

YOu have a few folks who think that ethnic cleansing is A-O.K., and talk of it in glowing terms.

Now that I personally have seen these folks in action, most of what they say can be discounted as youthful "LOOK AT ME, I'M DIFFERENT AND COOL syndrome".

Yes, we responded to a thread jack, but it's still an interesting thread jack. (As long as some people are ignored that is! )

[Jack the Bodiless]

From this article:

This week, Serbian special police forces and the Yugoslav Army launched their largest offensives to date against the ethnic Albanian insurgency known as the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA). Details remain sketchy, since the police have restricted access for diplomatic observers, journalists, and humanitarian aid workers, but initial reports suggest that Serbian forces used disproportionate force, attacked civilians, and systematically destroyed villages. At least 100,000 people are internally displaced, many hiding in canyons and forests, and 20,000 have fled the region altogether.

Despite this, NATO is now farther from taking action than it was a few months ago when the fighting was less intense. The U.S. government has expressed only mild criticism, mostly because the KLA had become an annoying threat that it could not control. Some diplomats in Kosovo are telling journalists that the West has turned a blind eye to the abuses in order to force the KLA to the negotiating table.

Article written: August 5th 1998.
NATO bombing campaign: March 24th 1999.

From this article:

(New York, September 16, 1998) — Human Rights Watch today criticized the decision of the Montenegrin government to deny those fleeing the fighting in Kosovo entry into Montenegro. The organization called upon the government of Montenegro to provide refuge to persons displaced by the Kosovo conflict and urged the international community to increase and expedite the delivery of humanitarian aid to the region.

"While we acknowledge the burdens faced by the Montenegrin government in responding to this crisis, closing the border effectively traps people who are fleeing continued fighting and wide spread atrocities by Yugoslav government forces," said Holly Cartner, Executive Director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch.

On September 11, 1998, in a late evening session the Montenegrin government decided to close the internal boundary between Montenegro and Kosovo to all persons seeking refuge from the armed conflict. The government justified its decision based on the economic strain posed by the incoming displaced persons and its fear that new arrivals would increase ethnic tensions and possibly destabilize the country.

At the time of the decision, approximately 40,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo had taken refuge in Montenegro. Combined with an additional 30,000 refugees who had fled the war in Bosnia and Croatia, refugees and displaced persons in Montenegro comprise 11.6 percent of the total Montenegrin population, according to the government. As a result of the swelling refugee population in Montenegro, xenophobia and ethnic tension are on the rise.

Article written: September 16th 1998.
NATO bombing campaign: March 24th 1999.

...Maybe you slept for a year, Patikis?

Sure, the Serbs intensified their ethnic cleansing activities after the bombing campaign began. But the Kosovars were fleeing Serbian ethnic cleansing, not NATO bombs.

Kosovars massacred by Serbs: in excess of 10,000.

Civilian casualties of NATO bombing: 500 (source: Human Rights Watch).

From this article:

The confirmed number of deaths is considerably smaller than Yugoslav public estimates. The post-conflict casualty reports of the Yugoslav government vary but coincide in estimating a death toll of at least some 1,200 and as many as 5,000 civilians. At the lower end, this is more than twice the civilian death toll of around 500 that Human Rights Watch has been able to verify. In one major incident-Dubrava prison in Kosovo-the Yugoslav government attributed ninety-five civilian deaths to NATO bombing. Human Rights Watch research in Kosovo determined that an estimated nineteen prisoners were killed by NATO bombs on May 21 (three prisoners and a guard were killed in an earlier attack on May 19), but at least seventy-six prisoners were summarily executed by prison guards and security forces subsequent to the NATO attack. The countervailing claims about the civilian death toll underscore the need for full accountability by NATO for its military operations.

[Bereta_Eder]

Official Greece has nothing to do with privates who, in their own free will, went to fight (thats how they saw it) on the side of serbia who was fighting against 3 and 4 and 6 all mighty countries all alone.

Noone glorified ethnic cleaning, not me, apart to give the finger to trolls that accused me of just to do that.


croatians OTOH did ethnic cleaning and i find it highly offensivce that a croatian would post such a thread without firstly admiting it.


also i will not take accusations from americans or brits who have trained albanian terrorists and now just declare that they were "idiots".


and I will not talk about any wrongdoings of greece (like leaking NATO info) for which they is NO proof) untill there is justice that is universal and uniform for all, US, UK included.


thats that.