Since the trial started in February 2002, the prosecution has wheeled out more than 100 witnesses, and it has produced 600,000 pages of evidence. Not a single person has testified that Milosevic ordered war crimes. Whole swaths of the indictment on Kosovo have been left unsubstantiated, even though Milosevic's command responsibility here is clearest. And when the prosecution did try to substantiate its charges, the result was often farce. Highlights include the Serbian "insider" who claimed to have worked in the presidential administration but who did not know what floor Milosevic's office was on; "Arkan's secretary", who turned out to have worked only as a temp for a few months in the same building as the notorious paramilitary; the testimony of the former federal prime minister, Ante Markovic, dramatically rumbled by Milosevic, who produced Markovic's own diary for the days when he claimed to have had meetings with him; the Kosovo Albanian peasant who said he had never heard of the KLA even though there is a monument to that terrorist organisation in his own village; and the former head of the Yugoslav secret services, Radomir Markovic, who not only claimed that he had been tortured by the new democratic government in Belgrade to testify against his former boss, but who also agreed, under cross-examination by Milosevic, that no orders had been given to expel the Kosovo Albanians and that, on the contrary, Milosevic had instructed the police and army to protect civilians. And these, note, were the prosecution witnesses.
Is a inappropriate?
Serious doubt has also been cast on some of the most famous atrocity stories. Remember the refrigerator truck whose discovery in the Danube in 1999, full of bodies, was gleefully reported as Milosevic was transferred to The Hague in June 2001? The truck had allegedly been retrieved from the river and then driven to the outskirts of Belgrade, where its contents were interred in a mass grave. But cross-examination showed that there is no proof that the bodies exhumed were the ones in the truck, nor that any of them came from Kosovo. Instead, it is quite possible that the Batajnica mass grave dated from the second world war, while the refrigerator truck may have contained Kurds being smuggled to Western Europe, the victims of a grisly traffic accident. The realisation is now dawning that lies were peddled to justify the Kosovo war just as earnestly as they were to justify the attack on Iraq.
What, a false war lead by the leader of the Free World and Everything That is Good? IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Another example of the United States going to war on the back of what was at best rubbish intel, but what were probably lies and mammoth assumptions. War should be the FINAL solution to a problem, and only if everyone is 100% certain that something is happening; eg FIND OUT BEYOND ANY DOUBT THAT THE SERBS WERE ETHNICALLY CLEANSING KOSOVO BEFORE BOMBING THE COUNTRY!
But it isn't that simple, is it? Governments which really do allow ethnic cleansing don't get bombed....so why Serbia? Hmmm...NATO expansion, maybe? Kill Tito's communist legacy? Who really fucking knows!
Reading it again, yeah i think the whole thing was bullshit. This is actually quite pitiful. If you're going to try and frame and railroad someone, make sure you get you lies straight, mmkay?
No. I love seeing one of the Clinton 'legacies' implode like a rotten
tomato being run over by a 12-wheeler
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
BoredShirtless wrote:What, a false war lead by the leader of the Free World and Everything That is Good? IMPOSSIBLE!!!
[Durandal] I've had it! Stop impugning the good name of Bill Clinton for no damn reason at all![/Durandal]
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
Wag the Dog becomes more prophetic with every passing day.
Devolution is quite as natural as evolution, and may be just as pleasing, or even a good deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
President Sharky wrote:Heh. This probably means that Milosevic will be found not guilty of war crimes.
It would be hilarious if he was found not guilty- and then went on to become Saddam's lawyer.
Devolution is quite as natural as evolution, and may be just as pleasing, or even a good deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
Anyone want to clue me on how this is more then merely an incompetent prosecution? Milosevic might skirt by, but I didn't find anything in the article that concluded the humanitarian justifications given for the Kosovo bombings were totally baseless.
Another example of the United States going to war on the back of what was at best rubbish intel, but what were probably lies and mammoth assumptions.
Oh, please: It was the Europeans that pressured the US to fulfill their NATO treaty obligations and get involved there in the first place. Also, the European countries that joined that war under the NATO banner did so without any hesitation.
The M2HB: The Greatest Machinegun Ever Made.
HAB: Crew-Served Weapons Specialist
"Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope." --P.J. O'Rourke
"A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." --J.S. Mill
BlkbrryTheGreat wrote:Wag the Dog becomes more prophetic with every passing day.
That movie was fucking stupid, there's no way the US government could pull off a fraud of that magnitude. Apparently the screenwriter had never heard of anything called "the international news media" in his life.
BoTM / JL / MM / HAB / VRWC / Horseman
I'm studying for the CPA exam. Have a nice summer, and if you're down just sit back and realize that Joe is off somewhere, doing much worse than you are.
fgalkin wrote:I knew there was a reason I was opposed to the Kosovo campaign from the beginning (other than that it were fellow Slavs that were being bombed).
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
Those same people have told me that they were cheering when they saw the bombs dropping. They were happy to take their chances with the bombs after they saw their neighbors butchered by soldiers. Denying that anything less than genocide happened in Kosovo is like denying that the Holocuast ever happened.
Son of the Suns wrote:Denying that anything less than genocide happened in Kosovo is like denying that the Holocuast ever happened.
Then where the fuck are the mass graves? Oh that's right, the only
mass graves we can find are ones neatly marked with crosses
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
Son of the Suns wrote:
Those same people have told me that they were cheering when they saw the bombs dropping. They were happy to take their chances with the bombs after they saw their neighbors butchered by soldiers. Denying that anything less than genocide happened in Kosovo is like denying that the Holocuast ever happened.
That's quite frankly bull. There's no evidence of any genocide in Kosovo, period. Unlike the Holocaust. They've found at best several thousand bodies in the entire province, with no information on the age, sex and affiliation of them, and their definitions of mass graves have been curious, at best (hint: individually marked graves don't qualify- CNN didn't seem to comprehend this during their coverage).
BlkbrryTheGreat wrote:Wag the Dog becomes more prophetic with every passing day.
That movie was fucking stupid, there's no way the US government could pull off a fraud of that magnitude. Apparently the screenwriter had never heard of anything called "the international news media" in his life.
I'm not defending EVERY aspect of the film. I'm just saying that their are certainly very accurate parallels that can be drawn.
Devolution is quite as natural as evolution, and may be just as pleasing, or even a good deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
fgalkin wrote:I knew there was a reason I was opposed to the Kosovo campaign from the beginning (other than that it were fellow Slavs that were being bombed).
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
Those same people have told me that they were cheering when they saw the bombs dropping. They were happy to take their chances with the bombs after they saw their neighbors butchered by soldiers. Denying that anything less than genocide happened in Kosovo is like denying that the Holocuast ever happened.
Like others said, where are the mass graves? Where is the evidence? Yes, I'll admit Molosevic had no big love for the Albanians, but look what's happening in the region right now. The exact same thing except its the Albananians doing it to the Serbs. Here's a hint for the US: they've been at each other's throats for centuries. You don't just barge im, bomb one side into oblivion and expect everyone to live happily ever after.
inappropriate?
