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“I don’t see any difference in the behavior of NATO and of Hitler. NATO wants to erect its own order in the world, and it needs Yugoslavia simply as an example: ‘We’ll punish Yugoslavia, and the whole rest of the planet will tremble...’”

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn
world-renowned Russian author

The 1999 U.S./NATO
Terror Campaign:
Nine Myths and Realities

Adapted from the 1999 fact sheet of the International Action Center
“NATO War Primer: Nine Myths and Realities”:

Myth #1: U.S./NATO had to attack “the Serbs” because the Yugoslav government and President Slobodan Milosevic refused to negotiate on Kosovo, a region of Yugoslavia where ethnic Albanians are the majority.

REALITY: There were absolutely NO “negotiations”. And U.S./NATO bombs were dropped on ALL Yugoslavs: Albanians, Serbians, Montenegrins, Hungarians, Romanis, Jews and all other peoples who make up the multi-ethnic Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The Yugoslavians were essentially told by the U.S.: “Submit unconditionally to the U.S. now, or we will bomb you into submission.”

U.S. officials, like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, went out of their way to make this point when the fraudulent “peace talks” were held in Rambouillet, France in February 1999. Instead of “negotiations,” the U.S. government presented an ULTIMATUM to the Yugoslav government that had three basic points:

1. Kosovo must be granted autonomy.

2. NATO must be allowed to occupy all of Yugoslavia with 30,000 foreign ground troops to ensure this “autonomy.”

3. A NATO-conducted referendum for Kosovo’s independence from Yugoslavia would take place within three years.

The Yugoslav government agreed to the first condition, and rejected the second and third, pointing out quite rightly that they were a gross violation of their sovereignty and the independence of their country.

The one breaking point that Yugoslavia refused to negotiate was that they would not tolerate a foreign occupying army. And the only constant U.S. demand (which the U.S. refused to negotiate) was that NATO’s foreign troops must occupy Yugoslav territory.

The bullying and deceit of the U.S. “negotiators” under Albright was carried to such an extent that they actually refused to allow the multi-ethnic Yugoslav delegation to meet with the Albanian delegation, or even to see 56 pages of the 80-page Rambouillet ultimatum!

Included in these hidden pages was the infamous “Appendix B”, which basically stated that when NATO troops occupying Yugoslavia committed any sort of crime, including murder and rape, they would be totally immune from prosecution under Yugoslav law. And furthermore, all these legally immune NATO troops must be allowed “free and unrestricted access” to every part of the land, sea and airspace of Yugoslavia.

Myth #2: Yugoslavia was the aggressor in this conflict, and Milosevic was a “new Hitler.”

REALITY: U.S./NATO forces were obviously the absolutely ruthless, NAZI-like, supreme aggressors in their brutal 1999 terror campaign.

The multi-ethnic Yugoslav nation and their soldiers, planes and ships were not attacking another country, they were defending their own country. The multi-ethnic Yugoslavs are utterly unlike the Nazi Germans, Hitler and the U.S./NATO forces.

The conflict in Kosovo was an internal, domestic tragedy which involved a great deal of separatist KLA terrorism against Serbs, Romanis AND ALBANIANS. This internationally known fact is covered up by U.S./NATO propaganda.

It is perfectly obvious to all sane and informed people of the world that it was the NATO countries who were acting like the NAZIs in their blitzkrieg of Yugoslavia. And NATO, even more than the NAZIs, is a totally ruthless aggressor. Even the NAZIs did not bomb churches, schools and hospitals — as NATO did!

Yugoslavia, a small, developing country of 11 million people, was attacked by a bloodthirsty wolf-pack of 19 cowardly NATO countries, which included the biggest military powers in the world, and which have a combined population of more than half a billion people.

And exactly like the NAZIs, NATO tells perfect lies, and tells these lies repeatedly — through the mass-media — to hide its brutal, evil actions. U.S./NATO propaganda habitually turned the truth of the situation around exactly backwards. Besides lying about and thereby demonizing the entire Serbian people throughout the 1990s, U.S./NATO’s vast machinery of propaganda has demonized Milosevic personally — just as the U.S. government has done with Fidel Castro, Moammar Qadhafi, Saddam Hussein, Daniel Ortega and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas — any national leaders who dare to be politically independent of the American Empire.

As a U.S. State Department official actually admitted:

“The demonization of Milosevic is necessary to maintain the air attacks.”

San Francisco Chronicle
Mar. 30, 1999

Myth #3: Clinton, Albright and the Pentagon generals were moved to action by their “concerns” about “ethnic cleansing” and human suffering.

REALITY: Clinton, Albright and the Pentagon generals are the major CAUSE of ethnic cleansing and human suffering in Kosovo, and in all of former and present-day Yugoslavia!

The U.S., Germany and other NATO powers played a key role in breaking up Yugoslavia in 1991-92, arming and supporting secessionist and terrorist movements, such as the so-called “Kosovo Liberation Army.”

(And it was the International Monetary Fund that demanded an end to “special privileges” for Kosovo in the 1980s.)

For 45 years after World War II, the many nationalities that made up Yugoslavia lived together in peace. In the civil wars which followed the break-up of Yugoslavia, there was much bloodshed and human rights violations on ALL sides.

The biggest single act of “ethnic cleansing” was the sadistic shelling and forced removal of 600,000 Serbs from the Krajina region of the former Yugoslav Republic of Croatia — by the U.S.-trained-and-armed Croatian military in 1995. This internationally known war crime is ignored by U.S./NATO propaganda.

More than 55,000 of these Serbs, who were resettled in Kosovo, are among the hundreds of thousands of people made refugees by NATO bombing and the conflict in Kosovo. (Julia Taft, Asst. Secretary of State, on C-SPAN, 3-29-99)

The U.S. “concern” about removal of people from their homeland is very selective. Therefore it is, in fact, a complete deception.

(This should not be too surprising. Virtually the entire continent of North America was “ethnically cleansed” of Native peoples to make way for the U.S. and Canada, two of the NATO powers.)

For many years U.S. policy has supported, with arms and money, the murder, torture and removal of people from their ancient homelands all over the world: the Kurdish in Turkey, Palestinians in Palestine, East Timorese in Indonesia, Guatemalan indigenous people — and the list goes on.

This list should include the thousands of Tibetans who have been murdered, tortured and made refugees by the totalitarian Chinese for the last 40 years. The U.S. has been courting and trading with China for 27 years while effectively ignoring the suffering of the Tibetan people.

In short, it is perfectly obvious that Clinton, Albright and the NATO commanders and pilots have no concern whatsoever for the suffering of people anywhere in the world, and especially those in Kosovo. The U.S. is not the “champion of democracy” it claims to be. The leaders of the United States of America are the Champions of Hypocrisy, not “democracy.”

Myth #4: The KLA (“Kosovo Liberation Army”) was a genuine liberation army.

REALITY: The KLA was a ruthless terrorist force which was created by the United States, and was funded and supported by the United States and Germany.

The KLA was quite similar to the CIA-funded Contras, who were used by the U.S. in Nicaragua in an effort to overthrow the government. The KLA drew their membership from the Albanian heroin-and-cocaine-smuggling mafia, and they murdered Kosovo Albanian people when they did not support secession. These internationally known facts are ignored by U.S./NATO propaganda.

NATO used the KLA in an attempt to justify sending U.S. troops to occupy and further break up Yugoslavia. The KLA did not exist before 1998. Yet suddenly in 1999 they had the latest high tech weapons! They were trained by U.S. and German special forces.

What kind of “liberation struggle” would call for the bombing of its own people and for a foreign army of occupation on its soil? And yet that was the “KLA” demand.

The Society of Albanian American Students released a call for a demonstration on Wednesday, March 31, 1999 which openly stated that it was “organized with the invitation of the U.S. State Department to support NATO strikes, and above all, will focus to pressure for ground troops in Kosova and arms for KLA.”

Vice President Al Gore addressed the crowd. The signs of KLA supporters at rallies organized by the U.S. State Department — “NATO Bombing, Just Do it”, “KLA is NATO” — express the real relationship between the KLA and the U.S. State Department.

Myth #5: The U.S./NATO goal was to protect the rights of the predominantly Muslim Albanians in Kosovo.

REALITY: U.S./NATO officials only pretended to care about the rights of Muslim people in Yugoslavia, while their policy of sanctions and war kills 300 mostly Muslim Iraqis every day — half of whom are children under 5 years old.

The Pentagon is not a humanitarian relief agency, and the corporate-owned U.S. politicians do not really care about any people — Albanians, Serbs, Kurds, Iraqis, Tibetans — or the poor and working people of this country, the U.S.

The U.S./NATO terror-campaign murdered people of all nationalities in Yugoslavia, and poisoned their land with illegal radioactive depleted uranium (DU) weapons. This internationally known fact was ignored by U.S./NATO propaganda.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as U.S. veterans and their families, are suffering from Gulf War Syndrome as a result of depleted uranium poisoning.

The Clinton administration and the Pentagon talk about “supporting our troops” before they go into battle, but they then deny medical benefits to veterans who suffer from the after-effects of Agent Orange from Vietnam or DU from Iraq.

This terror campaign cost Americans many billions of dollars — money stolen from housing, health care, education and other social programs. Each cruise missile costs $1 million. The only ones who benefited from the terror campaign were the military-industrial complex and big business. Once again. It’s the same old story.

The real U.S./NATO goal was to break Yugoslavia into ever-smaller pieces by murdering and bombing its people into poverty and submission. The Balkans is a strategic region, a crossroads between Western Europe and the oil-rich Middle East and Caspian Basin. The U.S. established, in only 5 years, military domination of the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia, as well as Hungary and Albania.

The only hold-out was the Serbian-led Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This is the real reason why Yugoslavia became the target in the Balkans, just as it is the real reason that Iraq has become the target in the Persian/Arabian Gulf region.

Myth #6: The U.S. was trying to “defend the rights” of the people of Kosovo because “they had no rights.”

REALITY: All minorities in Yugoslavia have much greater rights than national minorities have in the United States or in Europe. Yugoslavians are, in fact, much more tolerant of ethnic minorities than Americans. Albanians in Serb-controlled Kosovo had schools and tuition-free universities in the Albanian language. Until the U.S./NATO bombing.

Medical care was also free for all citizens of Yugoslavia. That included Yugoslav Albanians. These are two of the main reasons for the massive illegal immigration from Albania into Kosovo in the years prior to the U.S./NATO terror campaign.

If the Serbians were so terrible to Albanians, why did so many Albanians want to live in Serbian territory? The answer is that the overwhelming majority of Serbians were not abusive to Albanians. The fact is that Albanians wanted to benefit from Serbian generosity.

U.S./NATO propaganda has been lying about the Serbs for years. Particularly during the Clinton administration. The Serbs and all Yugoslavs were and are fighting real terrorists, not ordinary Albanians.

But those among the Albanians who were separatists boycotted the government school system and health care system. They refused to use what existed. They were not denied these basic Yugoslavian rights.

(And ironically, now that NATO warplanes have bombed so many hospitals and schools in Yugoslavia, it is NATO that has denied most Yugoslavians the opportunity for education and medical care. Even the NAZIs didn’t bomb schools and hospitals!)

Myth #7: The population of Kosovo was 90% Albanian.

REALITY: That figure actually included all non-Serbs in Kosovo — Romanis, Turks, Egyptians, Goramacs (Serb Muslims from Kosovo), Jews and others. At the Rambouillet ultimatum meetings, the Yugoslav delegation included two Albanians, and represented not only Serbs, but ALL of the nationalities in Kosovo. The Albanian separatist delegation consisted only of Albanians.

The religious differences were also exaggerated by U.S./NATO propaganda. While most Albanians are Muslim, 10% of the Serb population was also Muslim. In addition, 25% of the Albanian population was Roman Catholic, such as Mother Teresa, who was a Kosovo Catholic Albanian.

The situation was not at all as simple and black-and-white as U.S./NATO propaganda portrayed it.

Now the population of Kosovo is close to 100% Moslem Albanian — thanks to the bloody and sadistic ethnic cleansing carried out by the Albanians with the blessing of most of the NATO/KFOR occupation forces.

Myth #8: U.S. news reports are “balanced and impartial,” giving us “the true story.”

REALITY: What we see in U.S. news reports and general American mass-media today is a gross distortion of some facts, a total ignoring of other facts, a deceitful simplification of complex situations, and outright lies.

The American mass-media is dominated by big business interests, and functions essentially as a US military/industrial propaganda machine.

For political purposes, the suffering of only one group was shown — the Albanian refugees fleeing the NATO bombing in Kosovo and going to Macedonia and Albania — while the other Yugoslav victims of the NATO bombing were totally ignored.

There was no mention of the 150,000 Serbian and 80,000 Albanian refugees which fled the bombing into Serbia! This internationally known fact is ignored by U.S./NATO propaganda.

There was no mention of the thousands of Albanian citizens of Yugoslavia who marched in Belgrade in protest of NATO’s cruel and murderous bombing. This internationally known fact is ignored by U.S./NATO propaganda.

The New York Times, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, The San Francisco Chronicle Examiner, and others created a very slanted and false view of events in Yugoslavia, in order to justify the massive, terroristic NATO bombing. General Electric, one of the country’s largest military contractors which supplies engines for NATO jet fighters, owns NBC and co-owns MS/NBC.

In the United States of America there is, in fact, no such thing as free speech in the mass media. By means of its media ownership, the military-industrial complex has made a highly successful end-run around the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America.

Myth #9: The U.S./NATO bombing was not the cause of the refugee crisis.

REALITY: The U.S./NATO bombing was indeed the cause of the refugee crisis. There were no waves of refugees until the beginning of the NATO bombing on March 24, 1999.

The U.S. government used similar scripts of “defending civilians” and “stopping massacres” to justify massive bombing campaigns in both the Vietnam and Iraq genocides. Again and again it was the massive bombing that created the refugee crises.

These internationally known facts are denied by U.S./NATO propaganda.

The London Sunday Times interviewed refugees and found:

“Nor was there much fodder for NATO propagandists among the 200 or so refugees waiting to register at a Skopje district police station early on Friday (March 26). Mirvei, a tall Albanian woman clutching her four-month-old baby, looked bewildered when asked if Serbian troops had driven her out.

“There were no Serbs,” she said, “We were frightened of the bombs.”

Related pages

Book review:
Hidden Agenda: U.S./NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia
by Ramsey Clark, Nadja Tesich, Michel Chossudovsky, Slobodan Milosevic, numerous authors

American/NATO State Terrorism of the Yugoslavian Peoples

Book review:
To Kill A Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia
by Michael Parenti

At A Serb Funeral: Tears For Victims Of A “Regrettable Mistake”

The Geopolitical Strategy of Imperial America

Book review:
NATO in the Balkans: Voices of Opposition

Video review:
NATO TARGETS: The Civilian People of Yugoslavia

Related sites

For information which is very different indeed from the mass of lies and spin which dominates the American mass-media, check out the following sites:

US psychological warfare experts worked at CNN and NPR during Kosovo War
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/cnn-a18.shtml

“Cable News Network (CNN) and National Public Radio (NPR) have acknowledged that eight members of the US Army 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group served as interns in their news divisions and other areas during the Kosovo war. PSYOPS is a highly specialized unit of the military whose personnel are trained in the production and dissemination of US government propaganda, including on television and radio programs.”

“Three PSYOPS personnel also worked at the Washington DC headquarters of NPR, a publicly-funded radio network. They worked for periods ranging from six weeks to four months from September 1998 through May 1999 on such programs as All Things Considered and Morning Edition.”

Yugoslavia in Crisis — reports and analyses
http://www.iacenter.org/yugo_crisis.htm

Depleted uranium responsible for cancer among Europe’s Balkan troops
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jan2001/uran-j09.shtml

Depleted uranium weapons used in Balkan War expected to cause thousands of fatal cancers
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/aug1999/du-a05.shtml

Death on a Very Small Planet
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/1/rem.htm

Photos comparing Belgrade in 1999 with New York City in September 2001

Memorandum On Foreign Interference In The Yugoslav Elections, September-October 2000
http://emperors-clothes.com/memor.htm

The Media and their Atrocities
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D; May 2000
http://www.michaelparenti.org/MediaAtrocities.html

Yugoslav Sojourn: Notes from the Other Side
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D; January 2000
http://www.michaelparenti.org/YugoslavSojourn.html

The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D; November 1999
http://www.michaelparenti.org/yugoslavia.html

Why was NATO at war with Yugoslavia?
World power, oil and gold
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/stat-m24.shtml

After the slaughter:
Political Lessons of the Balkan War
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jun1999/balk-j14.shtml

Yugoslavian Military Medical Academy Reports,
Civilian Casualties:
http://www.vma.sv.gov.yu/Civil/index_engleski.html

WARNING — this site has gruesome photos that show what American cluster bombs have done to human bodies.

Every victim was somebody’s daughter, somebody’s son, somebody’s brother, sister, wife, husband, mother, father, grandfather, grandmother. Each one was somebody’s friend.

They could just as well be your loved ones.

If you’re not a media-numbed moron, these photos will be deeply disturbing to see.

But these photographs constitute a public record of gruesome American war crimes — a record which our truly EVIL American leaders and military will NEVER be able to deny or live down.

These victims are the future of America’s government and military.

WSWS : News & Analysis — The Balkans
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/eu-balk.shtml

This is the index page for an extensive collection of news articles and high-quality political analysis about events in the Balkans, Yugoslavia in particular.

International Action Center
http://www.iacenter.org/

The Activist site:
Photo Gallery of NATO’s Bombings in Yugoslavia
http://users.westnet.gr./~cgian/nato.htm

KFOR MY ASS!
http://crash.to/KFORMYASS

NATO WAR CRIMES
http://www.nato-warcrimes.gr/

Bibliography

To Kill A Nation:
The Attack on Yugoslavia
by Michael Parenti

Hidden Agenda:
U.S./NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia
by Ramsey Clark, Nadja Tesich, Michel Chossudovsky, Slobodan Milosevic, numerous authors

NATO in the Balkans:
Voices of Opposition
by Ramsey Clark, Sean Gervasi, Sara Flounders, Thomas Deichmann, Gary Wilson, Richard Becker and Nadja Tesich

NATO TARGETS (video)
produced by Gloria La Riva

Rogue State:
A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
by William Blum

The Fire This Time:
U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf
by Ramsey Clark

Desert Slaughter:
The Imperialist War Against Iraq
by the Workers League

The Beast Reawakens
by Martin A. Lee

Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
by Michael Parenti

Against Empire
by Michael Parenti

The Sword and the Dollar:
Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race
by Michael Parenti

What Uncle Sam Really Wants
by Noam Chomsky

The Culture of Terrorism
by Noam Chomsky

The Real Terror Network:
Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda
by Edward S. Herman

Western State Terrorism
Alexander George, editor; essays by Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Gerry O’Sullivan and others

Terrorizing the Neighborhood:
American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era
by Noam Chomsky
Pressure Drop Press, 1991

Pirates and Emperors, Old and New:
International Terrorism in the Real World
by Noam Chomsky

Apocalypse 1945:
The Destruction of Dresden
by David Irving

The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media:
Decoding Spin and Lies in Mainstream News
by Norman Solomon

Inventing Reality:
The Politics of News Media
by Michael Parenti

Manufacturing Consent:
The Political Economy of the Mass Media
by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

War, Lies & Videotape:
How media monopoly stifles truth
edited by Lenora Foerstel; multiple authors

Derailing Democracy:
The America the Media Don’t Want You to See
by David McGowan

Killing Hope:
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII
by William Blum

Bloody Hell:
The Price Soldiers Pay
by Daniel Hallock