July 23, 2001
The great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil ... therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big. Now that Slobodan Milosevic has been dragged to The Hague to face charges of deportation, persecution, and murder, we might ask, "Should he be there at all?" Certainly, the prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte thinks so, as does NATO and its leaders. And so too do editorialists, and journalists and probably, in the West, about 99 percent of the population. In fact, people who profess to know a lot more about these things than the rest of us are pretty convinced the case against Milosevic is airtight. One columnist says the trial against the former Yugoslav president is pro-forma. (2) The evidence is so overwhelming, a guilty verdict is certain. So, you might, in the face of this monolithic opinion, be surprised to discover that the evidence isn't overwhelming, at all. In fact, it's pretty underwhelming. Indeed, it turns out that a lot of what's called evidence, is simply war propaganda, tall-tales, exaggeration, and outright lies created by NATO to justify its 78-day aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia. Writer Michael Parenti observes, "Many [people] recognize that politicians lie, that they are capable of saying one thing then doing another." (3) But when it comes to foreign policy, says Parenti, "many of us retreat from that judgment. Suddenly we find it hard to believe that [our] leaders would lie to us about their intentions in the world." Guess what? The people who lie to us about the economy, and corruption, and joblessness, who make promises in election campaigns they have no intention of keeping, and don't, who lied to us about Vietnam, and Cambodia and Laos and dozens of other places, are lying to us about Milosevic, too. That shouldn't be shocking. As the 60's songwriter Phil Ochs once asked, "We've done it before, so why all the shock?."(4) Yes, over and over and over again. Milosevic was indicted for war crimes on May 22, 1999, during the height of NATO's air war against Yugoslavia, on the basis of information furnished by NATO to then prosecutor Louise Arbour, who, like me, is a Canadian. Canadians, sad to say, have played a grim role in the whole affair, out of all proportion to the country's size. Canadian politicians boast that Canada's pilots flew 10 percent of the sorties against Yugoslavia, the third greatest number, after the UK and the US. They don't mention the obvious implication: Canada killed 10 percent of the people. And Canadians have been involved in absolving NATO. The man who wrote the report declaring NATO innocent of war crimes was a Canadian. But on the other side, Canadians like Michael Mandel and Christopher Black have been involved in questioning NATO, and defending Milosevic. The information NATO supplied to Arbour led to an indictment on charges of massacres involving the deaths of 391 civilians. (5) All of the massacres but one had happened after the bombing had begun, even though NATO said it had to bomb Yugoslavia to stop a genocide. And there was no evidence that the one pre-bombing incident, the Racak massacre, was a massacre at all, said the Finnish pathologists who investigated the incident on behalf of the European Union. (6) Instead, said the pathologists, American official William Walker bent over backwards to portray the incident -- a fire fight between the KLA and security forces -- as a massacre of dozens of unarmed civilians. That NATO might lie deliberately to defend its actions in Yugoslavia was ruled out of bounds by the Tribunal, not surprising since the US championed the creation of the Tribunal, and NATO countries supply the staff and evidence. The appointment of Louise Arbour, the prosecutor who indicted Milosevic, was approved by Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State during the bombing, and the person who, earlier on, had worked to establish the Tribunal. Known as "the mother" of the Tribunal by its staff, (7) she was central to the decision to bomb Yugoslavia and central to the appointment of its prosecutor. So thoroughly is the Tribunal a NATO creation that when Canadian lawyer Michael Mandel and later Amnesty International tried to get the Tribunal to investigate war crimes connected to NATO's bombing of civilian targets, the Tribunal appointed lawyer William Fenrick directly from his post as director of law for operations and training in the Canadian Department of Defense, to undertake the investigation. Fenrick's report, which astonishingly relied almost entirely on NATO documents, absolved NATO entirely. The report explained that it had been assumed "that the NATO and NATO countries' press statements are generally reliable and that explanations have been honestly given."(8) NATO said it didn't commit war crimes, and Fenrick, an ex-NATO lawyer, accepted his former employer at its word. End of story. Genocide, or veracicide? While Louise Arbour's May 22, 1999 indictment of Milosevic doesn't include genocide charges, many people thought once forensic pathologists launched their investigation after the bombing, plenty of evidence of genocide would turn up. Mass graves were everywhere, NATO warned. In April of that year, the US State Department declared that 500,000 ethnic Albanians had been murdered by Milosevic's forces, a number that, as time wore on, would be ground down to a minute fraction of its original size. On April 18, the US Ambassador for War Crimes, David Scheffer, said there were possibly 100,000 dead. On April 19, State Department spokesman, James Rubin, echoed Scheffer's 100,000 figure. A month later, Defense Secretary William Cohen said, "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing...They may have been murdered."(9) German Defense Minister Rudolph Scharping pointed to "satellite images showing mass graves," and "refugees literally [walking] along mountains of corpses."(10) By the end of the war, however, with forensic pathologists poised to enter the field, the number suddenly dropped to 10,000 dead, 1/50th of the original estimate. British Foreign Office Minister Geoff Hoon claimed some 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed in more than 100 massacres. (11) Twenty teams of investigators from 15 countries rushed to the alleged killing ground, 500 investigators in all. Dr. Peter Markesteyn, a Winnipeg forensic pathologist, among the first war crimes investigators to arrive in Kosovo, recalls, "We were told there were 100,000 bodies everywhere. We performed 1,800 autopsies -- that's it." (12) A team of Spanish investigators was warned they should prepare themselves to perform over 2,000 autopsies. They found 187 bodies, more than half victims of NATO bombs that fell on a prison at Istok. (13) The Trepca mines were reported to be the site of a huge mass grave, housing the remains of at least 700 ethnic Albanian Kosovars. Not a single corpse was found. (14) French investigators expected to find 150 bodies at Izbica. They found none. (15) Emilio Perez Puhola, who led a Spanish team of forensic pathologists, found no mass graves. He called stories of mass graves the "machinery of war propaganda." (16) By October, 2,108 corpses have been disinterred, most found in individual graves. Investigators offered no information on the identity of the corpses, Serb, Albanian, civilian, KLA, or how they were killed: by the KLA, by security forces, or by NATO bombs. (17) Reinhard Munz, a German doctor who worked at the Stenkovac refugee camp in Macedonia, reports that "men of fighting age were the majority in our camp," contradicting NATO statements that columns of refugees were chillingly absent of men of fighting age, all of them presumably murdered or incarcerated by Milosevic's security forces. (18) Today, the Tribunal's amended indictment against Milosevic covers 11 alleged massacres, not the hundred or more Geoff Hoon warned of. And rather than being charged with the murder of 10,000, the indictment speaks of under a thousand dead or missing. (19) Significantly, all of the massacres in the indictment, but the controversial January 15th, 1999 Racak massacre of 45, which pathologists say wasn't a massacre, happened after NATO launched its aerial bombardment. Which means NATO violated international law and its own charter, to launch an attack to stop a genocide it had not a shred of evidence was going on. This wasn't a genocide, the systematic extermination of a people. It was veracicide, the systematic extermination of the truth. And NATO was the perpetrator. The Pristina concentration camp that never was "Allegedly, Albanians are held in a stadium in Pristina" (the province's capital), said Rudolph Scharping. (20) James Rubin, backing up Scharping's warning, declared that 100,000 had been detained. But German surveillance aircraft showed no sign of anyone being detained. And an Agence France-Presse reporter who visited the stadium, found it empty, with no signs of recent occupation. (21) Call it war propaganda, or call it a lie. It's the same thing. Operation Horseshoe, or Operation Horse Shit? German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he received intelligence showing Yugoslav authorities had planned a systematic cleansing of Kosovo, called Operation Horseshoe. (22) Eight months later, Der Speigel reported that Fischer's intelligence came from Bulgarian authorities eager to join NATO. Trying to ingratiate themselves with Germany, whose sponsorship they eagerly sought, Bulgarian authorities provided Germany with claims they knew the German government would readily accept. (23) But if the story was believed by Fischer, it wasn't believed by his own Foreign Office: "Even in Kosovo, an explicit political persecution linked to Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable...The action of the security forces [were] not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the military opponents and its actual or alleged supporters...There is no sufficient actual proof of a secret program, or an unspoken consensus on the Serbian side to liquidate the Albanian people, to drive it out or otherwise to persecute it in the extreme manner presently described." (24) Far from being a diabolical plot to drive ethnic Albanians ought of Kosovo, Operation Horseshoe was really Operation Horse Shit, a lie intended to buttress public support for bombing Yugoslavia. Organized campaign of rape, or rape of the truth? Rudolph Scharping repeatedly mentioned women reporting instances of systematic rape by security forces to OSCE observers. OSCE observers did indeed find evidence of rapes, but the number was in the dozens -- not many dozens they said -- and the OSCE concluded there was no organized policy of rape. (25) Jamie Shea, NATO spokesman, took chutzpah in lying to new heights, by declaring that 100,000 babies were born to Albanian women in refugee camps as a result of rapes by Yugoslav security forces. (26) Apparently, Shea was counting on nobody knowing that the gestation period is nine months. The timing means the rapes would have had to have been committed before the security forces had even begun their counterinsurgency operations. Our bombs didn't hit that column of refugees On April 14, a refugee convoy of tractors was attacked from the air, killing more than 70. NATO denied responsibility, pointing to accounts of survivors who said the column was attacked by the Yugoslav air force. After a few days of trying to pin the blame on the Serbs, NATO admitted that the convoy was indeed destroyed by a NATO pilot. It was a horrible mistake, NATO said, as it said repeatedly throughout the 78-day air war about other incidents in which civilians were shown to an early grave or a life of disability by NATO bombs. Two years later, a Canadian newspaper ran a cartoon, showing Milosevic standing on a pile of skulls, shrugging his shoulders, and saying, "Mistakes were made." It's understood that attributing a multitude of deaths to "mistakes" is no excuse, and that shrugging off deaths as mistakes is monstrous. If only trains didn't travel so fast On April 12, a passenger train crossing a bridge at Grdelica was destroyed by a rocket fired by a NATO pilot. Twelve people died, and several more were wounded. At a news conference, General Wesley Clark, the NATO Supreme Commander in Europe, presented the cockpit video from the plane, instructing reporters to, "Look carefully at the target, concentrate on it, and you can see, if you focus like a pilot, that suddenly this train appeared." (27) Months later, it was revealed that the tape was run at five times its normal speed. (28) Another example of why it's best not to regard NATO statements as being "generally reliable" and its explanations "honestly given." The hospital was a military target If you follow NATO's "generally reliable" and "honestly given" statements, there are practically no targets that are not legitimate military targets. And since practically everything counts as a legitimate military target, the distinction between civilian and military targets is nonsense. An automobile factory is a legitimate military target because it can be used to manufacture military vehicles. Roads and bridges are legitimate military targets because they can be used by military vehicles for transportation. Telecommunication systems are legitimate military targets because they can be used for military communications. Presumably, agriculture is a legitimate target, because soldiers have to eat. NATO's bombing of the Radio-Television building in Belgrade is a Serb war crime On April 23, the Serb Radio-Television building was destroyed by NATO missiles. Sixteen journalists were killed, and many more were wounded. Antennas, transmitter stations and satellite broadcasting facilities were also destroyed. NATO leaders said Milosevic's propaganda machinery had to be destroyed (presumably because it was interfering with the smooth, unhindered functioning of NATO's propaganda machinery.) The targets were clearly without military significance, prompting Amnesty International to urge Carla Del Ponte to indict NATO leaders for war crimes. (29) Del Ponte, aware that sometimes the best defense is a good offense, boldly replied that she might indict Milosevic. (30) He had advanced knowledge of the attack, failed to have the building cleared, and cynically used the deaths for propaganda purposes, Del Ponte alleged. It seems Del Ponte knows a thing or two about propaganda herself. We don't, of course, know whether Milosevic was warned or not. We do know that NATO's statements are hardly to be considered reliable or honestly given. But even if Milosevic had been warned, Del Ponte's threat to indict the former president would effectively rewrite the definition of a war crime, from, "it's illegal to attack a target without military significance," to, "it's perfectly all right as long as you make your intentions known in advance," or perhaps, more to the point, "it's perfectly all right to engage in as many war crimes as you'd like if you control the Tribunal that prosecutes war crimes afterwards." Next time, let's get better maps...or a better lie On May 7, 1999, three NATO rockets hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three journalists, and wounding several others. NATO said it was a horrible mistake. But there was evidence that the Chinese were using the Embassy to pass on intelligence to the Yugoslav government.(31) NATO came up with a plausible story to pass the attack off as an error. Outdated maps had been used, they announced. The real target was a government building. Those planning the strike got mixed up. While error as an explanation seemed reasonable, there was one problem. If the blame lay with outdated maps, the implication was that the old maps would have to show the ostensible target, the Federal Directory for Supply and Procurement, being in the same place the Chinese Embassy was when it was bombed. But there had never previously been any buildings where the Chinese building had been. Only a park. (32) I don't like dictators much, but I think the whole world should be run by lies Tony Blair, who was endorsed by roughly one-quarter of the eligible electorate in the last election, and therefore could hardly be said to rule with the blessing of the great majority of Britons, has a penchant for branding Milosevic a dictator. A typical Blair denunciation goes like this: "We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe, from death, barbarism and ethnic cleansing by a brutal dictatorship." (33) When 99 percent of the population has little understanding of whether Milosevic was elected or not, and few resources and little inclination to check, sanctimoniously uttering whoppers like this, and getting away with it, is easy. The background on Milosevic in the Tribunal indictment sets the record straight: "Slobodan MILOSEVIC was elected President of the Presidency of Serbia on 8 May 1989 and re-elected on 5 December that same year. After the adoption of the new Constitution of Serbia on 28 September 1990, Slobodan MILOSEVIC was elected to the newly established office of President of Serbia in multi-party elections held on 9 and 26 December 1990; he was re-elected on 20 December 1992. After serving two terms as President of Serbia, Slobodan MILOSEVIC was elected President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on 15 July 1997 and he began his official duties on 23 July 1997." (34) With the word "elected" popping up repeatedly, it's easy to see how Blair might have been mistaken. He couldn't have been lying. Perish the thought. Why can't we find the bodies? Well, um, because, um....they were hidden! Yeah, that's the ticket, they were hidden! It's difficult to make the charge of genocide stick, when you can't produce the corpses. And it's doubly difficult to justify a decision to devastate a country's economic and civilian infrastructure, pollute its air and water, kill hundreds if, not thousands, permanently disable thousands more, without having a shred of evidence that a genocide was going on. So what do you do? Come up with a story for why you can't find the bodies. Not long after Milosevic's arrest on April 1 by Serb authorities, a story began to circulate about a truck, with Kosovo markings, being pulled from the Danube. Inside were corpses. Immediately it was said that here at last was the evidence teams of pathologists had been scouring Kosovo for, without success. The corpses couldn't be found because Milosevic hid them. There was a disturbing convenience in the story arising just when support for Milosevic, or at least distaste for his arrest, was beginning to grow. Notice the circularity. A genocide was committed. The claim is to be treated as a given, unassailable, and beyond question. If evidence can't be produced, it must be that the evidence was concealed. On July 8, soon after Milosevic had been dragged to The Hague, and tens of thousands had rallied in the streets in opposition, at a point when questions were being raised about the Tribunal and the blackmail used to force Milosevic into UN detention, The Sunday Times ran a story claiming that Tribunal investigators had uncovered a plan formulated by the former president, called Operation Asanacija. (35) Asanacija would wipe Kosovo clean of evidence of atrocities, by exhuming corpses from mass graves and having them moved to Belgrade. Asanacija, The Sunday Times noted, is "a Serbian word with a chilling connotation that implies the sanitisation of an area." As theater, the article was commendable. As propaganda it was admirably executed. As truth...well, there were some problems. Reading newspapers articles is, in many ways, like watching a magic act. If you begin by believing the magician's statements are "generally reliable" and "honestly given," as Fenrick believed about NATO's statements, you'll have no trouble accepting the illusion as an instance of magic, not deception. The magician will be able to act in ways he wouldn't have to were he truly magical, without provoking a lot of questions. But if you're skeptical, telltale signs that something's amiss, arise. Why did the magician have to draw a veil over the hat? Why did he insist that he, himself, had to put the cards back in the deck? Why did he turn his back at a critical point in the presentation? There are telltale signs in the story conveyed in the Times, not only in the story itself, but in the way The Sunday Times tells it, that there's a deception going on. The essence of the story is this: According to The Sunday Times, "By the end of March 1999, Milosevic knew that NATO spy satellites had already pinpointed at least seven mass graves in Kosovo. He was determined to outwit any war crimes investigation that might follow at the end of the conflict." So, The Sunday Times goes on, at a March 30 meeting, Milosevic gave the order that, "All civilians killed in Kosovo have to be moved to places where they will not be discovered." "The first mass grave was opened in a field north of Belgrade," The Sunday Times continues. "The grave sites were all on land used by the [Yugoslav army]", but one. "The first mass grave opened...by forensic experts has yielded 36 bodies comprising 14 women, 13 men...eight children and a foetus." Incredibly, "old Yugoslav identity documents" were found with the corpses. At this point, anyone with a smidgen of skepticism might start asking questions. If the objective of Operation Asanacija was to wipe clean evidence of mass murder, why would bodies be reburied with their identity papers? That hardly makes sense. Indeed, why would they be reburied at all? Wouldn't it have been easier -- and a whole lot more effective -- to cremate the bodies, especially if you knew NATO satellites had already pinpointed your previous attempts at hiding bodies in mass graves? Wouldn't Milosevic be worried that the new graves would be pinpointed too? And why weren't the new mass graves, in and around Belgrade, on land used by the Yugoslav army, pinpointed by NATO's spy satellites? Are we to believe that NATO satellites can pinpoint mass graves in one place, but not another, in Kosovo, but not around Belgrade on Yugoslav army land? Surely, of all the places NATO was surveilling, land used by the Yugoslav army would be near the top of the list. The Sunday Times role in this should be mentioned. The story's many propagandistic devises make one wonder who wrote it: NATO, or journalists willingly complicit in spreading disinformation and propaganda helpful to NATO's purposes. A few points make the case. The story is accompanied by a photograph of a man wearing bandages on his hands and face. The caption reads, "Albanians were doused in fuel and set on fire," but there is no reference to Albanians being doused in fuel and set on fire in the text. The context would lead one to believe that ethnic Albanian corpses were set on fire -- cremated -- to destroy evidence of Serb atrocities, but were that true there would be no corpses to exhume from mass graves. So what you end up with is a suggestion that Serbs covered up their atrocities by burning corpses, without having to deal with the inevitable outcome of the cover-up -- no corpses to produce as evidence. Here, both A and not A are presented together, or heads I win, tails you lose. On the other hand, the caption can be interpreted without reference to the text, but to the photograph instead, which shows not a corpse, but an injured -- and living -- man. What the photograph and caption mean if construed this way is that Serbs committed the atrocity of immolating the living. But again, there's no reference to the atrocity in the text. It hangs, as an innuendo. A second photograph shows a long line of grim faced men bearing dozens of coffins, above the caption, "Mass graves were dug up and the bodies moved to Serbia to conceal atrocities." The men appear to be in a trench, possibly a mass grave. Presumably, these are coffins bearing the victims of Serb atrocities in Kosovo. But this is almost certainly a file photo of a funeral, a point attested to by the fact that the coffins are flag draped. Would Serbs, trying to quickly conceal evidence of mass slaughter, exhume mass graves, place the bodies in coffins, and then drape the coffins in flags? No. The Sunday Times used a file photo to illustrate the story, much as "an artist's rendition" or "reenactment" might be used to illustrate other stories. Except artist's renditions are labeled as such. In The Sunday Times, artist's renditions become photographs passed off as the real thing, to make it appear as if there's documentary evidence of the allegations made in the article. More propaganda. Writing as if preparing press releases for NATO, The Sunday Times packs three NATO fallacies into a single background sentence, "The slaughter of 45 ethnic Albanians [at Racak]...set in motion the Rambouillet peace talks, whose failure triggered NATO's intervention." Even the most willfully blind journalist would mention that the Racak incident is at least "controversial," acknowledging the findings of a Finnish forensic pathology team that investigated the incident on behalf of the European Union. There was no evidence of a massacre, the pathologists concluded. As to Rambouillet being a peace plan, the Nazi press doubtlessly characterized all of Hitler's ultimata as peace plans too, for they were. Everyone wants peace. The question always is, on whose terms? At Rambouillet, NATO made clear it would be on its terms. Do what we say, and nobody gets hurt, they told Milosevic. He didn't. So NATO, true to its word, ensured people got hurt -- a lot of them. Still more: That The Sunday Times article is fiction may account for why it reads like a suspense novel. In a novel, the author describes scenes as if he's there -- a fly on the wall. The same with the The Sunday Times article. Details the authors couldn't possibly have, are weaved in and out of the story. "Around a new mahogany table in the palace, [Milosevic] scowled at his inner circle. His country's only white-goods factory had been blown up that day, radar stations had toppled and critical fuel stocks had been engulfed in flames. In Kosovo, army and police bases lay in ruins. "He gazed at his three most trusted acolytes...Then he calmly gave his order. 'All civilians killed in Kosovo have to be moved to places where they will not be discovered.'" This is truly amazing. Were The Sunday Times reporters right there in the room with Milosevic, taking notes on the color of the table at which he sat, the expression on his face, and even recording verbatim what he said? Of course, not. Because like a novel, the story is all made up. And like a suspense novel, the characters are made into caricatures, heroes and villains. Notice that it is said that Milosevic "calmly gave the order," to exhume the bodies, emphasizing the cold-bloodedness of the character he plays in these fictional accounts. The Operation Asanacija story, according to The Sunday Times, comes from Tribunal investigators, another reason to doubt it. Even if the story had been recounted by an impartial source, there are enough problems with it to call it into question, but it comes ultimately from bodies under the control of NATO, an organization whose record as a reliable informant leaves much to be desired. Moreover, once you consider that NATO, and its Tribunal, have a motive to present fallacious evidence to cover up its failure to substantiate the pretext of the need to stop a genocide -- the pretext it used to launch its air attack in violation of international law -- the story collapses under the weight of the multifarious reasons to doubt it. The litany of lies and improbable stories grows ever larger, as each is exposed for what it is. In any normal court, the testimony of a witness who has lied repeatedly, who has a motive for spinning tall tales, would be dismissed, not even tolerated. But this Tribunal is far from an ordinary court, for the liar controls the prosecution and the judges, and the intention is not to uncover the truth. It's to exterminate it. Notes 1. Adolph Hitler, Mien Kampf (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1971) Vol. 1, chapter 10, p. 231. (back) 2. Richard Gwyn, International law should not be victors' justice, Toronto Star, July 4, 2001. (back) 3. Michael Parenti, Against Empire (City Light Books, San Francisco, 1995), p.71. (back) 4. Phil Ochs, Cops of the World. (back) 5. ICTY. Indictment against Milosevic et al. http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-ii990524e.htm (back) 6. Racak 'massacre' exposed as fraud, Workers World, Feb. 15, 2001, http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/yugo0215.html (back) 7. Christopher Black, An Impartial Trial? Really? http://www.swans.com/library/art5/zig036.html (back) 8. Michael Mandel, Milosevic has a point, The Globe and Mail, July 6, 2009. (back) 9. Washington Post, May 17, 1999. (back) 10. Rudolph Scharping, Wir duerfen nicht wegsehen. Der Kosovo-Krieg und Europa {We cannot look away. The Kosovo War and Europe] (Ullstein Verlag, Berlin, 1999), p.141. (back) 11. New York Times, Nov. 11, 1999. (back) 12. David Roberts, War-crime units exhumed bodies of about 4,000 civilian victims, The Globe and Mail, January 29, 2001. (back) 13. El Pais, September 23, 1999. (back) 14. New York Times, October 13, 1999. (back) 15. New York Times, July 18, 1999. (back) 16. The Sunday Times. October 31, 1999. (back) 17. The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 1999. (back) 18. Die Welt, June 18, 1999 (back) 19. ICTY. Case No. IT-99-37-I. http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-ai010629e.htm (back) 20. Scharping, p.128. (back) 21. William Norman Grigg, "why Kosovo?" in The Kosovo Dossier, 72. (back) 22. Scharping, pp. 102, 107. (back) 23. Thomas Deichmann, Scharping's Lies Won't Last, http://www.iacenter.org/deichmann.htm, and Lewis Dolinsky, San Francisco Chronicle, April 7 2000. (back) 24. Intelligence report from the German Foreign Office, to the Administrative Court of Trier, January 12, 1999 (reprinted in Progressive Review no. 361, June, 1999). (back) 25. Thomas Deichmann (back) 26. Cited in Michael Parenti, To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, (Verso, London, 2000) p. 138. (back) 27. Thomas Deichmann (back) 28. NATO used speeded-up film to excuse civilian deaths in Kosovo: newspaper, AFP, January 6, 2001. (back) 29. Steven Erlanger, Amnesty slams NATO bombing as violation of international law, New York Times Service, in The Globe and Mail, June 8, 2000. (back) 30. Alan Freeman, Milosevic blamed in deaths of 16 at TV station, The Globe and Mail, January 27, 2001. (back) 31. John Sweeney and Jens Holsoe, NATO bombed Chinese deliberately, The Guardian The observer, October 17, 1999, Chinese embassy bombed for helping Serbs: report, The Globe and Mail, October 19, 1999. (back) 32. Jared Israel, Lies, damn lies and maps: How NATO and the media misrepresented the Chinese embassy bombing, CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/maps.html. (back) 33. Cited in Where Are Kosovo's Killing Fields? stratfor.com, Global Intelligence Update 18/10/1999, http://www.stratfor.com/ (back) 34. ICTY. Case No. IT-99-37-I. http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-ai010629e.htm (back) 35. Bob Graham and Tom Walker, Milosevic ordered hiding of bodies, The Sunday Times, July 8, 2001. (back) Stephen Gowans is a writer and political activist who lives in Ottawa, Canada. Please, DO NOT steal, scavenge or repost this work without the expressed written authorization of Swans, which will seek permission from the author. This material is copyrighted, © Stephen Gowans 2001. 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