-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.smackem.com/quotes There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes it will be from failure of human wisdom. --Andrew B. Law When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing. --Dwight D. Eisenhower Diplomats are just as essential in starting a war as soldiers are in finishing it. --Will Rogers I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. -Albert Einstein >From http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2012/quote.html Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. -George Santayana >From Wash (DC) Post "" Retired Air Force Col. John Warden, author of ``Air Campaign,'' an influential book on air power strategy, said Clinton opposed the Vietnam War but apparently neglected to study the military lessons in that campaign. "" Military Fears Image May Be Damaged By John Diamond Associated Press Writer Thursday, April 1, 1999; 3:32 a.m. EST WASHINGTON (AP) -- Military officials worry that the lofty status gained by air power in the Persian Gulf War declines with each day that ethnic atrocities continue in Kosovo despite daily NATO airstrikes. Air Force officers and an active fraternity of retired air commanders bitterly blame the Clinton administration for returning to the incremental use of force that failed to bring Hanoi to heel in the Vietnam War. ``When you fly less than 50 bombing sorties per day for seven days, you're not serious about what you're doing,'' said retired Air Force Gen. Buster Glosson, one of the key planners of the Persian Gulf War air campaign. ``At best it's sporadic bombing.'' Officers, particularly in the Air Force, see the reputation of air power at risk in a mission laden with restrictions imposed from the White House. And they are growing increasingly concerned as television images from refugee camps provide vivid evidence that the airstrikes are not preventing the human suffering of the Kosovar Albanians. ``I'm worried about us being blamed once again for being over-promisers,'' said one Air Force strategic planner who spoke on condition of anonymity. No one in uniform will publicly criticize the commander-in-chief over the campaign against Yugoslavia. But Lt. Gen. Ron Marcotte, commander of the 8th Air Force, underscored preconditions for success from the air. ``We've got to be in it for the long haul, ensure that we use all our capabilities to the fullest extent possible and ensure that our airmen have the support they need,'' Marcotte said. The implication was clear enough: Without that support and full exploitation of capabilities, the Air Force should not be blamed for failure. As strikes on Yugoslavia intensified this week, so did the rhetoric from Washington warning against expecting too much from bombs and missiles. ``With respect to stopping the ethnic cleansing, we never supposed or reported that we had a silver bullet that would bring that to a halt,'' said Vice Adm. Scott Fry, operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Appearing Wednesday night on CBS's ``60 Minutes II'' program, President Clinton said he was aware of the military's concern over how air power is being applied. ``I understand the frustration of some of our people in the Pentagon,'' Clinton said. ``I have worked very hard with them to give them the maximum possible leeway, showing sensitivity only to targets that might have marginal benefits but cause a lot of collateral damage. I don't want a lot of innocent Serbian civilians to die because they have a man running their country that's doing something atrocious.'' Clinton urged Americans to ``have a little resolve here'' and added, ``We cannot view this as something that will be instantaneously successful.'' Within the Air Force, sensitivity to criticism stems in part from suspicion and distrust in other services of doctrines extolling the decisive role of air power, a debate that dates back to Army airman Billy Mitchell's promotion of bombers in the 1920s and '30s. Retired Army Gen. Colin Powell this week warned that the Clinton administration may not be able to end the Kosovo crisis without inserting ground forces into the region. ``At the end of the day, if you wish to seize the initiative, you may have to do that,'' Powell said. In interviews with active and retired Air Force officers, the Vietnam analogy came up again and again. Glosson couldn't mention the word, saying only that the ``gradualism'' of the campaign against Yugoslavia ``reflects an era we'd all rather forget.'' The Air Force strategic planning officer likened the Yugoslav bombing to President Johnson's ``Rolling Thunder'' air campaign over Vietnam that was designed to force Hanoi to the negotiating table. Then as now, such a campaign puts the initiative in the hands of the enemy, he said -- a view echoed by Powell. Dan Kuehl, a professor at the National Defense University and an air strike planner at the time of the Gulf War, said, ``The air power folks -- and I'm one of them -- are very sensitive to the criticism that, `Oh, well, it's been six days and the Serbs haven't stopped.''' Air Force Lt. Col. Peter Faber said the current thinking within the Air Force sees airstrikes as a way ``to create mental concussion and paralysis'' in an enemy with simultaneous strikes that disrupt communications, electricity, infrastructure and other links that connect citizens and military forces to leadership. But the campaign must operate intensively, around the clock. ``The paralysis school requires constant pressure.'' Retired Air Force Col. John Warden, author of ``Air Campaign,'' an influential book on air power strategy, said Clinton opposed the Vietnam War but apparently neglected to study the military lessons in that campaign. Clinton, according to Warden, ``concluded that that's the way we go to war. We do things like escalating. We do things like signal-sending, like gradualism.'' Warden was one of the developers of the idea of stunning and confusing an enemy with simultaneous attacks on an enemy's support structure, an idea first tested in the Gulf War. Though more violent in the short run, Warden said such a campaign may end a conflict sooner, and save lives. © Copyright 1999 The Associated Press >From Int'l Herald Tribune Paris, Thursday, April 1, 1999 Allies' Bid to Halt Serbs Faces Serious Obstacles Failure to Stop Milosevic Strains NATO Unity ------------------------------------------------------------------------ By William Drozdiak Washington Post Service ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BRUSSELS - Senior NATO officials say they confront serious military and political difficulties in halting a brutal Serb offensive that has already devastated Kosovo and overwhelmed neighboring states with a massive flood of refugees. Allied commanders have revised their strategy to focus more firepower on disrupting Serb attacks on the ground and pummeling targets right up the chain of command. But there are no guarantees that the broadened scope and accelerated tempo of bombing raids that was approved by allied governments early Wednesday will succeed. By the terms of its original mission, which the secretary-general of NATO, Javier Solana Madariaga, described as ''the need to stop the killing and prevent a humanitarian disaster,'' NATO already appears to have failed. Alliance commanders say the new strategy will take direct aim at Yugoslavia's political and military hierarchy, including President Slobodan Milosevic. General Klaus Naumann, chairman of NATO's military committee, said: ''His sole interest is to cling to power. We are going to grind his armed forces to pieces and chip away at all of the instruments that keep him in power until we succeed.'' Key decisions in the bombing campaign are placing enormous stress on the cumbersome process of maintaining consensus. When Italy and Greece raised the idea of a bombing pause over Easter, allied military commanders warned that a 10-day moratorium - from Good Friday to the celebration of Christian Orthodox Easter - would allow Mr. Milosevic to lay waste to Kosovo and finish his ''ethnic cleansing'' campaign with impunity. [In Rome, where the Italian government has had to repeatedly fend off attacks in Parliament on its pro-NATO policy, the Vatican said that it would make a peace initiative directly aimed at Mr. Milosevic, Reuters reported.] Mr. Milosevic has been extremely adroit at exploiting differences among NATO's 19 member states. But senior NATO officials believe he has committed two crucial mistakes: the forced exodus of ethnic Albanians that has appalled the outside world and the intrusion by two MiG fighters into Bosnian air space that betrayed aggressive intentions against his neighbors. With more than 600,000 Kosovars uprooted and many fleeing for their lives, NATO officials say the atrocities have consolidated support for bombing. The German government said Wednesday there are credible reports that Serb forces have organized three large concentration camps to hold many of the male prisoners that were separated from families during the forced expulsions. An estimated 100,000 are now incarcerated in the Pristina stadium, according to Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping. He insisted the civilized world could not stand aside and watch while acts of genocide were carried out that have not been seen in Europe since the Nazi crimes committed in the name of Germany during World War II. The alliance, however, has its own problems. As the war progresses, strains are becoming evident in sustaining a united front. The chief NATO spokesman, Jamie Shea, said: ''Democracies are always at a fundamental disadvantage because criminals know when they will commit a crime. It is always quicker for somebody like Milosevic to pull the trigger than for us to respond.'' In an agonizing debate that lasted into the early hours of Wednesday, 19 ambassadors from NATO countries struggled for nearly eight hours to reach consensus on giving authority to the NATO supreme commander, General Wesley Clark, to attack targets linked to the Yugoslav leadership. Some European governments are worried that missile strikes in downtown Belgrade would cause civilian casualties and undermine public support for the air strikes. Besides political consequences, there are military questions about the wisdom of taking the war to the Serbian capital. Some allied military officials question the value of hitting the Interior and Defense ministries, which have probably relocated to underground bunkers. Mr. Milosevic's palace, which once housed Yugoslavia's monarchy, also prompts second thoughts as a potential target. A senior NATO official said: ''It's an important symbol of Serb culture. Do you really think we can win the hearts and minds of the people and turn them against their leadership if we destroy part of their history?'' NATO's difficulties have already provoked some soul-searching about how the alliance miscalculated Mr. Milosevic's intentions. Military commanders say they missed important signals that the Serbs were preparing the forced expulsion campaign as early as October. At that time, Mr. Milosevic fired his armed forces chief of staff, who apparently opposed the plan conceived as a springtime offensive to sweep out the ethnic Albanians. But allied military officials said they thought this was an internal power dispute. In retrospect, they say Mr. Milosevic eliminated top commanders suspected of disloyalty, then managed to string along the alliance in the belief he would cooperate with peace negotiations. >From Christian Science Monitor Hidden hand conducting Serbs' war in Kosovo • Paramilitaries are believed to have carried out a violent campaign in Pec. By Justin Brown Special to The Christian Science Monitor Belgrade, Yugoslavia Note: Justin Brown is one of the few remaining Western journalists reporting out of Belgrade. They have names like Frenki, the Tigers, and the Chetniks. They were believed to have been among the most brutal combatants in the Bosnian and Croatian wars. And now, international officials say, they are working in Kosovo. "They are well trained, well motivated, and very, very dangerous," says one Western military official. Most recently, paramilitaries, as they are called, are believed to have carried out the brunt of an "ethnic cleansing" campaign against ethnic Albanians in Pec, a Kosovo city of 100,000 that is now nearly deserted. But paramilitaries are nothing new to the Balkans, and they are likely to play a greater role in the future - especially if NATO sends ground troops to Kosovo. "If NATO is coming with ground troops, I will go and defend my country with my [Tigers]," said Zeljko Raznjatovic, a notorious figure here, in a TV interview. NATO countries, in their second week of airstrikes against Yugoslavia, have denied any intention to expand the mission to the ground. But some have questioned whether a humanitarian catastrophe can be curbed through bombs alone. Already more than 100,000 ethnic Albanians have fled the country. Mr. Raznjatovic, or Arkan, who started a chain of ice-cream stores in Belgrade and has been convicted of robberies in Europe, was named this week as an indicted war criminal. The Hague war-crimes tribunal secretly indicted him in 1997. The most active paramilitaries in Kosovo are believed to be under the control of Frano "Frenki" Simatovic, a former state security worker who first organized Serbian fighting units in Knin, Croatia, in 1990. Mr. Simatovic is believed to have about 400 to 500 fighters, who are well armed, masked, and are known to drive through Kosovo in four-wheel-drive trucks without license plates. They operate in groups of 15 to 25 men, according to Western officials, and have been seen in Kosovo since this summer. Their identities and origins are for the most part unknown, even to local Serbs. "We don't know who they are or where they come from," says Natasa Kantic, the executive director of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade and one of the few who has visited Kosovo since the airstrikes began. "We are [saying this] based on experience in Bosnia and Croatia. In reality there is little difference between [paramilitaries] and the police. The two are linked together." International officials say the paramilitaries are being used first in Kosovo because they are better trained than the Serbian police in the region. Second, they are likely to be more difficult to prosecute for war crimes because records and evidence on them are harder to track down. If convicted, they will be harder to link to top officials in Belgrade. "Paramilitaries acting under any authority [of the Yugoslav government] would be considered the same as the Army," says Graham Blewitt, a prosecutor for The Hague war-crimes tribunal. "But it is difficult to prove they are under the control of the Army." After accusations of mass killings, "genocide," and ethnic cleansing, war-crimes prosecutions have become a constant source of speculation. Yugoslavia has refused to comply with the war-crimes tribunal, saying extradition is not allowed by its federal law. Irregular fighters have a long history in this volatile land, dating back to the Hajduks, rebels who fought against the Ottoman Turk occupiers for some 400 years. Chetnik units were formed in World War I, to fight against the Austrians and Germans when the official Serbian Army retreated to Greece. The Partisans, guerrillas led by Josip Broz Tito, fought the Nazis in World War II and went on to form Yugoslavia. In Bosnia and Croatia, there were several paramilitary groups, many of which were sponsored by political parties. Vojislav Seselj, the Serbian vice premier, led paramilitary troops in Croatia and Bosnia, but he is thought not to be involved in Kosovo. The ethnic Albanians of Kosovo also have an irregular fighting force - the Kosovo Liberation Army, which is now engaged with the Serbian forces. One former paramilitary from the war in Croatia is Nenad Canak, a liberal-minded politician from the northern city of Novi Sad. He says he was forced to join an irregular group as a means to make him "disappear." He survived. Now, Mr. Canak worries, a ground war in Kosovo would mean more paramilitaries, and it could allow the Yugoslav government to get rid of its enemies by sending them on suicide missions to the front. "This is an open chance for Milosevic to draft and send opponents out to get killed," Canak says. "We already saw that in Croatia." ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. -Thomas Huxley + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! 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