FROM SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA All 110 earlier Special Truth in Media Global Watch Bulletins on NATO's war on Serbia can also be seen at our Web site: www.truthinmedia.org, along with numerous photos and other memorable images from this war. Issue S99-111, "Peace" 5 -------------------------------------- June 18, 1999; 11:30PM EDT HEADLINES Kosovo 1. Serb Patriarch Heads for Kosovo to Stem Serb Exodus Kosovo 2. Serb Nuns Beaten, Tortured by Albanians at Devic Monastery Helsinki 3. Russia Does It to Serbia Again, Yielding to NATO Belgrade 4. Yugoslav Military Downed 61 NATO Aircraft? San Diego 5. Col. Hackworth: What Victory? ---------------------- 1. Serb Patriarch Heads for Kosovo to Stem Serb Exodus KOSOVO, June 18 - Displaying the kind of leadership which we have come to expect only from the bravest of the warriors, the frail, 84-year old Serbian spiritual leader, Patriarch Pavle, said he would move to Kosovo in a show of solidarity with the region's Serb minority. The Patriarch declared this one day after the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church demanded Slobodan Milosevic's resignation (see S99-109, "Peace" 3, June 15), as up to 50,000 Serb refugees were fleeing the NATO "peace process," according to a front page story in the USA TODAY (today, June 18). Patriarch Pavle appealed to Serbs and their fellow Orthodox Montenegrins "not to leave your centuries-old hearths and your holy places" in Kosovo, the birthplace of Serbian culture. He said he would travel to the western Kosovo city of Pec (the seat of the old Serb Patriarchate), and stay there for an extended period "with all my spiritual children and all well-meaning people living there.'' Pec, controlled now by Italian NATO "peacekeepers," has been the spiritual seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church since 1346 (i.e., since before the Kosovo Battle in 1389). ------------- 2. Serb Nuns Beaten, Tortured by Albanians at Devic Monastery KOSOVO, June 18 - Ethnic Albanian terrorists took over the Serb Devic (female) monastery right after the Yugoslav police withdrew, as provided by the NATO "peace process." The Albanians beat and tortured the nuns, according to the Mother Superior, Anastasia. The Albanians threatened the youngest nuns mostly, but the unity of sisterhood and courage of the Mother Superior saved their “Angel image”, as the Orthodox Christians understand monastic oath for celibacy. The confessor of the sisterhood of Devic monastery, old Fr. Seraphim, was forced by the Albanians to carry a heavy load of monastery food and inventory, by day and by night. The monastery has been "totally looted," according to Serb sources. The ethnic Albanians desecrated and destroyed the altar of the Monastery church, and damaged the fresco paintings in it. The relics of St. Joanikije of Devic, the greatest sanctity of the Monastery Devic, were also ruined. Today, a French K-FOR command decided that 10 of its soldiers should remain at the Devic monastery to protect the nuns from further harassment. Patriarch Pavle is also expected to visit the monastery today. His most recent visit was in January, when he was also stopped and mistreated by armed ethnic Albanians. (see our report about that incident, as told to the TiM editor by the Patriarch Pavle himself, during this writer's visit to Belgrade in late April - www.truthinmedia.org/Kosovo/day24up1.html). ------------- 3. Russia Does It to Serbia Again, Caving in to NATO HELSINKI, June 18 - After a brief, flash-in-a-pan, stand off at the Pristina airport with the world's most powerful military alliance, the Russian quisling government today meekly caved in and agreed to its assigned role of being a waterboy to NATO's "peacekeeping" force in Kosovo. If in doubt about this characterization of today's agreement signed in Helsinki by the U.S. secretary of defense, William Cohen, and the Russian defense minister, Igor Sergeyev, just listen to an American negotiator in this deal gloat, according to today's Washington Post: "We got what we needed in that there will be no Russian sector, no partition and no alternative to a unified NATO command structure," a senior Clinton administration official told the Washington Post today. "The Russians finally realized those were red lines that none of the allies would cross." --- TiM Ed.: So they folded their tents, and sold the Serbs out. Again. Just as Viktor Chernomyrdin and Slobodan Milosevic did it in their initial "peace agreement" (see S99-100, Day 72, Update 2, June 3). --- The deal will allow 3,000 Russian soldiers to patrol sectors of the southern Serbian province controlled by American, French and German troops. Cohen and Sergeyev acknowledged the agreement raises the stakes in the Russian-NATO relationship because the two sides are now clearly embedded in a long-term strategic partnership to stabilize the southern Balkans, Europe's most volatile region. --- TiM Ed.: Only 3,000 Russian troops? Whatever happened to the 10,000 to 15,000 troops which Moscow had been expecting to send to Kosovo? Not to mention the "Russian sector" which will similarly never come to pass. --- Senior U.S. officials said nearly 3,000 Russian troops would be equally distributed among the three allied sectors, with 750 others assigned to maintenance and fuel supply duties at the airport in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. NATO personnel will handle all flight plans and air control matters. About 200 Russian troops have occupied the airport since last Saturday, when they arrived in the early morning to cheering crowds of Kosovo Serbs following a day-long dash from Bosnia to beat NATO forces into the Serbian province. Moscow will maintain authority over its own soldiers but coordinate their activities with respective national commanders in each sector, who in turn will answer to NATO's chief commander in Kosovo, British Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson. In effect, this system ensures that NATO will remain in charge, but Russia can claim to perpetuate its own chain of command. ------------- 4. Yugoslav Military Downed 61 NATO Aircraft? BELGRADE, June 16 - The Yugoslav army downed 61 allied fighter jets, 30 unmanned spy aircraft, 7 helicopters and 238 missiles during the NATO air strikes campaign, according to Yugoslav armed forces chief of general staff chief, Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic. The Yugoslav army chief stated on the occasion of the Yugoslav Armed Forces Day that the resistance displayed by the Serb army and the Serb people will be the object of study for war analysts. --- TiM Ed. Yeah, right. The morale and unity of the Serb people certainly did remain high, until Milosevic and his stooges caved in to NATO. So spare us the violins, Gen. Ojdanic. ------------- 5. Col. Hackworth: What Victory? SAN DIEGO, June 18 - We had received the following column by Col. David Hackworth, America's most decorated living soldier, before today's Russian-American agreement on Kosovo's "peacekeeping" became public. With that as a preamble, many of "Hack's" comments are still as valid today as they were on June 15, when he wrote this piece: "Wait a military minute. We spend 4 billion bucks, risk our Green Berets' and jet jockeys' lives, and the Ruskies do an end run and march into Kosovo before us? They get the parades, flowers and cheers that were beamed by television around the world -- and we pick up the tab. This just doesn't add up. But come to think of it, nothing in the "war that wasn't a war" makes much sense. Let's review the deal. President Clinton does a peace dance with indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, a guy he called Hitler, in which Milosevic stays the main man. Kosovo still belongs to him. Serb soldiers, the ones who drove out the refugees, will be at the border welcoming them back home. Humm? Things have changed since President Truman, when Hitler put a bullet in his brain rather than face Harry's stern music. If he'd played war under Clinton rules, he'd have been allowed to give Ike the keys to Berlin while the Nazi army passed in review and then quietly retired to a sunny dictator-friendly South American state. Had I submitted an outline of how the operation went down as a proposal to a book editor, I'd have gotten the Big R - rejection - with a note saying "We don't do Air Power humor" or "Catch 22's already been written" or "Sorry, your imagination's in overdrive. No military operation could have been this bad." But that won't be the spin coming out of the White House and the Pentagon until Hillary grabs the headlines by kicking off her pre-2008 presidential election campaign with her go at the Senate. The veteran Clinton spin team -- which flimflammed Monica into a stalker, Paula into trailer-park trash, and labeled Bill's womanizing and the selling of secrets to China as dirty tricks by right-wing extremists -- will ram a hype hose down the nation's throat and turn the water all the way up. The war that wasn't a war will be spun into a great victory, a combination of our Revolutionary War, V-J Day and Desert Storm. But when our flyers and soldiers and sailors start leaking to the press, you'll see a triumph it was not. The conflict was not only badly bungled, it was the military mismatch of history. It was like a wrestling match between Little Orphan Annie and Jesse Ventura -- the little redheaded kid being Serbia and Jesse being a muscle-bound NATO. Annie weighed in with a fourth-rate 1960s army, backed by 10 million people from a primarily agricultural state the size of Ohio whose economy pumps out less dough than Coney Island on a rainy day. Jesse hit the scales with the most powerful military machine in the history of the world, 800 million supporters hailing from 19 mostly rich industrialized countries. After 78 rounds, Annie is still standing and singing "Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya tomorrow!" while Jesse, who has had to spend too much energy preventing his 19 supporters from stabbing him in the back never got in a decisive hit. When Serbia left Kosovo, its forces going out looked as good as NATO's military machine did coming in. The bombed and blasted Serb Army vehicles and soldiers were parade-ground sharp. Their trucks and tanks were clean and well maintained, and their soldiers' gear, uniforms and haircuts looked ready for a tough first sergeant's inspection. No one looked battle-rattled or had that vacant 1,000-yard stare that comes from a few too many nearby hits. After all those bombs and missiles and all of NATO's glowing reports about battle damage inflicted on the non-white-flag-waving Serbian Army, 11 MiG fighters rose from an air base in Kosovo on the day the peace deal was final. They wagged their perfect, unruffled wings and headed north. After such a pummeling, how could 11 jet fighters, almost more than Great Britain used in the war, remain unscathed? Eventually, the analysts will tell us the final score. But one thing for sure is that the Cold War is back and Russia again has a bunch of missiles pointed our way. Their politicians say they didn't authorize the stealth maneuver to parade in Kosovo. Which means the generals, the guys who control the nuclear-tipped missiles, are really in charge. Sleep well. Enjoy the "victory" while it lasts." ------------- NOTE: To cancel the e-mail editions of our reports, just reply REMOVE or UNSUBSCRIBE, followed by the e-mail address at which you're receiving them.
