Max: >This is total bullshit, as some informed anti-bombers have >attested. Since Louis didn't answer, I'll throw his question to >you: if no independent journalists are permitted to investigate >atrocities in Kosova, and since both refugees and Serbs are >biased, from what source would you accept as legitimate a report >of atrocities? If none, haven't you precluded such information >on spurious, a priori grounds? Actually, the very best we can hope for is that the barbaric US can raise itself up to the level of Serbia. We are among the greatest masters of atrocities in the 20th century. In the Russian Civil War, American troops fought alongside Wrangel who killed more innocent Jews than anybody in modern history and probably was Hitler's main inspiration. In the 1930s, US Marines backed vicious dictatorships in Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic that routinely killed, raped and tortured their own citizens. General Smedley Butler recalls his experiences: "I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of raceteering is long. I helped purify Nicaragus for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested." In WWII, we bombed Dresden which had no military value. This atrocity was dramatized in Vonnegut's "Slaugherhouse Five". We firebombed Tokyo to spread terror among the Japanese civilian population. We then topped that off by dropping A-Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when the Japanese had already given signals that they were ready to make peace. Why? As Stimson put it, we wanted to teach the Russians a "lesson". This is the kind of lesson we are trying to teach them today, by the way. The US rules the world. During the Korean War, we experimented with biological weapons according to the authors of a book reviewed in the current Nation Magazine: "Now two historians at York University in Toronto, Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, have produced the most impressive, expertly researched and, as far as the official files allow, the best-documented case for the prosecution yet made. Still lacking a smoking biological bomblet, the authors nevertheless conclude from the circumstantial evidence that the United States is guilty--not of waging a prolonged biological attack on North Korea and China but more likely of conducting a limited covert action, a kind of experimental foray with biological weapons to test the kind of war Washington would have waged had the Korean conflict led to World War III." There is also strong evidence that the US has used biological warfare against the Cuban people, including yellow fever and dengue. In addition, the US has refused to stop producing such weapons and chemical weapons as well, violating international treaties. During the Vietnam war, the United States launched Operation Phoenix which resulted in the murders of at least 40 thousand NLF sympathizers. We also encouraged GI's to burn down villages which were suspected of being friendly to the enemy. Most people realize that Lt. Calley was the fall guy for Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and other war criminals. Their actions were deemed criminal by the World Court among other bodies. During the contra war in Nicaragua, we trained our thugs to terrorize noncombatants and even published a CIA manual to tell them how to do it. The contras routinely raped women, burned down schools and health care centers and murdered captives. And we trained them to do this. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
