I am American and I did a bit of research on the war with Serbia and have to say that you are correct. We have been fed some very good propaganda.

The most interesting point was how CIA was arming Albanians and encouraging them to provoke the Serbs. Also most Americans are un-ware (again very good propanda efforts were made), that Serbian atrocities started after the bombings. Those attrocities are still atrocities and are in no way justified, but their portail in the Western media is terribly skewed.

It was very interesting to find out that at the same time as we were supposed to "prevent atrocities" in Serbia we dramatically increased Turkey's arms shiptment quota so they can bomb Kurdish villages. It was a quid-pro-quo kind of deal. Turkey said if you "bomb and use our airspace, then we want to bomb too." And bomb they did, big time. About 3000 Kurdish villages were destroyed.

If you were albanian, you couldn't go to school were you could learn your own language, you couldn't get a job a state industry (except for crappy jobs), you couldn't go to college/university where you can study in your own language. You even needed a visa to get out of Kosova!

BTW, Albanians there have been trying to secede peacefully since 1990, where they formed their own goverment. They had their own parallel structures, schools, etc. Slovenia split, got attacked, then Croatia split and endedup with war, then we all now of the Bosnian massacres.

It seem in all these, the common denominator is Serbia, and Slobodan, using vapid nationalism for his own purposes.

Kosova was going to end up just like Bosnia, where over 200k people were massacred if the west didn't intervene. he was doing the exact same tactics that he did during the previous war.

BTW, the Albanians in Kosova got armed after 1997, when there were trouble in Albania, and all the army depot got emptied, and you could find a Ak-47 for less than $100.

There were no american weapons in the region.

I agree with that. I never said that Serbians didn't commit attrocities. What I a blaming here is the Western propaganda machine (well ok, not Western, mostly NATO i.e. American) for lying.

Would you deny the facts that Serbian paramilitary forces intensified their attacks greatly after the bombing started?

I am not saying there we no masacres before, it is just that US knew it would get worse afterwards, they knew international observers would withdraw, but they decided to bomb anyway. Then they lied through their teeth when they used the victims of the retaliatory attacks of the Serbs to justify the bombings.

Yes, it was Serbian army who killed, but US (a suposedly rational country) knew that Slobodan would react in that way, and they didn't give a fuck. So it wasn't about humanitarian help, it was about saber rattling and not letting NATO get embarrassed in the middle of Europe.

It was not too long after USSR fell, European Union was gainging strength and US and NATO had to show the world who is boss. Yes, as a result they helped Albanians, and it is hard to play the "what if" game and guess what happened if they never went it. But they definetly didn't go in because they love Albanians or they cannot tollerate attrocities in the world. Look at Turkey and Indonesia -- both US clients that committed attrocities and nobody in US is bothered by it.

But innocent civilians being killed are innocent civilians being killed. It doesn't matter who's killing or what color their skin or what religion they are. There are terrible killing and attrocities still going on in the world.

We should do something about it if we can. But if we don't or we can't. We shouldn't lie about it, and pretend we do while we have completely different motives for our foreign war "adventures"

I wouldn't mind if the government actually told everyone what its real motives are. Perhaps there will be less support for war, or perhaps there won't. At least we won't be lied to.

Still, nice to hear that someone is interested in more then flashy headlines.

In light of my comment bellow, I will not pursue the subject further, HN is not the place for it.

I'm pretty sure that is a blatantly false statement. But if you would like to convince me otherwise, please show me some sources.

Then: Kosovo and the Metaphor War by Roland Paris (Political Science Quarterly, Volume 117, Number 3, Fall 2002) is a good analysis of how metaphors of previous wars and events were used to promote the war.

For 10x infation of number of deaths by NATO propaganda machine in preparing for war try: Kosovo: Orders of Magnitude by Adam Jones (IDEA Journal, Volume 5, Number 1, July 2000).

On the media portrail and lack of journalistic impartiality try: Ruigrok, Nel., Schoenbach, Klaus., Scholten, Otto. and De Ridder, J.. "Covering the Bosnian War: ‘Journalism of Attachment’ in Dutch Newspapers" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Dresden International Congress Centre, Dresden, Germany, Jun 16, 2006 (http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p92731_index.html)

Also note that there was a humanitarian catastrophy and there were certainly terible masacres going before the bombings and there were on both sides and have been going on for centuries. But after March 24, 1999 the Serbian attrocities intensified terribly.

You can listen to press reports around the time. For example Clinton says on March 24, 1999 that the reason for the war is "to deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo and, if necessary, to seriously damage the Serbian military’s capacity to harm the people of Kosovo." However intelligence reports warned him that bombing will actually intensify the attacks and that is exactly what happened. The large number of victim from these retaliatory attacks were then used as the reasons for the bombing.

> I'm pretty sure that is a blatantly false statement.

Well, do you have any sources? Please show that the number of claimed dead and missing Albanians (around 100,000) by NATO media monkeys was true as that was used to justify the war.

Please show evidence that US had purely humanitarian objectives, and reasons for US not getting involved in much larger humanitarian crises in Africa, South America, Asia (especially Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia). Some of then occuring simoultaneusly with the Kosovo war (hint: try Indonesia, it's a easy one).

Thanks for the links. I think your statement

there were certainly terible masacres going before the bombings

gets to the point of why I was skeptical about your earlier post. It would be incredible to say that United States bombing started Serbian-inflicted atrocities, when Serb atrocities were plainly occurring before there was any aerial bombing anywhere in the Balkans. I do not claim that the United States policy under the Clinton administration was ideal (or even beneficial to the United States) but I do claim that massacres were already occurring before there was any United States intervention.

There is no Turk vs Kurd fight going on its just an up moron brain washing people and turning them in to each other.

Get your facts right.

Alright, "my facts" are that European Court has consitently condemned Turkey for human right violations agains Kurds. "Your facts" are that you claim to have Kurdish friends. I think, I'll stick to "my facts" for now...