часть 2
источник: https://wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Francesca-Morrison.pdf
часть 2
начало здесь - Вновь о Косово
The role of politicians was also prevalent in Lettmayer and Bogdanich’s documentary, and Stojanovic’s work, but was completely omitted by Ignatieff, who instead discussed media manipulation through the omission of facts, which was a huge issue with the US public. The omission of the Albanian atrocities from the Ruder Finn press releases, assisted in leading the US public to believe that they were the only atrocities being committed. If the people of America had known that both sides were committing equal numbers of killings, they would not have supported the attack on Serbia and Kosovo by NATO, and Ruder Finn would fail their client, the KLA, who believed they needed the attack to help in their crusade for independence.
In an interview with Ruzha Todorova, a student at Western Oregon University, in December, 2005, such a discussion regarding lying by omission in the media arose. At the time, Todorova, from Bulgaria, remembered the media coverage during the Kosovo crisis. She said that channels, such as BTV, the Murdock-owned network, showed the images of dead Muslim women and children: the same images that were being displayed by the Western media, however, BTV also impressed to the public that the total destruction of the Kosovo infrastructure, economy, and civilian life, were the prime goals of the US stealth bombers.
Todorova recalls that BTV openly supported the government’s decision to make Bulgaria a no-fly zone for NATO military planes, and that they criticized the propaganda techniques of the Western media. BTV repeated images of the NATO destruction of the bridges across the Danube; the NATO bombing of seven civilian homes within Sofia, the capital city of Bulgaria; and televised discussions about the wealth of, and value of, the precious-metal mines in Kosovo. These arguments, found mostly in non-English reports, were not referenced in the west by CNN, BBC, or even the array of independent stations, yet they were closer to the truth: the war was for monetary gain through resources: they just had the wrong resources.
The US and NATO were not after the bauxite or copper that is prevalent in Kosovo and Serbia. The US and NATO were interested in the Caspian oil and they needed a direct route through the Balkans to run the AMBO oil pipeline. The US federal government had made a deal with Albania: they would support the Albanians and assist in gaining independence for Kosovo in exchange for cooperation with the Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil (AMBO) pipeline, that was to run across the Balkans, through Albania, to the Mediterranean ocean.
There are many conclusions to be sought from this array of secondary sources. “Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War” supplied the core truth: that the media controlled the attack on Kosovo and Serbia and that all of the players had some aspect of self-serving involvement. This ‘guilt by all parties’ acknowledges the critical role that Ruder Finn played, for profit, in manipulating the US media and public.
The media is self-serving and biased and will access all resources to support its own argument. However, the basis of the media itself, (i.e., the journalists), are ironically also misled, lied to, and manipulated by world politicians, PR agencies, terrorists, and corporations, whom have their own agenda to achieve and know that they need the media’s powerful influence over popular opinion, in order to achieve it. Ruder Finn, the Public Relations firm, manipulated the journalists, media, and the public for the agenda of their client: the KLA.
The KLA agenda is to extend their borders into Kosovo, Greece, Macedonia, and Montenegro and regain the territory once held as Greater Albania. They are highly motivated in their goal to eradicate current borders and impose those of the Greater Albania that had been established by the Italians in WWII. The US is willing to support this goal for a Greater Albania, as long as it can achieve its own agenda of running an oil pipeline through Albania. According to Serbian historian and author, Predrag Zivancevic, this drive to reclaim lands has inspired the forced eviction of over 400,000 Serbians from Kosovo by 1990.
The Kosovo Liberation Army, (KLA), whose roots lay in Albania, is reported to have ethnically cleansed Kosovo of 50 percent of the Serbian population. This ethnic cleansing is directed at Serbians, but also at Jews, Roma, and Macedonians. Amazingly, it is also against any Albanians who do not support the KLA’s violent actions. [19] Christopher Hill, Ambassador to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, (F.Y.R.O.M ) said, in 1999, “we spent the 1990s worrying about a Greater Serbia. That’s finished. We are going to spend time well into the next century worrying about a Greater Albania.” [20] Pleurat Sejdiu, a KLA representative in London adds “ Independence will not be stopped. How it will be achieved depends on the international community. They can make it easy or painful.“ [21]
The Kosovo Liberation Army, according to the Jerusalem Post, grew out of the Iranian support of the Albanian uprising in 1997. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, (IRG) who had joined forces with Osama Bin Laden, were supporting the insurgency in Kosovo, with plans to “turn the region into their main base for Islamic activity in Europe.” [22] They established an Islamic bank in the Albanian capital of Tirana and the militant Islamic social structure of Ayatollah Khomeini, a powerful Muslim Cleric with theocratic goals and fundamentalist views.
The IRG were directed to train and arm KLA members and select particular fighters to go to Iran to study Islam, to later return and lead in Albania. In 1998, the Guardian reported that the KLA, a renowned terrorist organization, had grown to over 30,000 men, armed with sophisticated weaponry such as anti-aircraft and anti-armor rockets. [23]
Bin Laden is believed to have originally established an operation in Albania in 1994, after telling the government that he was head of a wealthy Saudi humanitarian agency keen to help Europe's poorest nation. However, direct proof of Bin Laden’s presence, and support, in the region came in March of 1998 when “Claude Kader, 27, a French national, confessed to being a member of Bin Laden's Albanian network, was jailed for the murder of a local translator.” [24] Kader admitted, during his trial, that he was in Albania recruiting and arming fighters for Kosovo, and that he had left four of his KLA colleagues in the area, with the same goals. In 1998, the Jerusalem Post, respected as a well-informed paper, identified Kosovo as a new Islamic bastion in the former Yugoslavia and claimed the KLA financial and military support “includes that of Bin Laden.” [25]
Soon the London Times was reporting that the “Islamic fighters who had caused havoc in Bosnia were moving onto Kosovo” [26] and the Jerusalem Post confirmed that the Hezbollah and the Afghani mujahedeen were finally also backing the KLA. Reports showed that Muslims from Albania, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other various countries, were fighting alongside them in Kosovo, and training them in guerilla diversion techniques. [27] Finally the Washington Times boldly stated “al-Qaeda has both trained and financially supported the KLA” [28] and reported many border crossings of the Islamic jihad from Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan.
In May of 1999, US Senator Jim Inhofe warned that if the US was to go into Kosovo and support the KLA that they would be fighting alongside a known terrorist organization and would become partners of a sort with Osama Bin Laden [29] Sadly, the US federal government was blinded by the pipeline race and did not heed the warning because in 2001, the CIA were accused, by Belgrade, of directly funding terrorists in the KLA.
Huge financial support for the KLA also came from the drug trade. According to an intelligence report published in 1999 in the London Times, up to fifty percent of the KLA's guerrilla war funding comes from drug proceeds. In fact, European and US law enforcement groups recognize the KLA as "a major force in international organized crime, moving staggering amounts of narcotics through an underworld network that reaches into the heart of Europe." [30] The Times continued: "Albania--which plays a key role in channeling money to the Kosovo Albanians (KLA) is at the hub of Europe's drug trade," and that according to Interpol in 1999, "the Balkan Route is a principal thoroughfare for an illicit drug traffic worth $400 billion annually." [31]
Such support has brought the KLA to financial stability. Jashar Salihu, a former political prisoner who now runs the Homeland Fund, the financial arm of the KLA, said “the rebel force opposing the Serbs is better off financially and militarily. I am a person who can buy guns in Belgrade.” [32] Salihu, a former prison mate of Izetbegovic, the Bosnian Muslim leader accused of war crimes against Serbians, continues “even amid peace talks in Rambouillet, KLA representatives were booking flights to Tirana, Albania, where they planned to trek back from with Kalashnikov rifles strapped to their backs.” [33] It is ironic that while NATO demands disarmament from the Serbians, the KLA rebels are buying US sniper rifles, German anti-tank bazookas, and Chinese surface to surface missiles. It was irrelevant what the official outcomes were, the KLA were following their own agenda: they are determined to removed Serbians from Kosovo, and regain the Albanian territory.
To gain support for any liberation movement in political circles, it is effective and respectable to have a humanitarian cause as justification. It also helps to have famous and respected people supporting the movement. Senator DioGuardi, (R-NY), himself the son of an Albanian-Italian immigrant, is very active in the D.C. social and political circles, and has access to famous celebrities such as Mohamed Ali, the Pope and Jack Nicholson, and the trust and friendship of some influential members within the House of Representatives. It is these friends, such as Senator Dole and Senator McCain, who gave him support to introduce resolution H.CON.RES.358 in 1986. This “concurrent resolution condemn[ed](ing) the repression of ethnic Albanians by the Government of the Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia,” and placed a demand upon Congress to enforce human-rights for Albanians in Yugoslavia. [34]
Bob Dole, the US Senator for Kansas of 28 years and Presidential candidate, is a supporter of Joseph DioGuardi and the KLA. In their support, he presented the same resolution, H.CON.RES.358, for Albanian rights, to the senate the very day after DeGuardi, and later, with fellow lawmaker, John McCain, the US Senator for Arizona, Dole backed a $25 million proposal to Congress to arm and train the KLA. [35] Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-California), Senators Joe Biden, George Mitchell. and Tom Lantos (D-California), who was the first official to visit Albania since 1946, were all strong supporters of the resolution. [36]
Successful donations and continued support inspired DioGuardi to create the foundation of the American Albanian Civic League, (www.aacl.com) in 1988, a pro- KLA group, within the USA, which promotes the Greater Albania plan of border expansion. The league is a political arm established to propel the Kosovo issue in Washington. With DioGuardi as President, the AACL organized 10,000 Albanian supporters to demonstrate for human rights in Washington D.C. in 1989, with Senators Dole, Pressler (R-South Dakota) and Congressman Gilman (R-New York) amongst the speakers rallying for the Albanian support. [37] Congressman Joseph DioGuardi is compensated $400,000 p.a. to head the Albanian American Civic League and Senator Robert Dole accepted a check for $1.2 million from the AACL: for his campaign in 1998. [38] By 1999, George Soros, a well-respected philanthropist from Hungary, was even pulled into the humanitarian propaganda and became a supporter of Albanian independence and ally to DioGuardi, who presented Congress with a petition, signed by 40 prominent policy makers urging US intervention in the Balkans. [39]
Croatia’s success had been based on the marketing techniques of the same highly motivated, successful and experienced, Rudder Finn Global Public Affairs, whom they had hired in 1991. Based in New York, this international marketing company’s success is based on its ability to "develop and carry out strategies and tactics for communication with members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate [and other] officials of the U.S. government…as well as with American and international news media." They achieve this success with the help of “several hundred journalists, politicians, representatives of humanitarian associations and academics to create public opinion.” [40] Ruder Finn understands that to gain the military action that the KLA want, there must be popular support in the USA: Ruder Finn was motivated to market their client’s plan by the considerable compensation they received: it was a business deal that did not involve ethics.
According to filings under the Foreign Agents Registry Act of the US Justice Department, the Government of the Republic of Kosovo paid Ruder Finn over $230,000 in 1998 to “compile[d] background materials and disseminate[d] information regarding the Serbian oppression of Albanians in Kosovo to members of Congress, executive branch, and the international news media.” [41]
The marketing strategy chosen by Ruder Finn for the Kosovo crisis was based on a Holocaust style depiction. David Finn, chair of Ruder and Finn, was quoted as saying “In a single move we were able to present a very simple story of goods guys and bad guys…the emotional charge was so powerful that nobody could go against it“ [42] Another Ruder Finn executive, James Harff, whilst being interviewed by French journalist, Jacques Merlino, in 1999, claimed “I am helping to bring the historical truth.” [43]
“However, when challenged by Merlino that Ruder Finn were claiming that Serbs were ethnically cleansing Albanian citizens with gas chambers, and were committing genocide, without any evidence as proof that what they were screening was even true, Harff replied: “Our job is not to verify information [it is] to accelerate the circulation of information favorable to us, to aim at judiciously chosen targets.” [44] Harff explained, “We had a job to do and …we are not paid to be moral”. [45]
After the interview, Jacques Merlino commented that through their contacts within international government and press circles, the Ruder Finn team was able to distribute largely unverified stories of Serb atrocities and that their goal was to induce military action against the Serbs, on behalf of the Albanians, known terrorists and drug dealers. The infamous “camp” photo, which Bill Clinton held up as he promised military action against the Serbs if America elected him, showed an emancipated Muslim man, imprisoned behind barbed wire, was a Ruder Finn creation, and a complete hoax.
The photograph was taken from a videotape shot on 5 August, 1992, in Croatia, by an award-winning British television group from ITN. There was no camp, just a couple of angles that allowed Ruder Finn to create a manipulative photograph and label it “Serbian Concentration Camps in Kosovo.” [46] The men were free men: refugees en route. Ruder Finn intentionally misled the American public to serve their client, the Kosovo Terrorist group, the KLA.
The truth is that the US media thrives on drama and the uglier the information, the better it sells. Ruder Finn are professionals at manipulating media photos and reports, creating stories that make a huge impact in the US market, while conveniently also supporting a predetermined political agenda. Racak was one such story. On January 15, 1999, the tragic news that 45 Kosovo Albanians had been found dead, killed in an execution style, hit the air waves. The story had a powerful impression on the public as TV screens, the internet, and the newspapers showed the bodies laid strewn in dirty ditches, unvalued and unprotected.
The American diplomat who authenticated the "massacre" was William Walker, a war crimes investigator and colleague of Oliver North during the Iran Contra affair, who had years of covert experience in Latin American operations before being assigned to Kosovo. After viewing the claimed massacre, Walker publicly accused Serbian security forces of “having on the previous day executed in cold blood some forty Albanian peasants in the little village of Racak” [47] A few days after the news broke, Le Monde and Le Figaro and French TV stations questioned the absence of shell casings or blood on the clothes and the ground where the bodies were found: there were no eyewitnesses.
The European Union’s forensic team stated that it was impossible to confirm whether this could be labeled a massacre. When an investigation at the scene implied that there was foul play, Rollie Keith, who was a Kosovo Verification Monitor during February and March of 1999, speculated that the notorious Walker may have been assigned by the federal government to assist the KLA in staging the whole event: putting NATO in line for military intervention. It was even suggested by the Los Angeles Times that the massacre was faked by the KLA and that the bodies had been collected form the military actions around the region and moved to Racak for the sole purpose of staging genocide. They suggest the bodies at Racak therefore were KLA military members who had been put into civilian clothes and moved into place to stage the lie. A few days after the news broke, Le Monde and Le Figaro and French TV stations questioned the absence of shell casings or blood on the clothes and the ground where the bodies were found: there were no eyewitnesses. [48]
On February 2, 1999, CIA Director George Tenet, gave testimony of a report , prepared by the CIA, which referenced the Serb "massacre at Raçak," as a pretext for NATO intervention against Serbia.” [49] Racak had convinced the American public that the Serbs were vicious aggressors against innocent Albanian Muslims, which was completely untrue. The KLA had been labeled as a terrorist group by the US State Department and had been conducting bombings, assassinations, and ambushes against Serbs in Kosovo since the late 1970s, only reaching their maximum effectiveness in 1998. [50] The Serb forces would respond to this violence with brutal attacks aimed at the villages, and the entire families, of the KLA members, not in actions of ethnic cleansing but simply in acts of violent revenge. Of the 2000 deaths in Kosovo, there was an equal balance amongst Albanians and Serbians. [51]
There are many other stories of Serbian rape camps, torture chambers and the infamous Pristina Sports Stadium of March 1999 story by Jamie Rubin, who served as the assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Chief Spokesman for the State Department from 1997 to May 2000 for President Clinton. [52] His report claimed that over 100,000 Albanian men had been herded into the Stadium at Pristina. The Agence France Presse reported that the stadium was empty, the grass in perfect condition and the groundskeeper claimed no one has been there. Rubin later simply denied having made the charge, however, the grand narrative was never corrected to the public and the West was left to believe that there had been more ethnic atrocities: once a massacre has been declared, it is rarely corrected if untrue.
While Americans are being manipulated by the power of the media, Serbian civilians were getting frustrated with the Western media: so frustrated that they will throw rocks at them to send them fleeing. Most Serbian officials refuse to even grant interviews to foreign-press reporters because they consider them to be part of an international conspiracy against the Serbian efforts. The Yugoslavs say they are fighting a war on two fronts: “against the separatist Albanians and the foreign press.“ [53]
The Federal Secretariat for Information in Belgrade issues press kits to foreign reportersto prevent any misunderstandings. “News has become a dirty business” says Sasa Aksentijevis, head of the foreign press department at the Yugoslav Secretariat for Information. “They are proud of their abilities to manipulate information,” [54] says Dusan Masic, a journalist with the leading radio station B-92 in Belgrade. He adds “you people in the international press really don’t know what you are writing about. You buy into the Ruder Finn line.” [55]
The undeniable truth is that public relations firms hold immense influence over the news stories that reach the general public, the general press, and the political decision makers in the United States. As such they invest considerable amounts of capital, employing celebrities and politicians whom lobby and donate funds to gain influence in congress, the White House, and in the media. It is their agenda to manipulate the system and achieve their own goals. Through their influences and manipulative techniques, the KLA-Ruder Finn propaganda campaign convinced the public that the Serbians were committing atrocities that must be stopped.
This support against Serbia offered the USA federal government and NATO the justification for the bombing, on the grounds of humanitarian intervention, and backed it with their own staged event: the failure of the Rambouillet Peace talks. The reality is that Clinton’s administration had long standing political and financial objectives for the attack, and later invasion of Kosovo: oil pipelines and $4 trillion profit.
Pipelines from the Caspian Sea had been discussed as early as 1991, when the fall of the USSR brought the oil-rich states clamoring for their independence and oil hungry nations rushing to assist, along with their National corporate oil magnates. [56] There was intense competition to swiftly gain oil contracts and to get oil pumping as soon as possible, to the Mediterranean and onto Rotterdam, The Netherlands, for export to the USA and certain European markets. Competition was tight to establish pipelines and tensions ran high as Nations clashed, combating for the best routes, the necessary alliances with host nations, critical security for the region, and the investor’s dollars.
Russia and the US were the most aggressive competitors in the pipeline war of the Balkan region. Russia has established projects with Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia: the US was left with Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania. This fact is crucial in that this pre-established relationship between Russia and Serbia dictated Clinton’s decision that the US would support the Albanians and the KLA, against Serbia because they were already working with Russia.
These business relationships between Russia, Serbia, Turkey and Greece left no alternative for the US except to run its 550 mile pipeline across the Balkans between Burgos, Bulgaria, and the Mediterranean port of Vlore in Albania, going through Macedonia. It would take four years to build such a pipe, at the cost of $1.13 billion, of which $930 million is to be provided by international donors, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the US Export-Import Bank, and the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation. [57] This extremely expensive and difficult project will reap huge profits, estimated at $4 trillion, and has already attracted the oil giants Texaco, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, BP, Amoco, Agip, and Total-ElFina, and individual oil tycoons.
By 1992, when Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense, under President Bush Senior, the Caspian oil had already been earmarked by America’s most powerful corporations, the oil conglomerates, to which Cheney, and Bush, are affiliated. This affiliation inspired the administration to award Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, a valuable contract to provide the US army with global support. The contract included the construction and maintenance of US military bases in Somalia, East Africa, at the cost of $62 million, and in Haiti, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo for a total of $133 million. Between 1995 and 2000, when Cheney went to work for Halliburton as the CEO, federal contracts for the Balkans nearly doubled from $1.2 to $2.3 billion. [58] The plan for Caspian oil is well established in Cheney’s political career.
The Balkan oil attracted attention throughout Europe and the USA. In 1994 the European Union's Council of Transport Ministers sanctioned an oil pipeline as a part of the East-West Corridor 8 infrastructure, a communication network that links east to west and includes a highway, railroad, gas pipeline and fiber-optic telecommunications line as well. [59] In 1996, when the US Trade and Development Agency contracted Brown and Root to conduct the first feasibility studies for the 850 km trans-Balkan oil pipeline, millions of US dollars were committed. [60] Dick Cheney was the connection between the US government, and 750,000 barrels a day of Caspian oil: an approximate value of $600 million a month. [61]
However, it was still necessary to award the pipeline contract so, in January 1997, Edward L. Ferguson, former Director of Oil & Gas Development for Europe and Africa for Brown & Root Energy Services was appointed CEO and President of the Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation, (AMBO) located in Pound Ridge, NY. In 1999, less than two years later, a portion of the Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline project, which held a budget of $826 million, was awarded to AMBO. Ferguson's responsibilities included identifying fiscal majority partners for the project. [62]
By September 1997 the wealth of the Caspian oil was declared public when the New York Times advised:
- Forget mutual funds, commodity futures and corporate mergers. Forget South African diamonds, European currencies and Thai stocks. The most concentrated mass of untapped wealth known to exist anywhere is in the oil and gas fields beneath the Caspian Sea and lands around it ... The strategic implications of this bonanza hypnotize Western security planners as completely as the finances transfix oil executives.” [63]
This type of announcement was sure to attract public investors and to increase the confidence of the oil producing nations.
In 1998, Cheney concurred “We go where the business is [and] I can’t think of a time when we’ve had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically important as the Caspian.” [64] By January 1999, the republic of Azerbaijan, landlocked between Russia, Iran, and the former Soviet republics, and estimated to be worth $4 trillion by the US News and World, sold its huge pool of Caspian Sea oil through 16 contracts with major oil companies. Azerbaijan also invited the USA, and NATO, to establish a military presence in their nation, undoubtedly under advice from the oil companies for security reasons.
The Washington Post noted that “with the Middle East increasingly fragile, we need bases and fly-over rights in the Balkans to protect Caspian sea oil” [65] and, hence, Brown and Root received another global support contract. Worth $180 million, the company was to build the newest US military base: Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. [66] Military bases brought security, and security brought investors, and investors would bring the financing for the pipeline.
The attack on Serbia and Kosovo was pre-planned by the US and NATO. Bombing on Kosovo and Serbia stopped on June 10 and on June 21, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (TDA) had already signed an agreement with the Bulgarian government to build an east-west oil pipeline across the Balkan peninsula. Within three weeks the US forces seized 1000 acres of farmland in southeast Kosovo at Uresevic and construction began on Camp Bondsteel. According to Colonel Robert L. McClure, quoted from the Bulletin, “Engineer planning for operations in Kosovo began months before the first bomb was dropped.” [67]
Brown and Root employed over 1,000 former US military personnel to work alongside 1,700 US military engineers and 7,000 Albanian locals 24 hours per day, 7 days a week to construct Camp Bondsteel. Brown and Root offered permanent employment to 5,000 Kosovo Albanians, becoming the largest employer in Kosovo. This local labor is cheap: Brown & Root pay them just $1-3 per hour, which they justify claiming that it prevents a perversion of the local economy. [68]
The military refer to Camp Bondsteel as the Grand Dame within the new and growing network of US bases that span the borders of Kosovo, Bulgaria, and Macedonia, stretching from the Black Sea through to the Albanian Mediterranean coast, they will follow the route of the pipeline, offering it security. Within the fences and watch towers of Bondsteel lie 25 kilometers of roadway and over 300 buildings, surrounded by 14 kilometers of earth and concrete barriers, 84 kilometers of concertina wire and 11 watchtowers. There are 24 hour gyms, retail districts and chapels, a library, and one of the best equipped hospitals anywhere in Europe. This is a permanent base.
In 2001, well informed sources situated in Brussels revealed that "the American administration wanted to lease certain military bases and buildings for 99 years, including Bondsteel the KFOR base in Kosovo, Yugoslav Army's radar base on Kopaonik Mountain, the military airport near Sjenica and additional buildings on Pester plateau." [69] Russian General Ivashov, the head of Russia’s Defense Ministry's Central International Military Cooperation Directorate at the time of the Kosovo war, testified in 2004, that the US National Security Council had already made a plan to attack Yugoslavia by 1997, and to install such bases. [70]
The other bases that are also conveniently located near to the proposed route of the AMBO pipeline are Camp Monteith on the Kosovo- Macedonia border, Camp Able Sentry in Macedonia, and a CIA and FBI “Balkan anti-terrorist center” [71] in Sofia, Bulgaria. These bases are to ensure oil-security for the region by using the US soldiers coming out of German bases, diverting them to the new bases in Hungary, Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Kosovo instead. It is impossible to locate all the US bases in the Balkans because “the outposts where they [US soldiers] may be living [are] abandoned buildings or schools.” [72]
Considerable US military force is on the ground in the Balkans, ready to guard the pipeline through the Balkans. During a visit to Camp Bondsteel in 2001, George W. Bush announced that the US military was committed to stay in the Balkans, [73] even though he had already committed to bring them home during his 2000 campaign. [74]
Approximately one year after the bombing of Kosovo and Serbia, in May 2000, the US Trade and Development Agency casually made its intentions public. A report was published claiming that a US pipeline was to cross the Balkans because the quantity of oil coming from the Caspian Sea would breach the safety limits placed upon the shipping lanes of the Bosphorus (the straits of Turkey.) The agency also acknowledged the “consistent source of oil to US refineries” that would provide “American companies with a key role in developing the east-west corridor 8” and would advance the “privatization aspirations of the US government in the regions.” [75] There was to be an oil pipeline with huge profits for the US corporations that had supported the political process.
The NATO bombs, which were never sanctioned by the UN, include the notoriously destructive cluster bombs, which have a high failure rate from the heights NATO dropped them, and have subsequently become landmines, [76] and did not constitute humanitarian intervention. According to The Marine Corps Gazette: “The resulting deaths of thousands of Serbian soldiers, civilians, and Kosovar Albanians and the displacement of hundreds of thousands more can hardly be considered as a victory for humanitarianism.” [77]
The fighting still may not yet be over because Kosovo has not yet gained its independence. In 2005, Florin Krasniqi, a Kosovo-Albanian roofer who lives in New York and smuggles weapons and supplies to the KLA, told 60 Minutes that he would continue to run guns to Kosovo till they do [gain independence]. He also said that “if we don’t get independence, there will be another war. Probably in a year or so. We were capable of luring NATO into our war, so I think we’ll be capable of pushing the UN out if we need to.” [78]
The attack on Kosovo and Serbia by the US and NATO has been exposed here as a quest for Caspian oil by the US federal government. This particular quest, as there are others, has brought the government into a ring of drug cartels, liars, known terrorists, and armed insurgencies and may have also jeopardized US national security by installing permanent bases in the region.
As frustration grows for Kosovo independence, there has been increasing Muslim violence that, since November 2002, according to NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson, required “the forces of the Atlantic alliance [to] cooperate with Serbian forces against "terrorist" activities in southwestern Serbia.” [79]
Such terrorist activities in Kosovo are foreseeable, however, it is alarming that there maybe an Albanian Muslim insurgency surfacing within the US because they have not received their independence. According to FBI director Robert Mueller, on May 7, 2007, US federal agents broke the Fort Dix Six before the “alleged Muslim terrorists launched their murderous attack on the military installation.” [80] Four of the six men are ethnic Albanians; one was a sniper in the Kosovo war. As the Financial Times put it “Now the biggest threat to a fragile peace in the Balkans comes from Albanian extremism.” Is this the war that Krasniqi threatened in 2005?
With such concerns is it feasible to grant Kosovo independence? Since 9/11, attitudes have changed towards known Muslim terrorists such as the KLA and since Spain, France, and England have all recently experienced homegrown terrorist actions, do they want to encourage Muslim states within their boundaries?
On this quest for Caspian oil the US government jeopardized the national security of the USA by affiliating with the KLA terrorists. They also allowed the American people to be manipulated by the media to support a corporate agenda and even bombed a sovereign nation for 78 days, killed 2,500 people and displaced millions in order to justify establishing new US bases across the Balkan region to protect their private oil pipeline.
The deceit and manipulation associated with the attack on Serbia and Kosovo is only despoiled more by the demoralizing fact that the US government deceived US military men and women into sacrificing their lives, believing it was for humanitarian reasons, when they were actually committed to arms purely to support private corporate advancement of profit. This fact needs to be understood by all Americans and those involved need to be held accountable.
[19] Dimitrije Bogdanovic “The Kosovo Question.” Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Volume DLXVI - Presidium No 2. 1995
[20] Velika Albanija. “Greater Albania: Concepts and Possible Consequences.: Ed Jovan M. Canak, Belgrade Institute of Geopolitical Studies, 1998
[21] US News and World Report, 03/01/99, vol. 126 issue 8, P42, 2/3P, 1c
[22] The Sunday Times, March 22, 1998
[23] Ben Works. “Articles on the KLA.” Serbian Network. July 1999.
[24] Chris Stephen. “Bin Laden opens European terror base in Albania.” Sunday Times. November 29, 1998
[25] Steve Rodan.”Kosovo seen as a new Islamic Bastion.” Jerusalem Post, September 14, 1998
[26] Times of London, November 26, 1998
[27] David Steinmann. The Middle East News Line, April 8, 1999
[28] Washington Times, May 1999
[29] Srdja Trifkovic. “Osama Bin Laden: the Balkan Connection” The Chronicles. September,2001.
[30] The London Times, March 24, 1999
[31] San Francisco Chronicle, May 5, 1999
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Clark, Wesley. Waging Modern War. Cambridge MA: Perseus Books, 2002.
Committee on Foreign Relations Unite States Senate. The Crisis in Kosovo. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998.
Daalder, Ivo and Michael O’Hanlon. Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo. Washington: The Brookings Institute Press, 2000.
DiPrizio, Robert C. Armed Humanitarians. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2002.
Edwards, David, and David Cromwell. Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media. London: Pluto Press, 2006.
King, Iain, and Whit Mason. Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo. New York: Cornell University Press, 2006.
Gilboa, Eytan., ed. Media and Conflict: Framing Issues, Making Policy and Shaping Opinions. New York: Transnational Publishers, 2002.
Gokay, Bulent. “Oil, War and Geopolitics from Kosovo to Afghanistan” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, Volume 4, Number 1, 2002.
Hammond, Philip, and Edward Herman, ed. Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis. London: Pluto Press, 2000.
Kosovo: Of Blood and History, Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 2001, videocassette.
Ignatieff, Michael. Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond. New York: Picador Books, 2000.
Joksimovich, Vojin. Kosovo Crisis. Los Angeles: Graphics Management Press, 1999.
Lessons of Kosovo: The Limits of Air Power, Produced by America’s Defense Monitor, 2003.
Washington DC. 1 DVD. McLaughlin, Greg. The War Correspondent. London: Pluto Press, 2002.
Mertus, Julie A. Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999.
Norris, John. Collision Course: Nato, Russia, and Kosovo . Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2005.
Human Rights Watch. Not on the Agenda: The Continuing Failure to Address Accountability in Kosovo. Washington D.C.: Human Rights Press, 2004.
Pika, Joseph A. and John A. Maltese. The Politics of the Presidency. Washington: CQ Press, 2004.
Stojanovic, Srdjan D. “Spinning Kosovo: Media and Propoganda in a Post Modern War”, The Center for Peace in the Balkans, 1999, 13 March 2000, http://balkanpeace.org/library/spinn1.html.
Sullivan, Stacy. Be Not Afraid, For you Have Brothers in America. New York: Saint Martins Press, 2004.
The Brooklyn Connection: How to Build a Guerrilla Army, a film by Klaartje Quirijns. 2 hours. Films Transit, 2005. 1 DVD.
Thomas, Raju, ed. Yugoslavia Unraveled: Sovereignty, Self-Determination, Intervention. Oxford: Lexington Books, 2003.
Ramet, Sabrina P., Thinking About Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Wall, Andru E., ed. Legal and Ethical Lessons of NATO’s Kosovo Campaign. Rhode Island: Naval War College, 2002.
War In Europe, produced by Peter Boyer, Frontline Films, 1999, videocassette. Tapes 1, 2 and 3.
War Photographer, a film by Christian Frei, 2001. 1 DVD
Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War, produced by George Bogdanich and Martin Lettmayer, 3 hours, Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 2002, videocassette
Willcox, David. Propaganda, the Press and Conflict. Oxford: Routlage, 2005.
Newspapers and Catalogue:
Associated Press
CIA World Fact Book
Financial Times, April 1999-November 2006
Guradian Newspapers Limited, February 2001-June 2005
Jerusalem Post, September 1998 - August 2001
Le Figaro Library of Congress Online Catalogue Middle East News Line, April 1999 - June 2006
Reuters San-Diago Union Tribune, July 2001 - Aug 2001
San Francisco Chronicle, May 1999 - January 2004
The Seattle Post Intelligencer, April 1999 - June 2007 The Sunday Times, March 1998- September 2001
US News and World Report, March 1999 - May 2007
Washington Times, May 1999 - April 1999 - June 200