Wesley Clark War Crimes amply documented:

NATO's War of Aggression against Yugoslavia

General Wesley Clark, NATO's Supreme commander in Europe, confirmed in late May that "NATO'S air campaign has not reached its peak yet and the alliance should be prepared for more civilian casualties.". General Clark also confirmed that "he would be seeking to increase the number of air strikes in Kosovo and expand the range of targets.

As the bombings entered their third month, there was also a noticeable change in "NATO rhetoric". The Alliance had become increasingly unrepentant, NATO officials were no longer apologising for civilian casualties, claiming that the latter were contributing to "helping Milosevic's propaganda machine." 

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Low Intensity Nuclear War

With NATO air-strikes entering their third month, a new stage of the War has unfolded. NATO's "humanitarian bombings" have been stepped up leading to mounting civilian casualties and human suffering. Thirty percent of those killed in the bombings are children.¹ In addition to the use of cluster bombs, the Alliance is waging a "low intensity nuclear war" using toxic radioactive shells and missiles containing depleted uranium. Amply documented, the radioactive fall-out causes cancer potentially affecting millions of people for generations to come. According to a recent scientific report, "the first signs of radiation on children including herpes on the mouth and skin rashes on the back and ankles" have been observed in Yugoslavia since the beginning of the bombings.²

In addition to the radioactive fall-out which has contaminated the environment and the food chain, the Alliance has also bombed Yugoslavia's major chemical and pharmaceutical plants. The bombing of Galenika, the largest medicine factory in Yugoslavia has contributed to releasing dangerous, highly toxic fumes. When NATO forces bombed plants of the Pancevo petrochemical complex in mid-April "fire broke out and huge quantities of chlorine, ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride monomer flowed out. Workers at Pancevo, fearing further bombing attacks that would blow up dangerous materials, released tons of ethylene dichloride, a carcinogen, into the Danube."³ 

Nato to the "Rescue of Ethnic Albanians"

Ethnic Albanians have not been spared by NATO air raids. Killing ethnic Albanians in Kosovo is said to be "inevitable" in carrying out a "humanitarian operation on behalf of ethnic Albanians". In addition to the impacts of the ground war between the KLA and the Yugoslav Armed Forces, the bombings and the resulting radioactive fall-out in Kosovo have been more devastating than in the rest of Yugoslavia.

Presented as a humanitarian mission, the evidence amply confirms that NATO's brutal air raids of towns and villages in Kosovo have triggered the exodus of refugees. Those who have fled their homes to refugee camps in Macedonia and Albania have nothing to return to, nothing to look forward to... An entire country has been destroyed, its civilian industry and public infrastructure transformed into rubble. Bridges, power plants, schools and hospitals are displayed as "legitimate military targets" selected by NATO's Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) in Vicenza, Italy and carefully "validated prior to the pilot launching his strike."

With the "diplomatic shuttle" still ongoing, the Alliance is intent on inflicting as much damage on the Yugoslav economy (including Kosovo) as possible prior to reaching a G8 brokered "peace initiative" which will empower them to send in ground troops. "Allied commanders have steadily widened their list of economic targets... Increasingly, the impact of NATO air strikes has put people out of work... causing water shortages in Belgrade, Novi Sad and other Serbian cities. ... [T]he effect was to shut down businesses, strain hospitals' ability to function and cut off water..."⁴. Some 115 medical institutions have been damaged of which several have been totally demolished. And hospital patients --including children and the elderly-- are dying due to the lack of water and electricity...⁵

General Wesley Clark, NATO's Supreme commander in Europe, confirmed in late May that "NATO'S air campaign has not reached its peak yet and the alliance should be prepared for more civilian casualties."⁶. General Clark also confirmed that "he would be seeking to increase the number of air strikes in Kosovo and expand the range of targets.⁷ As the bombings entered their third month, there was also a noticeable change in "NATO rhetoric". The Alliance had become increasingly unrepentant, NATO officials were no longer apologising for civilian casualties, claiming that the latter were contributing to "helping Milosevic's propaganda machine." 

Extending the Conflict Beyond the Balkans

Drowned in the barrage of media images and self-serving analyses, the broader strategic interests and economic causes of the War go unmentioned. The late Sean Gervasi writing in 1995 had anticipated an impending War. According to Gervasi, Washington's strategic goals stretched well beyond the Balkans. They largely consisted in "installing a Western-style regime in Yugoslavia and reducing the geographic area, power and influence of Serbia to a minimum...."⁸

In this context, the installation of American power in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean also constitutes a step towards the extension of Washington's geopolitical sphere of influence beyond the Balkans into the area of the Caspian Sea, Central Asia and West Asia.

In this regard, NATO's military intervention in Yugoslavia (in violation of international law) also sets a dangerous precedent. It provides "legitimacy" to future military interventions. To achieve its strategic objectives, national economies are destabilised, regional conflicts are financed through the provision of covert support to armed insurgencies... In other words, the conflict in Yugoslavia creates conditions which provide legitmacy to future interventions of the Alliance into the "internal affairs of sovereign nations".

The consolidation of American strategic interests in Eastern Europe, the Balkans (and beyond) was not only marked by the enlargement of NATO (with the accession of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic as NATO members) barely two weeks before the beginning of the bombings, the War in Yugoslavia also coincided with a critical split in geopolitical alignments within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

In late April, Georgia, the Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldava signed a pact in Washington, creating GUUAM, a regional alliance which lies strategically at the hub of the Caspian oil and gas wealth, "with Moldava and the Ukraine offering [pipeline] export routes to the West".⁹ This geopolitical split bears a direct relationship to the crisis in Yugoslavia. The region is already unstable marked by nationalist conflicts and separatist movements.

The members of this new pro-NATO political grouping not only tacitly support the bombings in Yugoslavia, they have also agreed to "low level military cooperation" with NATO while insisting that "the group is not a military alliance directed against any third party, namely Moscow."¹⁰

Dominated by Western oil interests, the formation of GUUAM is not only intent on excluding Russia from the oil and gas deposits in the Caspian area but also in isolating Moscow politically thereby potentially re-igniting Cold War divisions... 

The War Has Stalled Nuclear Arms Controls

In turn, the War in Yugoslavia has significantly stalled nuclear arms-control initiatives leading to the cancellation of an exchange program "that would have had US and Russian nuclear weapons officers in constant contact at year's end to prevent any launches as a result of Year 2000 computer troubles."¹¹

Moreover, Russia's military has also voiced its concern "that the bombing of Yugoslavia could turn out in the very near future to be just a rehearsal for similar strikes on Russia."¹².

According to Dr. Mary-Wynne Ashford, co-president of the Nobel Peace Prize winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the impact of NATO bombings of Yugoslavia "on nuclear weapons policy is an extremely serious development... Russians feel a sense of betrayal by the West... because NATO took this action outside the UN."¹³

Aleksander Arbatov, deputy chairman of the Defence Committee of the Russian State Duma U.S.-Russian relations describes the War in Yugoslavia as the "worst most acute, most dangerous juncture since the U.S.-Soviet Berlin and Cuban missile crises."¹⁴ According to Arbatov:

"START II is dead, co-operation with NATO is frozen, co-operation on missile defence is out of the question, and Moscow's willingness to co-operate on non-proliferation issues is at an all-time low. Moreover, anti-U.S. sentiment in Russia is real, deep and more wide-spread than ever, and the slogan describing NATO action - "today Serbia, tomorrow Russia," is "deeply planted in Russian's minds."...¹⁵ Mary-Wynne Ashford also warns that whereas Russia was moving towards integration with Europe, they [the Russians] now:

".... perceive their primary threat from the West. Officials in [Russia's] Foreign Affairs (Arms Control and Disarmament) told us that Russia has no option but to rely on nuclear weapons for its defence because its conventional forces are inadequate.... Even if the bombings stop now, the changes in Russia's attitude toward the West, its renewed reliance on nuclear weapons with thousands on high alert, and its loss of confidence in international law leave us vulnerable to catastrophe.... This crisis makes de-alerting nuclear weapons more urgent than ever. To those who say the Russian threat is all rhetoric, I reply that rhetoric is what starts wars".¹⁶ 

The Media War: "Silencing the Silent Majority"

This war is also "a War against the Truth". With protest movements developing around the World, NATO has reinforced its clutch over the mass media. In a stylised ("wag the dog") media mascarade, the Alliance is relentlessly portrayed as "the saviour of ethnic Albanian Kosovars". A full-fledged "cover-up operation" has been set in motion with a view to thwarting public debate on the War. The hidden agenda is to "silence the silent majority." The Western media heeding to the Alliance's demands has blatantly misled public opinion. Casually portrayed on TV screens, civilian deaths are justified as inevitable "collateral damage". According to the Pentagon, "there is no such thing as clean combat."¹⁷

Meanwhile, anti-war commentators (including former ambassadors and OSCE officials) have been carefully removed from mainstream public affairs programmes, TV content is closely scrutinised, the images of civilian deaths and destruction relayed from Belgrade are seldomly and selectively displayed, journalists are under tight supervision. While the media does not hesitate to criticize NATO for having committed "errors" and "tragic mistakes", the legitimacy of the military operation and its "humanitarian mandate" are not questioned:

"Public opinion is confronted with a loaded question which allows only one answer. In the present war, that question is, "Doesn't ethnic cleansing have to be stopped?" This simplification allows the media to portray Yugoslavia rather than NATO as the aggressor. The alliance, in a complete inversion of reality, is presented as conducting an essentially defensive war on behalf of the Kosovar Albanians..." when in fact ethnic Albanians are the principle victims of NATO's "humanitarian bombings."¹⁸

According to NATO's propaganda machine, "ethnic Albanians do not flee the bombings" and the ground war between the KLA and the Yugoslav Army. According to Diana Johnstone this makes them "nearly unique [because] throughout history, civilians have fled from war zones.... No, as we have heard repeatedly from NATO spokesmen and apologists, Kosovo Albanians run away from only one thing: brutal ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbs."¹⁹

The refugee crisis we are told by NATO is limited to Kosovo. Yet the evidence (withheld by the Western media) confirms that people throughout Serbia are fleeing major cities:

Reliable estimates put the number of refugees who have left Belgrade to escape the bombing at 400,000. Most are women and children, as with the Kosovo Albanians. At least another 500,000 have left Serbia's other cities, notably Novi Sad and Nish, where NATO bombing has caused air pollution, cut the water supply, and struck purely civilian targets such as market squares. Altogether, according to the Italian daily "Il Manifesto", the NATO bombing has produced at least a million refugees in Serbia. Predrag Simic, foreign policy adviser to Serbian opposition leader Vuk Draskovic, told a Paris conference [in late May] that Kosovo was being so thoroughly devastated by NATO bombing that nobody, neither Albanians nor Serbs, would be able to go back and live there".²⁰

 

Who is Responsible for War Crimes?

Public "disapproval" of NATO bombings is immediately dismissed as "Serb propaganda". Those who speak out against NATO are branded as "apologists of Milosevic". While most anti-War critics in NATO countries are not defenders of the Milosevic regime, they are nonetheless expected to be "balanced" in their arguments. "Looking at both sides of the picture is the rule": anti-war commentators are invited to echo NATO's fabricated media consensus, to unequivocally "join the bandwagon" against Milosevic. Under these circumstances, an objective understanding and analysis of the role of the Milosovic government since the civil War in Bosnia and in the context of the present crisis in Kosovo has been rendered virtually impossible.

Media double standards? Whereas President Milosevic and four members of his government were indicted by the Hague International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) (late May) for organising a policy of "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo, the news media failed to mention that several parallel law suits were launched at The Hague Tribunal (ICTY), accusing NATO leaders of "crimes against humanity."²¹

It is also worth mentioning that the UK government (whose Prime Minister Tony Blair is among the list of accused in one of the parallel law suits) has provided The Hague Tribunal with "intelligence on the situation within Kosovo" since the beginning of the bombings.²² Part of this intelligence material was relayed by the KLA with which British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has been in frequent contact as well as through British Special Forces (SAS) directly collaborating with the KLA. 

Law Suit Directed Against Nato Leaders

In May, a group of 15 Canadian lawyers and law professors together with the American Association of Jurists (with members in more than 20 countries) launched a suit against NATO leaders at the ICTY in the Hague.²³ The suit points to "open violation" of the United Nations Charter, the NATO treaty, the Geneva Conventions and the "Principles of International Law Recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal". The latter makes: "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances" a crime.²⁴

The list of crimes allegedly committed by NATO leaders includes:

"wilful killing, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, extensive destruction of property,... employment of poisonous weapons [implying radioactive fall-out] or other weapons to cause unnecessary suffering, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity,... "²⁵

Under the terms of reference of the ICTY "a person who planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of a crime shall be individually responsible for the crime" and "the official position of any accused person, whether as Head of State or Government or as a responsible Government official, shall not relieve such person of criminal responsibility or mitigate punishment."²⁶

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson (and former President of Ireland) confirmed in Geneva on 30 April that the Prosecutor of the War Crimes Tribunal (ICTY) has the mandate not only to prosecute Serb forces but that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and NATO may also come under scrutiny, "if it appears that serious violations of international humanitarian law have occurred."

According to Walter J. Rockler, former prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials:

"The bombing war also violates and shreds the basic provisions of the United Nations Charter and other conventions and treaties; the attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent "Polish atrocities" against Germans. The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok."²⁷

Articles by Michel Chossudovsky on Yugoslavia:

On the KLA: http://www.transnational.org/features/crimefinansed.html

On the break-up of Yugoslavia: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/022.html

 and http://www.lbbs.org/yugoslavia.htm

 On the impact of the bombings:http://www.diaspora-net.org/food4thought/chossudovsky.htm

DEPLETED URANIUM:

The Use of Weapons banned by International Convention

The NATO bombings have also used of weapons banned by international conventions. Amply documented by scientific reports, the cruise missiles utilize DEPLETED URANIUM "highly toxic to humans, both chemically as a heavy metal and radiologically as an alpha particle emitter". Since the gulf War, depleted uranium (DU) has been a substitute for lead in bullets and missiles. According to scientists "it is most likely a major contributor to the Gulf War Syndrome experienced both by the veterans and the people of Iraq". According radiobiologist Dr. Rosalie Bertell, president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health:

"When used in war, the depleted uranium (DU) bursts into flame [and] releasing a deadly radioactive aerosol of uranium, unlike anything seen before. It can kill everyone in a tank. This ceramic aerosol is much lighter than uranium dust. It can travel in air tens of kilometres from the point of release, or be stirred up in dust and resuspended in air with wind or human movement. It is very small and can be breathed in by anyone: a baby, pregnant woman, the elderly, the sick. This radioactive ceramic can stay deep in the lungs for years, irradiating the tissue with powerful alpha particles within about a 30 micron sphere, causing emphysema and/or fibrosis. The ceramic can also be swallowed and do damage to the gastro-intestinal tract. In time, it penetrates the lung tissue and enters into the blood stream. ...It can also initiate cancer or promote cancers which have been initiated by other cancinogens".

According to Paul Sullivan, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center:

"In Yugoslavia, it's expected that depleted uranium will be fired in agricultural areas, places where livestock graze and where crops are grown, thereby introducing the spectre of possible contamination of the food chain."

The New York based International Action Center called the Pentagon's decision to use the A-10 "Warthog" jets against targets in Serbia "a danger to the people and environment of the entire Balkans". (Truth in Media, 10 April 1999). In this regard, a report in from Greece:

"registered an increase in levels of toxic substances in the atmosphere of Greece, and said that Albania, Macedonia, Italy, Austria and Hungary all face a potential threat to human health as a result of NATO's bombing of Serbia, which includes the use of radioactive depleted uranium shells".
(see Truth in Media, 10 April 1999).

What is not conveyed by the international media, is that people of all ethnic origins including ethnic Albanians, Serbs and other ethnic groups are leaving Kosovo largely as a result of the bombing.

There are reports that ethnic Albanians have left Kosovo for Belgrade where they have relatives. There are 100,000 ethnic Albanians in Belgrade. The press has confirmed movements of ethnic Albanians to Montenegro. Montenegro has been portrayed as a separate country, as a safe-haven against the Serbs. The fact of the matter is that Montenegro is part of Yugoslavia.

FOR MORE, VISIT:

http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/DepletedUranium.html

Milica Rakic, 3 years old, Belgrade, FRY... Her only sin or guilt (whichever suites you) was that, despite the horror that was happening to her country, she tried to live her short, innocent life. She was also a victim of Wesley Clark's war. Wesley Clark today calls himself an Anti-War candidate, but for Milica Rakic, he is her murderer!

NATO cluster bombs take their toll in Kosovo

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Apr 28, 1999 (AFP) - When seven cousins from the Koxha [Albanian] family found a yellow tube attached to a mushroom-shaped cloth in a pasture, they thought it was a toy.

They did not imagine it was a cluster bomb that would soon kill five of them and seriously injure two others, said Besnik Koxha, one of the wounded survivors.

The Koxhas, ethnic Albanians from Doganovic village, 55 kilometers (30 miles) south of Pristina, were among the latest casualties of cluster bombs dropped on Kosovo by NATO warplanes.

Rade Grbic [a Serb], director of the main hospital in Kosovo's capital Pristina, said his staff has treated "between 300 and 400" people wounded by cluster bombs since NATO raids began March 24.

"But there were also many people killed by these bombs," he said.

Besnik Hoxha, 14, and his brother Ardijen, 2, suffered shrapnel injuries even though they were at least 20 meters (yards) from their five cousins who played with the cluster bomb when it went off, Grbic said.

"I have worked in this crisis region for 15 years and treated many injuries, but I have never seen such horrific wounds as those caused by cluster bombs," he says.

"These wounds lead most often to disability, people lose their limbs."

Cluster bombs are most commonly used against concentrations of tanks and infantry soldiers on a battlefield, according to a source close to the Yugoslav army in Kosovo.

"The yellow tubes and so-called 'parachutes' found throughout the province indicate that most of the cluster bombs dropped by NATO in Kosovo come from a CBU-87 system," the source said.

"This system consists of more than 200 mini-cluster bombs loaded in a dispenser which is delivered by aircraft," he said.

"At a certain height, the dispenser releases the bombs," he said. "But not all of them explode when they fall in the field."

At NATO headquarters in Brussels, an official confirmed that the alliance is using cluster bombs, but only those designed to destroy tanks [sic!] and other armored vehicles.

"There are two types -- anti-material and anti-personnel," the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We are using the first."

But he acknowledged that civilians could become casualties if they tamper with unexploded cluster bombs.

According to the authoritative "Jane's Air-Launched Weapons" directory, the US-made CBU-87 "combined effects munition" is a "free-fall cluster bomb" comprising 202 "multi-purpose bomblets."

Each bomblet is capable of "defeating up to 177mm (seven inches) of armor," and has fire-starting capabilities as well, Jane's said.

But it added: "The bomblet also has a fragmenting case which gives it a good anti-material/personnel capability."

In a combat zone like Kosovo, civilians and military live and operate close to each other which leaves great risk for civilian casualties from cluster bombs, especially those left unexploded.

An AFP reporter in Kosovo has seen dozens of unexploded cluster bombs in three places -- at [Serb monastery] Gracanica, seven kilometers southeast of Pristina; Merdare, five kilometers northeast of Podujevo, in the north; and in the area of Urosevac, in the south on the road to Macedonia.

It was in the area south of Urosevac that the five Koxha cousins were killed.

"There are villages in Kosovo where large portions of space cannot be accessed because of a huge number of unexploded bombs," Grbic said.

"Even when the war is over, they will be a big problem, because no one knows the exact number of unexploded cluster bombs on our territory."