quote:

---

agreb/Belgrade - Croatia cleared a huge black mark on its international record following the announcement Thursday of the arrest of its most wanted war crimes suspect, general Ante Gotovina.

Gotovina, 50, was arrested on the Canary Island of Tenerife by Spanish police on Wednesday night. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Carla del Ponte, said Croatia was instrumental in his arrest.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rikardo:
Thanks for the info. This guy was just a military, although apparently a general. None of the Croatian (or the Bosnian Muslim, or the Kosovar Albanian) political leadership has been arrested, like those who planned the expulsion of the Serbs from the Krajina. Only the Serb politicians have been arrested plus some Kosovar official who was a soldier in the war) This will make the Madeleine Albright Tribunal, financed largely by NATO, look good to the West which needs to believe that, unlike the Bush attack on Iraq, which was EVIL, the Clinton attack on Yugoslavia?Serbia was GOOD.

---

I tend to beleive that any intervention which stops genocide, and puts an end to a war as good. There are a few Bosniacs on the wanted list. The numbers do not match up though for opportunity. It is hard to go out and commit war crimes when you are busy on the ropes just trying to keep from being knocked down. The Bosniacs spent the majority of the war on the defensive, very few offensive operations were launched by them.

Now, of course, I could and do argue that there were fewer Bosniacs commiting war crimes, because they were happy with Tito's vision of one nation for all three ethnic groups. A fair number of Bosnian Serbs and Croats served along side of Bosnian Muslims during the war (the only faction which is the case, the other two players were ethnically pure).

Overall, I think the ICYC is fair.

We will see whether the Milosevic group will come to this accused's aid, since they think otherwise.

quote:

---

Carla del Ponte, said Croatia was instrumental in his arrest.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeff house:
I think he will get a fair trial at the ICYC. I disagree with those who have complained about the court's rules and procedures, as well as funding.

Overall, I think the ICYC is fair.

We will see whether the Milosevic group will come to this accused's aid, since they think otherwise.

I mean, if it is a matter of principle, I presume they will.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by swallow:

This may be the most hopeful sign of all coming out of the arrest. Governments in the region seem increasingly willing to hand over their war crminals, an encouraging erosion in absolutist nationalism and a hopeful sign for the possibility of eventual reconciliation.

---

"It's pretty to think so."

Hemingway, last line of the Sun Also Rises.

Ala Auguso Pinochet, some of the attempts to prosecute Sharon, and recently a civil suit against an Shin Bet operative for killing a bunch of Palestinians with a one ton bomb. Funny though, it seems as if some people are disqualified from the process as if there is some silent hand guiding the actions of the bodies empowered to adminstrate international law, so as to make some persons available for prosecution and others not?

quote:

---

...It has taken 10 years but something remarkable has started to happen...

...Bosnians of all three nationalities have begun arresting their own suspected war criminals. Eleven hundred are currently under investigation.

This year a pan-Bosnian state tribunal was set up under the auspices of the International High Representative, Paddy Ashdown.

But it is not internationally administered.

Suspects appear before Bosnian prosecutors and Bosnian judges - Serbs, Croats and Muslims sitting together in pursuit of a justice that, for the first time, is not distorted by ethnic loyalties...

---

quote:

---

Tens of thousands of Croatians have attended a rally in support of General Ante Gotovina in the coastal town of Split, after the long-time fugitive's transfer to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

[SNIP]

For many Croats, the circumstances leading up to the arrest remain a mystery. The Croatian government, which told UN war crimes investigators that he was not in Croatia, has denied reports that it provided the war crimes investigators and Spanish police with his mobile phone number.

According to well-informed sources, months of phone taps of the general's wife, Dunja, and his friend, financier Hrvoje Petrac, arrested last August in Greece, led to the detention. Mr Grgic is said to fear for his life as many in Croatia regard him as a traitor to the national hero.

---

"Clinton was not a crusader like Bush. He was a humanitarian"

Another Clinton-lover. Why is it that the more we hate Bush, the more we love Clinton?

Is that Western dualism? The more we hate the Devil the more we prove our love for God. Clinton did not oppose the invasion of Iraq and the Democrats wanted to increase the military commitment.

It was the Republican Eisenhower who put an end to the war the Democrats had begun by their implication in the Korean civil war in 1950. And Wilson who got America into the First World War, with the help of Canadian propogandists, was a Democrat. I read that he pressured Kerensky, the moderate of the February 1917 Russian Revolution, to stay in the War. This led to the October Revolution because only Lenin promised an end to the war with Germany.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rikardo:
Quote:

"Clinton was not a crusader like Bush. He was a humanitarian"

Another Clinton-lover. Why is it that the more we hate Bush, the more we love Clinton?

Is that Western dualism? The more we hate the Devil the more we prove our love for God. Clinton did not oppose the invasion of Iraq and the Democrats wanted to increase the military commitment.

It was the Republican Eisenhower who put an end to the war the Democrats had begun by their implication in the Korean civil war in 1950. And Wilson who got America into the First World War, with the help of Canadian propogandists, was a Democrat. I read that he pressured Kerensky, the moderate of the February 1917 Russian Revolution, to stay in the War. This led to the October Revolution because only Lenin promised an end to the war with Germany.

There's no oil in Yugoslavia but its a very strategic area to control. US Military Camp Bondsteel helps. Is Madeleine Albright another humanitarian ?

---

How on earth is this a strategic area to control? Given the nature of the US armed forces and capabilities, it is as strategic as middle of no where Iowa (though Iowa has sentimental value), meaning it costs money and is useless to them.

Time to bust this myth wide open. The former Yugoslavia fell apart thanks to one man and his actions. That man is Slobodan Milosovic. His actions WRT Kosovo on 28 Mar 1989 caused a great panic in all of Yugoslavia. The resoponse, later that year Sept 1989 Solvenia passed resolutions to accede from the Federation.

Serbia's response (they were the controlling aspect of the Yugoslav Communist party), was first to indirectly threaten Slovenia... Then they sent the army. Croatia blocked said army, hence causing further ethnic tensions now. The rest, well, resulted in war and attempted genocide.

The Serb people do not share the blame for this. Slobodan Milosovic and his advisers however should, must, and are being called on to account for their actions.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Reason:

How on earth is this a strategic area to control? Given the nature of the US armed forces and capabilities, it is as strategic as middle of no where Iowa (though Iowa has sentimental value), meaning it costs money and is useless to them.

---

That is a completely errounseous summation of the strategic value of the Balkans.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cueball:
Think for a second. Actually two. Now take out your history books and a map. Now think again.

---

I suppose it's sort of close to the Bosperous and the Black Sea . . . but not really.

It's sort of close to Turkey and the Middle East . . . but not really.

You could control the Agean Sea I guess, which would have been really useful . . . two-thousand years ago.

It's still a long way to Russia, and Romania doesn't really have that much oil anymore, if you're trying to go the "OMG! It's all about the oil!" route. Its neighbours are all already NATO members.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cueball:

That is a completely errounseous summation of the strategic value of the Balkans.

Think for a second. Actually two. Now take out your history books and a map. Now think again.

---

Thinking from a startegic military point of view. What is the Balkens value? Now, work into this, the fact that the US has a firm base in Germany, and I forgot to mention Italy, and potential use of Greece. The ground is ok to build bases in, but resupply is problematic over long stretches of ground. Could resupply by air, which makes aircraft vulnerable.

No, if I was a commander, I would not see much strategic value in the Balkens. I would have an interest in keeping any internal struggle inside the borders of the Former Yugoslavia, but that would be the extent of my interest.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Andrew_Jay:
How about you tell us what's so strategic about the Balkans.

I suppose it's sort of close to the Bosperous and the Black Sea . . . but not really.

It's sort of close to Turkey and the Middle East . . . but not really.

You could control the Agean Sea I guess, which would have been really useful . . . two-thousand years ago.

It's still a long way to Russia, and Romania doesn't really have that much oil anymore, if you're trying to go the "OMG! It's all about the oil!" route. Its neighbours are all already NATO members.

The most insidious crackpot theory about the intervention in the Balkans that I've heard is that it broke up Yugoslav socialism and paved the way for eventually entry into the E.U. Even that's still foolishness.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Andrew_Jay:
For sure, Croatian and Bosnian entry into NATO and the E.U. is a good thing, but that wasn't the reason there's been a major western presence in the region since the early 1990's, as some people would try to claim.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Reason:

Thinking from a startegic military point of view. What is the Balkens value? Now, work into this, the fact that the US has a firm base in Germany, and I forgot to mention Italy, and potential use of Greece. The ground is ok to build bases in, but resupply is problematic over long stretches of ground. Could resupply by air, which makes aircraft vulnerable.

---

Ok. Here is one thing. There is not essential reason to believe that after the collapese of the USSR, that Russia itself would not continue, after a short lapse, again seek to dominate Eastern European politics and be a threat to Western interests. Absorbing or otherwise intergrating the former communist European states immediatly when it became possible, means that Russian power is further contained and manageable.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Reason:

Three trips there... I know the reason why the west came into the Balkens. CNN.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cueball:

This is of course a joke. Isn't it?

---

Not in the least. I was following the developments in the Balkens before western involvement. There was barely a blip on the radar prior to CNN and other news agencies airing footage from sniper ally, and other places.

People talked strategic value of the balkens. There is none. It is a money pit. We gain nothing economically, nor strategically from this area. This is the obstacle that I would tie my defenses off to, not the objective, nor the defenses itself.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cueball:

Ok. Here is one thing. There is not essential reason to believe that after the collapese of the USSR, that Russia itself would not continue, after a short lapse, again seek to dominate Eastern European politics and be a threat to Western interests. Absorbing or otherwise intergrating the former communist European states immediatly when it became possible, means that Russian power is further contained and manageable.

Why would Western Europe not to hobble the Russian Eastern European power while the Russian state was in a regressive political power position?

---

For all your good points you are not a grand strategy thinker.

Even now they ssem to be making efforts to reasset themeselves:

War games with China (the firsts ever.) A policy of no more retreats (War in Chechnya.) trilateral deals on security between China, Uzbekistan and Russia.

It like you took a snap shot of Russias armies fleeing from Smolensk in 1812 and are saying, look the Russian are finished, "Vive la emperor!"

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cueball:
Oh! I see and that is how it is, and how it always will be.

For all your good points you are not a grand strategy thinker.

Even now they ssem to be making efforts to reasset themeselves:

War games with China (the firsts ever.) A policy of no more retreats (War in Chechnya.) trilateral deals on security between China, Uzbekistan and Russia.

It like you took a snap shot of Russias armies fleeing from Smolensk in 1812 and are saying, look the Russian are finished, "Vive la emperor!"

Russia has retreated before. And American and European polciy makers are not blind to this fact.

---

The Russians have a conscript army, that is unmotivated first off. Second, the Russians are pushing hard to become closer with us now. During the time frame of the start of the war in the Former Yugoslavia, strategically speaking, the Russians were not a consideration.

The only advantage the Russians have now is they do have battle hardened troops thanks to Chechna... Of course, I shjould say battle wary, as that is more appropriate (this is also the case with the Americans).

quote:

---

Originally posted by Reason:

The Russians have a conscript army, that is unmotivated first off. Second, the Russians are pushing hard to become closer with us now. During the time frame of the start of the war in the Former Yugoslavia, strategically speaking, the Russians were not a consideration.

---

Russian conscript armies beat Napoleon and Hitler. It was once said, by I can't remember whom, but that much has been made of the umprofessional and drunken nature of the Russian army, but that it should be remebered that "drunk they fought the Germans at Stalingrad, and drunk they marched to Berlin."

And if it is the case that the Russians were not a factor, why were they operating as peacekeepers in Yugolslavia, in such a position so that they could unilaterally and precipitously take over the Pristina airport in Kosovo in a stand off with British troops.

Here is a little more detailed look at some of the ways the Russian see there relationship with their historical Balkan ally the Serbs:

quote:

---

Thus, in June 1999, Kvashnin had already successfully bypassed Sergeyev and after getting a nod from Yelπtsin, marched a column of Russian paratroopers through Serbia into the Kosovoπs capital Pristina to overtake advancing Western peacekeepers. At the time, this move was extremely popular in Russia: Many believed that the West was snubbed and Russian influence in the Balkans enhanced.

Today, we know that only by chance did advancing, heavily armed British troops fail to obey an order by NATOπs supreme commander U.S. General Wesley Clark, to attack the small Russian contingent and oust them from Pristinaπs airport. A British general saved Russiaπs dignity, but our influence in the Balkans soon decreased to zero and several years later, in acknowledgment of strategic defeat, all Russian peacekeepers were withdrawn from the former Yugoslavia – a decision also made by Kvashnin.

During the 1990s, the Russian military was an unhappy and disillusioned force. Russian solders were almost starving, surviving on a diet of bread, potatoes and cabbage. Officersπ pay was low and irregular, they had to endure bad housing and poor career prospects in the face of defense cuts. With Sergeyev and Kvashnin pulling the Russian military in different directions, creating havoc and internal strife, meaningful reform was impossible.

In 2000, Putin declared military reform a national priority. Putinπs close associate Sergei Ivanov – a former FSB general – was given the task to make things right. In 2000, as secretary of the Security Council, Ivanov prepared a draft plan to cut the size of the Russian military. After the plan was approved, Ivanov was abruptly retired from active service as a two star general, and in 2001 moved from the Security Council to become a ≥civilian≤ Defense Minister.

After defeating Sergeyev and drastically increasing the power of the General Staff, Kvashnin almost immediately began to intrigue actively against Ivanov. Of course, Ivanov had the unequivocal support of the President. But it was widely rumored in Moscow that for Ivanov the MOD is only a way station, he is Putinπs chosen successor in the Kremlin and will soon move up to become, say, Prime Minister. Kvashnin, meanwhile, was maneuvering to succeed Ivanov as Defense Minister and achieve his ultimate lifetime personal goal – to advance to the rank of Marshal of Russia.

---

DEGRADATION OF THE RUSSIAN MILITARY: GENERAL ANATOLI KVASHNIN

Trust me, Putin is not friendly with the west. he rejected total integration with NATO on the twin pillars of incompatability of hardware requirements, turned down a proposal for a NATO council veto on the basis that Russia already had a veto in the form of the atom bomb (he was specific.) He also went public on calling the collapse to the USSR the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century.

quote:

---

Putin defends the Soviet-era intelligence service to this day. In recent comments to a writers' group in Moscow, he even seemed to excuse its role in dictator Joseph Stalin's brutal purges, saying it would be "insincere" for him to assail the agency where he worked for so many years. Fiercely patriotic, Putin once said he could not read a book by a Soviet defector because "I don't read books by people who have betrayed the Motherland."

---

Putin's Career Rooted in Russia's KGB

I can assure you that long term policy planners in the US are not naive about the potentials for Russian geo-political resurgence, and had ever reason to ensure that it would have much work to do, if it wanted to reassert itself as a grand player. I can also assure that these considerations were not far from the minds of people like Madeline Albright.

Yeltsin is gone. The more things change the more things stay the same.

[ 15 December 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Brian White:
¨Time to bust this myth wide open. The former Yugoslavia fell apart thanks to one man and his actions. That man is Slobodan Milosovic. His actions WRT Kosovo on 28 Mar 1989 caused a great panic in all of Yugoslavia. Perhaps the refugees is what stopped it. Seeing and working with those people made it more real.

[SNIP]

It really happened, they went in and stopped a madman with bloodlust from killing people.
Better late than never.

---

That is an interesting narrative. I was hoping you would provide sources for the "slaughter of in Kosovo." The fact that you were in Europe doean't really add a lot of credibility ro your story, as Europe is a great big place.

quote:

---

The latest person to debunk the genocide numbers is retired Vancouver homicide detective Brian Honeybourn, a member of the forensic team. He told The Ottawa Citizen this week that his nine-member group found mainly single graves, with a couple of exceptions being one of 20 bodies and another 11. He wonders how genocide charges against Mr. Milosevic can stand up. "It seems as though The Hague is beginning to panic."

Garth Pritchard, a Canadian filmmaker, accompanied the forensic team to Kosovo. "This was a massacre that never happened." He joined mission leader Brian Strongman in lambasting Canadian Louise Arbour, the special prosecutor for the tribunal that brought the charges against Mr. Milosevic. Ms. Arbour, now the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, was used as a pawn by war-hungry Washington and London, they said. "I was standing there when the forensic teams were telling Louise Arbour there were no 200,000 bodies and she didn't want to know," Mr. Pritchard told the Citizen.

---

commondreams from G lobe and Mail

quote:

---

On September 23 El País, a mainstream Madrid paper, reported that Spanish forensic investigators sent to Kosovo had found no proof of genocide. The team, which had experience in Rwanda, had been told to expect to perform more than 2,000 autopsies in one of the areas worst hit by fighting, but it found only 187 bodies to examine. No mass graves and, for the most part, no signs of torture. And when on October 10 other investigators announced that no bodies had been found in the Trepca mine complex, long rumored to contain as many as 700 corpses, skepticism burst into the open. First out of the gate was a Web site called Stratfor.com, a sort of wannabe Jane's Intelligence Review, which in a long article concluded that "bodies numbering only in the hundreds have been found," while taking care not to judge the final outcome prematurely. Though it raised the right questions, Stratfor's estimate was too low because of sloppy research, something symptomatic of much of its work. It was, nevertheless, widely cited. The debate raced around the Internet, popped up in Alexander Cockburn's November 8 Nation column (which was recycled as an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times), found space in another author's opinion column in the Amsterdam De Volkskrant and then emerged as a very lengthy news story in the Sunday Times of London. The Sunday Times added an interview with the head of the Spanish team, Emilio Perez Pujol, who was "disillusioned" by the "war propaganda machine." Pujol says the death toll may never exceed 2,500.

Until recently the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia kept out of the debate, except indirectly in late August when it was quick to deny the figure of 11,000 dead that Kosovo's UN civilian administrator, Bernard Kouchner, was then touting. But on November 10 Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor for the ICTY, reported to the UN Security Council that its investigators had found 2,108 bodies at 195 sites, out of 529 reported locales. Del Ponte cautioned that it was an interim figure and that evidence of grave tampering did exist; Ljubenic and Trepca sites made notorious in press reports were found not to contain masses of bodies. A State Department draft report still set the number of likely Kosovar Albanian deaths at "over 8,000."

---

The Nation

Ntoice that this fellow Pujol was not only in Europe at the time, as he was Spanish, but was also a forensic scientist with expertise in the area of mass murder, as he was in Rewanda, and not only that went to Kosovo to see for himself.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cueball:

Putin's Career Rooted in Russia's KGB

I can assure you that long term policy planners in the US are not naive about the potentials for Russian geo-political resurgence, and had ever reason to ensure that it would have much work to do, if it wanted to reassert itself as a grand player. I can also assure that these considerations were not far from the minds of people like Madeline Albright.

Yeltsin is gone. The more things change the more things stay the same.

[ 15 December 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

---

The Russians are good on defense yes... If you stir the beast, then there will be a reconing. Till then, the Americans are more expansionist frankly.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cueball:

The Nation

Ntoice that this fellow Pujol was not only in Europe at the time, as he was Spanish, but was also a forensic scientist with expertise in the area of mass murder, as he was in Rewanda, and not only that went to Kosovo to see for himself.

So. Those are some of my sources, what are yours?

---

When did I say Kosovo was the source of slaughter? My reference was BiH. My sources the mass graves I had to sort through.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Reason:

The Russians are good on defense yes... If you stir the beast, then there will be a reconing. Till then, the Americans are more expansionist frankly.

The Balkens has no strategic value. The west did not destabilise the Former Yugoslavia, and all attempts to explain that the west did have been weak at best.

---

I didn't say that the "west conciously destabalized" Yugoslavia. My point is that they leveraged the instability into a superior long term strategic position. A position which it had been persuing since 1945.

According to Gwynn Dyer, the Russian's took one look at how quickly the U.S. military invaded Iraq and began re-arming with nukes. And, of course, the USian MIC still consider Russia to be the number one nuclear threat because of those rumors. Sure-sure ya-ya, I know. The Russian's just won't commit to an arms race and become the red menace they once were.

At the end of the day, American or Russian imperialism... Who cares? Both cost lives un-necessaryily (spelling way off tonight,please forgive me and happy holidays).

All I cae about is should I pull tje trigger? No?! Life goes on!

Not everyone will like this...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I do not beleive it was Genocide. I think General Lewis Macknezie made this point, noting that at Srebrenica the Serbs shot all the military age men and boys they could get their hands on.

The massacre had a specific military and political point, and in my view, was a direct retaliation for what was done by the Bosnian Muslim Croatian allies, at Krajina. Mackenzie also makes the point that when the UN turned Srebrenica a save haven, this also meant that Bosnian Muslim milita groups uses the veil of the UN forces to act with impunity and mount raids against the surrounding Serb communities, raids that also were mounted in such a way that they often ignored the rules of war.

War crimes, and sometimes a great scale such as Srebrenica and Krajina were committed, there is no doubt about this fact. Pinning it all on one man and his cronies is also to play loose with the facts.

[ 16 December 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

---

Then the Security Council changed the wording of the safe-haven resolution from "the UN will defend the safe havens" to "by their presence will the UN deter attacks on the safe havens." In other words, a tiny, token, lightly armed UN contingent would be placed as sacrificial lambs in Srebrenica to "deter" the Bosnian Serb army.

It didn't take long for the Bosnian Muslims to realize that the UN was in no position to live up to its promise to "protect" Srebrenica. With some help from outsiders, they began to infiltrate thousands of fighters and weapons into the safe haven. As the Bosnian Muslim fighters became better equipped and trained, they started to venture outside Srebrenica, burning Serb villages and killing their occupants before quickly withdrawing to the security provided by the UN's safe haven. These attacks reached a crescendo in 1994 and carried on into early 1995 after the Canadian infantry company that had been there for a year was replaced by a larger Dutch contingent.

---

More of that here from Lewis Mackenzie

[ 16 December 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Brian White:
You remind me of those guys that deny the death camps.

---

I called it a war crime. Do you need a definition of the term. I really find it odd that I am having a discussion about "human rights" with someone who is accusing me "justifying" the summary execution of several thousand men and boys, when I call it a masacre and a war crime.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Brian White:
Offering justification for murder is not a pleasant thing.
You just said that it was ok to take out all the muslem men over 15, truck them away and kill them.
You are in serious denial. That IS genocide.
For sure war criminals should be tried regardless of where they come from.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Brian White:
And whether you meant it or not, attributing a rationale to it IS offering justification.

---

So you must have went ballistic when people tried to find a rationale behind the 9/11 attacks. They were justifying terrorism, right?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Brian White:
¨It is clear that Cueball did not¨ (Offer justification for war crimes).
And I follow it with this quote from Cueball
He did write, in my view, did he not?
¨The massacre had a specific military and political point, and in my view, was a direct retaliation for what was done by the Bosnian Muslim Croatian allies, at Krajina¨.
And whether you meant it or not, attributing a rationale to it IS offering justification.
One of hitlers generals justified the previous killing of the boys and children of jews because they ¨might¨ grow up to avenge the murder of their parents. Same difference. Same Crime.
It is called genocide and cueball disputes it.

---

Oh so, you would have lawyers be barred from discussing the cricumstances under which a murder is committed. Say, we should not hear from the defence on a guilty plea of a woman who has a been abused for years by an abusive spouse? You would call this justification, and condemn it, I suppose.

Not that I think the Serbs are a much abused spouse, but the point remains that circumstances are relevant to the crime.

Have you ever heard of something called motive? Does the revenge murder of one man by another justify either? But in fact establishing the first murder as the motive for the second is a sailent topic of evidence in almost any murder trial.

The question is, why did person A do this to person B? All judges ask it, all lawyers attempt to answer the question. I see you have done no such thing, except hop up and down denouncing everyone right and left, and yet have you entered even one shred of evidence into this discussion, other than the fact that you met a few Yugolzlavs when you were in Euorope sometime ago?

A smart person here might think to suggest here that Krajina was a direct result of Serbian threats to attack newly minted Croatia. But you sir are not so smart, nor apparently so well informed outside of a few bar room conversastion with likely biased witnesses.

What it is my friend is discussion of the circumstances of the crime. Such does not necessarily indicate that one supports the crimes.

Did any of Karla Homolka's lawyers support the murder of Kristan French, simply because they searched for "mitigating circumstance?"

My opinion it that the events at Srebrenica transpired directly as a result of the upping of the ante at Krajina by the Croatian army organized by MPRI, private military contractors operating under licenses from the US department of State headed by Madeline Albright (Google it: "MPRI Croatia" if you don't believe me.) This event raised the stakes of the whole conflict, (until that time really a business of quite death squad activity and traditional military engagments,) up to a whole new level that including ethnic cleansing, and group massacres, such as the one at Srebrenica, [but it was our Croatian friends, not the Srabs, who really did the first major ethnic cleansing in the Yugoslav wars of the the 1990's.

For some reason though, this fact seems of little interest to those harbouring their petty illusions and/or trying to put a pretty face upon NATO involvement in the conflict whose propoganda efforts are best served not by an accurate retelling of the circumstances of all of the crimes committed by all sides in the conflict but by a singular focus on one set of charachters in the Serbian leadership and the Serbian people as a whole.

That is my opinion. I (at the very least,) provide evidence to support it, as opposed to outrageously denouncing everyone who opposes me as some kind of proto-facist holocaust denier.

This all started because I asked you for specfics about slaughter of people in Kosovo and for sources. It is apparent you have none, which is what I thought.

[ 17 December 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Brian White:
Cueball, I just find that you insist on looking for excuses for breaking the geneva conventions.
That german general used the same excuses as you did.
There can be no excuses. It is the civilizing law of the world that they broke.
And it is a pretty tenuous link that you brought up. Some of your boys were killed by somebody, so lets us take revenge on these ¨unrelated¨ boys.
Same with Bush. He cannot be allowed to torture people. There has to be a higher law and people have to be brought to account if they break it.

---

Which German generals, where?

Have you studied any history at all? Do you just make outraged pronoucements about things based on "stuff you heard somewhere" all the time?

So. You think that the US State Department to support and to fund the Croatian Army, whom then perpetrate the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia, while working with a US based military contractor (chock full of former US --Generals MPRI) under a license from the State Department, shouldn't take any responsibility for those events because Serb militias, with at least tacit support of the government in Belgrade did something similar six months later?

You want to talk about the rule of law, and civilization, yet it seems that you agree with Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright that rules only apply to our enemies, expendable friends and those who do not carry US citizenship.

In fact he's your big hero, apparentlty.

[ 18 December 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

You do know that there were a fair number of WW2 German generals who did not appear in the docket at Nuremberg, some who undoubtedly deserved to be there, some who most certianly did not.

I guess what I am arguing for here, is a little specifity, not just sweeping statements about people, even Generals. I mean Romeo Delaire is a General, and there seems to be some reason to be sympathetic toward him and his experience in Rewanda.

Speaking of General's you do know that a very famous American General, named MacNamara, who presided over much of the Vietnam war, and also incidentally the fire bombing of Tokyo, said recently in interview that if the allies had lost WW2, it was he and his friends who would have been tried for war crimes, and he meant it to mean that the fire bombing of Tokyo was a war crime.

But you see, to get back to the point about Nuremberg, the Nuremberg trials were very clever in phrasing their mandate, so that it did not have jurisdiction over those Allied and Soviet Generals whom committed War Crimes like MacNamara, and Hugh Dowding (Herr Goerings RCAF counterpart.)

The crime those generals and civilian officials were charged at Nuremberg were charged not with War Crimes, because the court argued that war crimes in war, were more or less inevitable. No they did not concern themselves so much with that. No. They argued that those German Generals were guilty of committing the "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

In other words Goering, and Jodl, and Keital et al were in the docket, not so much because of anything they did during the war,(although you can be sure the British made sure that the Bombing of London was raised in the issue of Goering's crimes,) but for declaring war in the first place and starting the whole thing off.

That was their chief crime. That is what I know about "the German Generals" at Nuremberg.

quote:

---

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal, the basic legal document for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals that commenced in November 1945.

One of the great innovations of that charter was the charge of "Crimes Against Peace," defined as the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances."

---

Jeff House's favourite lawyer Michale Mandel

Now would you do me a favour and read that article through and through and tell me if it make sense at all. I mean it is all about Iraq, os perhaps we can agree on it as a basis of discussion.

Honestly, I have had this discussion time and time again, and with a lot more detail, and our condemnatory missives are adding little subtance to the debate in terms of fact or learned opinion, except in that you are hectoring me over and over again.

[ 19 December 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

"people have to be brought to account if they break it" (the higher law)

What people Brian ? The president of the United States ?, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ? Madeleine Albright ? Wesley Clark ? Or just the little guys who don't follow the Rules of War. Do you know that Nuremburg judged aggression on another country (like Germany on Poland or on the USSR) as the worst international crime.

Wasn't that what NATO's 11-week bombing of Yugoslavia was, or the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq? Don't forget that Nuremburg was a trial by the victors of the vanquished. Former USA Defence Minister MacNamara admitted in a recent film "The Fog of War" that the US bombing of Japan was so horrific that if the USA had lost the war he and other planners would have been considered "war criminals".

And who will judge the judges? In a country the courts need the approval of the executive and legislature. Where is the World Executive ? The Security Council with the veto in the hands of the five victors of WW2, the nuclear powers ? Or the World Legislature ? Do you want a totalitarian "world government" ?

I think when looking at Nuremberg, it's important to see not only its significance at the time (the crimes against peace stuff) but also its effect on the years that followed. It established the idea that there were crimes against humanity which could be judged by humanity rather than simply the leaders of one state. That, more than the crimes against peace, is why campaigners for international justice look to it as a historical landmark. And it established the idea that "just following orders" was not a defence -- there is a high morality than the laws of the state. Sure, there's plenty of hypocrisy in the USA getting off for crimes while Germans are punished, but the principles are what resonated for half a century afterwards and changed the way national sovereignty and international law were understood. The stuff about aggression as the biggest crime (Mandel's line) is not wrong, but it is an imcomplete picture of Nuremberg's historical significance.

I think some of this is from our Roman Christian roots, certainly not from Confucius.

The ICC is perhaps a somewhat good idea, if its really neutral, but I doubt that. It will mean more work for lawyers and judges. Besides the real problems of humanity are inequality, and the environment.

War crimes were, based on my fairly substantial research into the war, quite commom among allied troops and condoned by all ranks in particular against the Japanese, largely reviled as sub-human or sub civilized. It was Truman, who ordered the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima who considerd the Japanese to be 5000 years behind in development.

Of the 100,000 Japanese soldier on Okinawa, only 10,000 survived. A stunning 90% kill rate. Of the 20,000 Japanese soldiers at Iwo Jima, only 1000 were made POW's - 5%. Such statistics alone suggest major massacres, and or 'take no prisoners' policies were in effect. I have seen reports of Japanese POW's being borded on landing craft, and then sunk in the harbour of Shanghai by the US navy, even after hostilities had officially ended.

The Soviet massacre of Polish officers at Katyn, is another example.

Also we might cite massacre by air of allied civilian populations (collateral damage today) on an operational level such as the obliteration of the town in Caen, Fance by the USAF during operation Goodwood, and the killing of nearly 1,500 (dutch acounting) by the British during the Arnehm offensive (operation Market Garden.)

Of this last Dutch Prince Bernhard caustically said:

quote:

---

My country can never again afford the luxury of another Montgomery success.

---

This is aside from the more often spoken about strategic bombing campaigns, and the firebombing of major cities -- possibly the most gratuitous of these being the bombing of Dresden where as many as 200,000 (German police estimates, asserting that these figures should be circulated to avoid panic as the rumoured ones were much higher among refugees) were killed, in February 1945, two months before the inevitable end was realized by Hitler's suicide.

1500 Dutch at Arnhem is small potatoes these days, really. But it establishes that war crimes pervaded all levels of military endeavour, from random shootings of burdensome prisoners by enlisted men, through the officer corps SOP, right up to cabinet level strategic decisions.

Swallow, I am not suggesting that some kind of retroactive court be convened, but to establish that both insitutionalized and laisse faire war criminality, is more or less a fact of modern war, despite the moral pretenses of whatever side may be involved in the conflict, as is suggested by the rather cryptic phraseology of the original Nuremberg prosecutor, in his summary of the purposes of the court.

Another thing that is symptomatic of war is the tendency of the victors to find justification to try their enemies but protect there own.

So what of Madeline Albright's decision to give MPRI and its huge staff of "retired" US army generals a license to operate in Croatia as her proxies, and the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Krajina? Isn't it the case that a substantial charge against Milosovic is that he allowed his proxies off the leash at Srebrenica?

[ 20 December 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by swallow:
[QBIt established the idea that there were crimes against humanity which could be judged by humanity rather than simply the leaders of one state.[/QB]

---

Emphasis added. Like i said, the tribunal itself had large elements of hypocrisy and victor's justice, but the symbol of Nuremberg has had a larger impact than the actual trials. I'm not claiming that humanity did the judging, that woulod be an absurd claim, just that the principle was established that crimes against humanity outweighed the tired old Westphalia ideas of absolute national sovereignty.

The UDHR does establish those rights, yes, and that's one reason why Canada has been in the dock at the UN Commission on Human Rights for its reluctance to pursue economic and social rights. The meaning of "human rights" was distorted by Western governments to include only political and civil rights. That's starting to change in Canada at least -- there has been some talk on babble about Supreme Court rulings on things like the right to health care.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rikardo:
What do you mean, Sparrow, by "humanity"? "Humanity" didn't judge at Nuremberg, the representatives of the Victorious Allies did. Who can speak for "humanity"? Who dares to?

---

I don't really see the need to for name manipulation.