Posted on Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - 10:13 pm:

The November 28 edition of Britain's Observer newspaper presented fresh evidence to back up its claim that the May 7 NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was deliberate.

In an article entitled "Truth Behind America's Raid on Belgrade", the newspaper stated that far from being a blunder, "the pinpoint accuracy of the attack was in fact a deadly signal to Milosevic: seek outside help in Kosovo at your peril".

The Observer's earlier report, on October 19 ("British newspaper says NATO deliberately bombed Chinese embassy in Belgrade"), was denounced by the Clinton administration and the Blair government in Britain. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described it as "balderdash", while Britain's Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said there was not a "shred of evidence to support this rather wild story".

The November 28 Observer reports that the bombing of the Chinese embassy was carried out by a US B2 bomber that flew from Whiteman air force base in Missouri. It released what the Observer describes as "the most accurate air-drop munitions in the world-the JDAM flying bomb". The JDAM is accurate to a range of less than two metres, the newspaper notes. It uses four adjustable fins to control its position, which is in turn continually checked and rechecked by fixes from seven satellites.

The bombing was so precise that it demolished the office of the military attaché, killing three people, while leaving the embassy's northern end untouched, which included the front entrance. A senior NATO air force officer is quoted as saying, "far from not knowing the target was an embassy, they must have been given architect's drawings."

The US and Britain contend that the embassy bombing was the result of intelligence sources having used an old and unreliable map. The Observer systematically demolishes this claim. It cites the response the following day of an American colonel to criticisms by British, French and Canadian personnel of the supposed mistake. "Bulls h i t," said the colonel. "That was great targeting ... we put two JDAMs down into the attaché's office and took out the exact room we wanted ... they [the Chinese] won't be using that place for rebro [re-broadcasting Yugoslav radio transmissions] any more, and it will have given that bastard Arkan a headache."

NATO has deliberately targeted both industrial and civil facilities, which included during the first 27 days: aircraft, pharmaceutical, appliance, electrical, chemical, tobacco, tubes, plastics, rail, hydro-construction, printing, shoe, automobile, machine, cotton yarn and surface coal mining. Some of the bombings were carried out during working hours—at the “Zastava” auto plant in Kragujevac, Yugoslavia's fourth largest city, 120 workers were wounded during a NATO attack. The bombing has also devastated small businesses. Over 250 commercial and craft shops in Djakovica alone were damaged.

Refineries and warehouses storing liquid raw materials and chemicals have been destroyed, contaminating several thousand hectares of fertile soil, rivers and lakes, as well as polluting the air. Those attacked include: nine fuel storage/warehouses, two oil refineries, a service station, a chemical plant, a fertilizer plant, a thermo-electric power station and the petrochemical industry in Pancevo, which was demolished.

Four agricultural complexes had been attacked and 250 hectares of land had been burnt down due to forest fires begun by bombings. The sea port of Bogojevo was also attacked.

Sixteen hospitals and healthcare centers were hit, some partially damaged and others destroyed. A total of 190 schools had been damaged, including 20 faculties, 6 colleges, 40 secondary schools, 80 elementary schools and 6 student dormitories. The number of schools damaged would be the same as if every college, university, technical and community school in Ohio were attacked.
Further damage to Yugoslavia's infrastructure included the destruction of one bridge and damage to another thirteen. Twelve rail lines had been destroyed, as well as three railway stations. Six major roads and highways had also been cut due to the bombing. Two bus stations had been destroyed, as well as a hangar full of new buses. In the Leskovac region alone over 3,500 industrial facilities and dwellings had been destroyed or damaged.

Seven airports had been attacked and damaged and several thousand private houses across Yugoslavia were either destroyed or damaged—especially housing blocks in the cities of Aleksinac and Pristina.

Public facilities and government buildings that had been damaged or destroyed include the Republican and Federal Ministry of the Interior in Belgrade; Security of the Ministry of the Interior and Hydro-Meteorological Station, both in Banjica; the TV-RTS studio, post office and refugee center, all in Pristina. The Tornik ski resort, the Divcibare mountain resort and the Baciste Hotel were also attacked. The city power plant in Krusevac and the Meteorological Station on Mt. Kopaonik had also been hit, and heavy damage was inflicted on four libraries in Rakovica. The refugee camp in Paracin was also attacked.

Infrastructure damage was also caused to Batajnica's electrical power supply, Zemun's water supply, Bogutovac's power station and telephone lines, Pristina's power station and Polinje's hydroelectric power station. Across Yugoslavia 17 telecommunication and TV transmitters were attacked.

Religious sites and buildings were not spared from NATO's bombing. Nine monasteries were damaged, many built between the twelfth and seventeen centuries. Four churches were damaged, as were religious monuments. A memorial complex was destroyed and two cemeteries also suffered damage; eight historical monuments and museums were also attacked.

The latest figures for overall damage caused by NATO were presented on May 17 by the Yugoslav authorities to a United Nations mission which visited Belgrade. Damage caused directly by NATO's bombing is now estimated to be over $100 billion. More than 1,200 civilians are confirmed dead and over 5,000 have been wounded. Since the air attacks began more than 160,000 inhabitants of Kosovo and Metohija have been made refugees. These include ethnic Albanians and Turks, Serbs and Montenegrins.

Who NATO Killed

Since the Nato airstrikes began on March 24 Serb officials say more than 2,000 civilians have been killed and more than 7,500 wounded. Nato has owned up to bombing raids and missile attacks that have killed 460 civilians, according to a tally by Agence France-Presse. By all accounts, the bombing was indiscriminate, killing farmers, suburbanites, city dwellers, factory workers, reporters, diplomats, people in cars, busses and trains, hospital patients, the elderly and children. Indeed, by our count, Nato bombing raids have killed more than 200 children. Hundreds more will almost certainly perish in the coming months, through environmental factors, such as poisoned water supplies and lack of electrical power to run vital hospital equipment. The following list of civilian casualties is far from comprehensive. We compiled it from daily reports by the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry and wire services, including Agence France Presse, Reuters and AP.

Posted on Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - 10:25 pm:

* 11 October: Two US jets were said to have bombed the mountain village of Karam. The death toll was estimated at between 100 and 160.
* 13 October: Bombs fell on the Qila Meer Abas neighbourhood, two kilometres south of Kabul airport. Four civilians were reportedly killed
* 18 October: Some 47 civilians were said to have been killed when a central market place, Sarai Shamali, near Kandahar, was bombed.
* 23 October: More than 90 civilians were reportedly killed when low-flying US gun ships fired on the farming villages of Bori Chokar and Chowkar-karez, north of Kandahar.
* 31 October: An F-18 was said to have bombed a Red Crescent clinic in a pre-dawn raid, killing between 15 and 25 people.
* 10 November: Villages in the Khakrez district were reportedly bombed, killing more than 150 civilians

Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006 - 8:35 am:

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Otherwise, I am outta this thread. It's been captured by the obtuse and the politically motivated, IMHO.

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Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006 - 10:41 am:

July 27, 2006
An Unexpected Reason to Hope
By David Warren

Before we get to the uplifting substance of today's column, let me briefly skirmish with the innumerable correspondents who have filled my inbox with outrage against my justifications for Israel's attacks. They parrot what they have heard in the "liberal" media. The errors of fact I'm about to correct are beneath the elementary. But it is necessary to correct big lies as well as small.

Item: Israel has attacked Lebanon, which is too weak to defend itself.

This is a lie. The Israelis have made it abundantly clear they are not attacking Lebanon, but Hezbollah entrenched in Lebanese soil. Israelis, as anyone with any decency, feel sorry for innocent Lebanese caught in the crossfire. But as Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, put it to the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel: "Whether weak or strong, a government carries the responsibility for whatever happens within its country." She went on to hint the obvious: that Israel would prefer a Lebanon strong enough to disarm Hezbollah without Israeli help.

Item: The Israeli military operations are "excessive", and include unnecessary strikes against Lebanon's infrastructure and capital city.

This is a damned lie. Israel has been attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon, which necessarily includes infrastructure that Hezbollah uses. Even the attacks on the Beirut airport were to a purpose openly stated, and advertised in extensive leafleting and broadcasting before the airport's runways were cratered, and fuel depots taken out. From hard past experience, the Israelis knew Hezbollah would be using that airport not only to whisk their prisoners to safekeeping in Iran, but as a conduit to bring Iranian and Syrian advisers, and crucial supplies, in and out of the country. The strikes elsewhere in Beirut are overwhelmingly on the southern, Shia part of the city, where Hezbollah's masters have their command. Lebanese television and radio have themselves been broadcasting Israeli communiqués, clearly warning what they will hit, when, and why. The overwrought charge that Israel is "trying to destroy Lebanon" is an imposture. If the Israelis actually wanted to destroy all of Lebanon, they could carpetbomb the place.

Item: There is a huge civilian toll.

Statistics. And given the scale of the conflict, the number of deaths is not abnormally high. Our media have been giving running totals of civilian deaths in Lebanon that they should know are both wrong and misleading. They cannot know how many have been killed in Hezbollah's "hidey holes". Foreign reporters are in no position to distinguish between real civilians, and the Hezbollah fighters who blend among them. Even the United Nation's humanitarian point-man, Jan Egeland -- no friend of Israel -- has noted actual boasts from Hezbollah that their "human shield" strategy has got so many women and children killed, and so few of their own fighters. They cache their weapons in schools, hospitals, houses, apartment buildings. They hold civilians at gunpoint who are trying to flee. In light of all this, the stress on specific casualties -- for instance the poor little boy who was suffering hideously in a hospital in Tyre, that CNN went to town on, Monday night -- is a flagrant appeal to emotionalism, calculated to enflame misinformed audiences against Israel, throughout the West and the Arab world.

But now we come to the paradox. Despite some of the best efforts I've seen, by our liberal media, to spread poison, there is a growing understanding of what is taking place. Better yet, the response of the Arab world is increasingly directed against Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran; and even against Iran's other client, Hamas in Gaza (now suing for peace). This is unprecedented.

In a partly incoherent, rambling, and apocalyptic address on official Iranian TV, Sunday, President Ahmadinejad said, "Lebanon is the scene of an historic test, which will determine the future of humanity." Then, after condemning the unnamed leaders of various Arab regimes that had failed to align with Iran and Hezbollah, "This is 'the Day that all things secret will be tested'."

Iran unquestionably ordered the rocket and kidnapping attacks with which Hezbollah and Hamas provoked the current Israeli reaction (though it may have been greater than they expected). The ayatollahs are probably also behind the current terror spike within Iraq. Their motive is quite obvious: to change the subject from the Western and growing Arab alarm about Iran's own emergence as a bellicose nuclear power. The ayatollahs are, further, trying to cement their claim to be the managing directors of the international Jihad.

Ahmadinejad is right: this is "an historic test". But it does not follow that he is winning it. Instead, it appears, by pushing too hard and fast, Iran has opened a civil breach across the Muslim world between Shia and Sunni. The ayatollahs have thus created a new opportunity for the West to form alliances with Sunni Muslim states against Iran's aspiring regional hegemony, which the Bush administration is now rightly trying to exploit. Ahmadinejad has, in short, given us an unexpected reason to hope -- as Hitler did, when he began to make too many enemies.

Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006 - 10:43 am:

Syria is the key in solving Middle East crisis
By Thomas L. Friedman

DAMASCUS, Syria — One wonders what planet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice landed from, thinking she can build an international force to take charge in south Lebanon without going to Damascus and trying to bring the Syrians on board.

Two Syrian officials made no bones about it when I asked their reaction to deploying such a force, without Syrian backing: Do you remember what happened in 1983, each asked, when the Reagan administration tried to impose an Israeli-designed treaty on Lebanon against Syria's will?

I was there, I remember quite well: Hezbollah, no doubt backed by Syria or Iran, debuted its skills for the world by blowing up the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping battalions. This is not a knitting circle here.

Can we get the Syrians on board? Can we split Damascus from Tehran? My conversations here suggest it would be very hard, but worth a shot. It is the most important strategic play we could make, because Syria is the bridge between Iran and Hezbollah. But it would take a high-level, rational dialogue. Rice says we can deal with Syria through normal diplomatic channels. Really?

We've withdrawn our ambassador from Damascus and the U.S. diplomats left here are allowed to meet only the Foreign Ministry's director of protocol, whose main job is to ask how you like your Turkish coffee. Syria's ambassador in Washington is similarly isolated.

Is this Syrian regime brutal and ruthless? You bet it is. If the Bush team wants to go to war with Syria, I get that. But the U.S. boycott of Syria is not intimidating Damascus. (Its economy is still growing, thanks to high oil prices.) So we're left with the worst of all worlds — a hostile Syria that is not afraid of us.

We need to get real on Lebanon. Hezbollah made a reckless mistake in provoking Israel. Shame on Hezbollah for bringing this disaster upon Lebanon by embedding its "heroic" forces amid civilians. I understand Israel's vital need to degrade Hezbollah's rocket network. But Hezbollah's militia, which represents 40 percent of Lebanon, the Shiites, can't be wiped out at a price that Israel, or America's Arab allies, can sustain — if at all.

You can't go into an office in the Arab world today without finding an Arab TV station featuring the daily carnage in Lebanon. It's now the Muzak of the Arab world, and it is toxic for us and our Arab friends.

Despite Hezbollah's bravado, Israel has hurt it and its supporters badly, in a way they will never forget. Point made. It is now time to wind down this war and pull together a deal — a cease-fire, a prisoner exchange, a resumption of the peace effort and an international force to help the Lebanese army secure the border with Israel — before things spin out of control. Whoever goes for a knockout blow will knock themselves out instead.

Will Syria play? Syrians will tell you that their alliance with Tehran is "a marriage of convenience." Syria is a largely secular country, with a Sunni majority. Its leadership is not comfortable with Iranian Shiite ayatollahs. The Iranians know that, which is why "they keep sending high officials here every few weeks to check on the relationship," a diplomat said.

So uncomfortable are many Syrian Sunnis with the Iran relationship that President Bashar Assad has had to allow a surge of Sunni religiosity.

Syrian officials stress that they formed their alliance with Iran because they felt they had no other option. One top Syrian official said the door with the United States was "not closed from Damascus. (But) when you have only one friend, you stay with him all the time. When you have 10 friends, you stay with each one of them."

What do the Syrians want? They say: respect for their security interests in Lebanon and a resumption of negotiations over the Golan. Syria is also providing support for the Sunni Baathists in Iraq. Much as the Bush team wants to, it can't fight everyone at once and get where it needs to go. There will not be a peace force in south Lebanon unless it's backed by Syria. No one will send troops.

I repeat: I don't know if Syria can be brought around, and we certainly can't do it at Lebanon's expense. But you have to try, with real sticks and real carrots. Syria is not going to calm things in Lebanon, or Iraq, just so the Bush team can then focus on regime change in Damascus. As one diplomat here put it to me, "Turkeys don't vote for Thanksgiving."

Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006 - 12:42 pm:

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“We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world,’’ Justice Minister Haim Ramon told Israeli radio, “to continue this operation, this war, until Hezbollah won’t be located in Lebanon and until it is disarmed.’’

Mr. Ramon also raised the possibility of an expanded air assault, saying “all those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah.’’

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Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006 - 2:20 pm:

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Mr. Ramon also raised the possibility of an expanded air assault, saying “all those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah.’’

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