[Crossposted from my Real History Blog.]
Would you believe that looking into Milosevic’s death led me to a strong link between the US government and al Qaeda, sharing common goals in Kosovo? That’s why history is always relevant, and the truth always matters.
Here’s where I started.
ABC News is reporting the “swirl of suspicion” regarding the death of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevich:
Among the scenarios being floated: Drugs smuggled into prison, a poisoning plot and the possibility Milosevic was undermining his own treatment in hopes of being sent to Moscow, where his wife and son live in exile.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow did not fully trust the autopsy report and would send its own pathologists to examine the body. The U.N. war crimes tribunal had said a heart attack killed Milosevic, according to preliminary findings from Dutch pathologists who conducted a nearly eight-hour autopsy.
… Milosevic was found dead in his prison cell in The Hague on Saturday, just hours after writing Russian officials a letter alleging that an “extremely strong drug” was found in his bloodstream. Zdenko Tomanovic, his family lawyer, said Milosevic was “seriously concerned” he was being poisoned.
I almost blogged about this when I first heard he had died. I was immediately suspicious because a former associate of Milosevich’s, who had later testified against him, was found dead in the same facility just six days earlier. The sentiments expressed by Marija Darijevic in this Chicago Tribune piece echo my own:
Six days before Milosevic’s death, Milan Babic, 50, leader of Serb rebels in Croatia and a convicted war criminal, committed suicide in the same prison. Babic had provided key testimony against Milosevic and was back in The Hague testifying in another case.
“First Babic, now Milosevic. This is not an accident,” said Marija Darijevic, 34, a Belgrade lawyer. “I suffered under Milosevic and I don’t feel any regret at his death, but I think that even the worst criminal has the right to proper medical treatment.”
The suspicious death, labeled officially “heart failure,” took place in a city that bills itself as the “City of Peace and Justice.” Saddam Hussein had just last year asked that his own trial be moved there, believing he would get a fairer deal. I imagine he’s having serious second thoughts on that front now.
I’m surprised how people just accept at face value that Milosevich was, as the press called him, the “Butcher of the Balkans.” As is often the case in historical matters, the victor’s account of history is only one side of the story. Ramsey Clark, a former Attorney General of the United States, wrote a letter to Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, in which he stated:
The Prosecution of the former President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is scheduled to end its presentation of evidence to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on February 19, 2004, more than two years after its first witness testified.
Over 500,000 pages of documents and 5000 videocassettes have been placed in evidence. There have been some 300 trial days. More than 200 witnesses have testified. The trial transcript is near 33,000 pages.
The Prosecution has failed to present significant or compelling evidence of any criminal act or intention of President Milosevic. In the absence of incriminating evidence, the Prosecution apparently hoped to create a record so massive that it would be years, if the effort was ever made, before scholars could examine and analyze the evidence to determine whether it supported a conviction.
Is it possible Milosevic was not the monster the press told us about? Is it possible it was necessary to paint him as such as an excuse to go to war, much as the WMD lie had to be invented?
After some searching tonight, I found this interesting article from Jurist. Author Marjorie Cohn, an associate professor of law, a Court TV commentator, and a news consultant for CBS, presented facts that make me think my suspicions are justified:
The most significant international war crimes trial since Hitler’s henchmen were tried at Nuremberg is scheduled to begin on February 12. Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will appear in the dock at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague to answer charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
But Milosevic, often referred to in Western circles as the “Butcher of the Balkans,” maintains it is really the leaders of NATO who should be tried for their crimes against the people of Yugoslavia. In 1999, thousands of Yugoslavs were killed or wounded by NATO’s bombs, allegedly to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians in Kosovo.
As The New York Times said on February 9: “When Mr. Milosevic sneers at the tribunal here as `victor’s justice,’ he is not entirely wrong.” Former President William Clinton, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and U.S. military leaders orchestrated the use of laser-guided and cluster bombs and depleted uranium that devastated the people and the land of Yugoslavia. They will never face charges at The Hague.
Milosevic contends he acted in defense of the Serbs against Muslim extremists. He claims he was fighting the same type of terrorism the United States is now battling in Afghanistan and elsewhere. At that time, the United States gave active support to the Kosovo Liberation Army, a Muslim terrorist group financed by the Third World Relief Agency, through which Osama bin Laden and others funneled $350 million. Milosevic insists that his pleas to Clinton to get bin Laden out of Kosovo were ignored; instead, Clinton allied with the Albanian Muslims against the Serbs.
That the Clinton administration allied themselves with the Kosovo Liberation Army is well-documented. In fact, the more I read, the more the KLA sounds like the Contras in Nicaragua, a group that was primarily made by US funding. The rhetoric was even similar:
“[The] United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles … Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values.” (Sen. Lieberman quoted in the ‘Washington Post,’ April 28, 1999)
This gets even more interesting when you find out that al Qaeda was also helping the KLA. Peter Dale Scott, for an upcoming book on 9/11, makes a compelling case that the US-KLA-al Qaeda collaboration was about protecting oil interests:
Though the origins of the Kosovo tragedy were rooted in local enmities, oil became a prominent aspect of the outcome. There the al Qaeda-backed UCK or “Kosovo Liberation Army” (KLA) was directly supported and politically empowered by NATO, beginning in 1998.[49] But according to a source of Tim Judah, KLA
representatives had already met with American, British, and Swiss intelligence agencies in 1996, and possibly “several years earlier.”[50] …Mainstream accounts of the Kosovo War are silent about the role of al Qaeda in training and financing the UCK/KLA, yet this fact has been recognized by experts and to my knowledge never contested by them.[52] For example, James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, said “Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan…. Milosevic is right. There is no question of their [al Qaeda’s] participation in conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well documented.”[53] In March 2002, Michael Steiner, the United Nations administrator in Kosovo, warned of “importing the Afghan danger to Europe” because several cells trained and financed by al-Qaeda remained in the region.[54] …
At the time critics charged that US oil interests were interested in building a trans-Balkan pipeline with US Army protection; although initially ridiculed, these critics were eventually proven correct.[59] BBC News announced in December 2004 that a $1.2 billion pipeline, south of a huge new U.S. army base in Kosovo, has been given a go-ahead by the governments of Albania, Bulgaria, and Macedonia.[60]
And Peter Dale Scott is not the only one putting this all together. This article also speaks of the links between the CIA, German Intelligence, al Qaeda, and the KLA. If I had many more hours, I might find many more articles. But I’m already starting to see the pattern.
I’m not crying over Milosevic’s death. I didn’t know him. I didn’t live under him. I don’t support any kind of genocide. But as an American citizen, I am especially upset when people who are supposed to represent me, i.e., American officials, engage in genocidal behavior. (Or fail to prevent it, as we’re failing to do in Darfur.)
I’m also trying to say that the powers that be use our emotions against us. Most people get upset at the name “Milosevic” and can’t go any further than that. just as many get upset at the thought of 9/11 and can’t imagine the truth could be other than what they heard in the midst of their terror and grief. The media riles us up with partial facts, but doesn’t usually present the other side of the story. That’s why it’s important to question everything.
Ramsey Clark’s letter to Annan regarding the the International War Crimes tribunal’s case against Milosevic truly startled me. I had no idea when I started searching tonight that I would find this information:
The initial indictment made no allegations of any crimes in Croatia, or Bosnia. It dealt exclusively with alleged acts by Serb forces in Kosovo in 1999. All of Serbia, including Kosovo, remained under heavy U.S./NATO bombardment at the time of the indictment. There were no U.S., or NATO forces, or ICTY investigators in Kosovo. Investigation was impossible. The indictment was purely a political act to demonize President Milosevic and Serbia and justify U.S. and NATO bombing of Serbia which was itself criminal and in violation of the U.N. and NATO Charters.
Wow.
And why does that seem so believable? Perhaps because the pattern of deception leading to war was repeated just recently in Iraq. And because we appear to be seeing something similar now re Iran.
If Milosevic was killed, shouldn’t we find out why? Was it possible he was killed because his trial might not have produced the “desired” result? I don’t know the answer. But the question was definitely worth asking. I had no idea that opening the Milosevic door would give me new reasons to question the official story of 9/11.