Reply #29: Clark's heinous actions in Serbia/Kosovo [View All]

[PoliticalAmazon]

*****CLARK'S DISHONORABLE "VERY CLOSE TO WAR CRIMES" ACTIONS IN SERBIA/KOSOVO****

Her's an excerpt of Democracy Now!'s interview of Robert Fisk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fisk) and Steve Rendell (Fair and Accuracy in Reporting)in which they discuss just ONE Clark's disasters. These are the issues covered (numbers added to the transcript are mine);

(1) Fisk says Clark wasn't very "antiwar" during his time in Serbia.

(2) NATO (under Clark's command) bombed a hospital, killing almost all of the patients.

(3) Clark bombed a series of bridges, and a train, even after they knew the train was on the bridge, they bombed the bridge again.;

(4) Clark claimed 100 Yugoslavian tanks were bombed. He lied. It was actually only 11.

(5) Clark ordered Brit General Michael Jackson to get to an airport first, ahead of Russian soldiers, so the U.S./Brits (and Clark) could get the credit of "liberatin" it. Gen. Jackson said he wasn't about to "start World War III."

(6) Under Clark's leadership, over and over again, sites that were bombed turned out to be illegitimate targets. When large numbers of citizens were killed, they either lied or were silenced.

(7) American aircraft (under Clark's command) bombed an Albanian refugee convoy. NATO claimed it was Serbs who did the bombs, but when Fisk and others investigated they found that the bombs had NATO markings on them. When confronted, NATO admitted it was NATO's bombing, but they were "confused." Later investigation by Fisk showed that NATO had continued to bomb the convoy for 35 minutes, even though there were civilian refugees there, because, mixed in with the civilians, were Serbian vehicles.

(8) NATO, under Clark's command, committed several very-close-to-war-crimes actions.

(9) Clark's praise of Bush/Blair's conspiracy to invade Iraq and the invasion of Ira.

Democracy Now! Transcript

http://www.democracynow.org/2003/9/18/robert_fisk_on_wesley_clark_iraq

AMY GOODMAN: Well, John Hlinko, we have just reached Robert Fisk in Baghdad. We want to thank you for being with us, cofounder of the DraftWesleyClark.com campaign. Zoltan Grossman, thanks for being with us from the University of Wisconsin.

We’re going not to the break right now, which we usually do, but because we have Robert Fisk on his satellite phone at this moment. we want to go directly to him.

Robert Fisk, we’ll get your comment at the beginning, hearing that Wesley Clark is now running for president as the antiwar warrior. Then we’d like to get your observations of what’s happening right now on the ground in Iraq.

(1) ROBERT FISK: I have to say first of all about General Clark, that I was on the ground in Serbia in Kosovo when he ran the war there. He didn’t seem to be very antiwar at the time. I had as one of my tasks to go out over and over again to look at the civilian casualties of that have war.

(2) At one point NATO bombed the hospital in which Yugoslav soldiers, against the rules of war, were hiding along with the patients and almost all the patients were killed.

This was the war, remember, where the first attack was made on a radio station, the Serb Radio and Television building. Since then we’ve had attacks twice on the Al Jazeera television station. First of all in Afghanistan in 2001, then killing their chief correspondent, and again in Baghdad, this year.

(3) This was a general who I remember bombed series of bridges, in one of which an aircraft bombed the train and after, he’d seen the train and had come to a stop, the pilot bombed the bridge again.

I saw one occasion when a plane came in, bombed a bridge over a river in Serbia proper, as we like to call it, and after about 12 minutes when rescuers arrived, a bridge too narrow even for tanks, bombed the rescuers.

(4) I remember General Clark telling us that more than 100 Yugoslav tanks had been destroyed in the weeks of that war. And when the war came to an end, we discovered number of Yugoslav tanks destroyed were 11. 100 indeed.

So this was not a man, frankly whom, if I were an American, would vote for, but not being an American, I don’t have to.

(5) AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk speaking to us in Iraq. And then you have the time that the British general, Michael Jackson, Wesley Clark had told him to get his British troops to the airport before the Russians got there, so it wouldn’t be perceived that the Russians were liberating and General Michael Jackson responded to him, ’I’m not going to start World War III’.

ROBERT FISK: Yes. Jackson did indeed say that. One member of Jackson’s staff confirmed to me that the quote is true. I think the words--I think the verb is wrong, but World War III is correct.

(6) It was a very strange atmosphere to that war, over and over again when NATO has bombed the target, it was clearly illegitimate. Or when they killed large number of civilians, they were either silenced, or they lied.

(7) We had the very famous occasion, infamous occasion when American aircraft bombed an Albanian refugee convoy in Kosovo, claimed later or NATO claimed later it was probably Serb aircraft. It was only when we got there and found the NATO markings on the bomb, that NATO fessed up admitted that they had done it themselves and had been confused.

When I went to the scene months later and tracked down the survivors, it turned out that although they were confused, NATO aircraft had gone on bombing that convoy for 35 minutes even though there were civilians there, because mixed in among them, most cruelly, this was an act of Milosevic’s regime, were military vehicles as well.

(8) We shouldn’t be romantic about the Serb military or the Serb security police they were killers and murderers. But NATO, in its war against the Serbs, committed a number of acts which I think are very close to war crimes, and General Clark was the commander. So this is a man who wants to be the president, democratic president of the United States of America. Well I don’t interest myself in what he thinks about the last war in Iraq. I watched it first hand and had my own opinions. But I sure as hell know what it was like to be under the bombs of his war in Serbia.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, I want to ask you about General Powell’s visit, Secretary of State General Powell’s visit to Baghdad. But we still have Steve Rendall in the studio who is leaving in one minute as we listen to this description of what’s happening in Iraq. We were wrapping up the discussion of Wesley Clark whether or not he was for this war. Your final comments, Steve?

STEVE RENDALL: I’d like to just say that politicians would like to be all things to all people. Our problem is not with Wesley Clark’s campaign, it’s with the media’s portrayal of him.

(9) One point I’d like to say, your listeners should go look at the daily column that Clark wrote for the Times of London, right around the time of the fall of Baghdad. He wrote there, for instance, the day after the fall of Baghdad he wrote “Liberation is at hand. Liberation, the powerful bomb that justifies painful sacrifices, erases lingering doubts and reinforces bold actions.” He also wrote that George W. Bush and prime minister Tony Blair “should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt”.

This is the day after, this is on April 10, the day after the so called fall of Baghdad. He was cheering this event, and it’s very hard for us to see reporters casting him as antiwar candidate.

....AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank I very much, Robert Fisk for being with us. Robert Fisk is correspondent for the Independent newspaper based in Beirut right now in Iraq. returning as he has so many times.

Thank you for joining us. You are listening to Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/2003/9/18/robert_fisk_on_wesley_clark_iraq