Real News 24/7

 

FEATURED STORY
Part V
December 11, 2003
 

Wesley Clark is fourth Democratic candidate touting his Jewish connections   


by Ken Francis
 

Part I: Descended from the priestly caste of Kohen   Part II: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the most kosher of them all?   Part III: The Clinton Factor   Part IV: Calling General Backtrack!   Part V: Waco and Kosovo  Part VI: coming soon


Part V: Waco and Kosovo

Wes's War  Shown here addressing troops, General Wesley Clark wrote the book on modern warfare or, at least, a book, Waging Modern War. Some critics, however, say more can be learned about his battlefield stratagems by observing the attacks on civilians at Waco and Kosovo, said to have his  fingerprints all over them.
 

When Retired U.S./NATO General Wesley Kanne Clark announced his candidacy as a Democratic contender for President back in late September, he immediately bolted to the top of the opinion polls, a lead he sustained for over a month . But in recent weeks he fell into a tie for first, and now, according to the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey of Democrats, Clark has dropped behind  former Vermont Governor and  abortion doctor Howard Dean by nine percentage points, 25% to 17%.

While this waning in popularity can be attributed to various causes, the recent flap over what critics say was Clark's involvement in the 2003 fiery deaths of over eighty people at the Branch Davidian religious community in Waco, Texas, probably hasn't helped with the more conservative Democratic voters. Initially, he refused when asked by an Insight magazine correspondent to be interviewed on the subject back in October. As it turned out, this was but opening salvo of what would become a growing assault on Clark's character, stemming from his purported role in what many Americans perceive to be a senseless siege against citizens whose "crimes," in most cases, amounted to no more than being members of a fringe religious group and wanting to be left alone.

 

Overkill defined The assault on the Branch Davidian religious sect by Federal agents, resulting in the death of over 80 adults and children, is one of the dark moments in U.S. history. The military vehicles used in the raid came from a nearby army base, where they were under the command of General Wesley Clark.
 

The allegations have continued unabated, principally one of the few bastions of truly free speech left, the Internet. So successful were the various websites and chat rooms in getting out the Clark connection with this sordid page of history that finally some response was deemed necessary. But even then,  Clark avoided direct comment, perhaps thinking that to do so would be to open the question at future press conferences and other speaking engagements, a move that could prove costly. In any case, he addressed the issue, as it were, by proxy:

  An Army division commanded by Wesley Clark supplied some of the military equipment for the government's 51-day standoff with a religious sect in Waco, Texas, and Clark's deputy, now the Army Chief of Staff, took part in a crucial Justice Department meeting five days before the siege ended in disaster, according to military records.

Clark's involvement in support of the Waco operation a decade ago was indirect and fleeting, according to his former commanding officer. But the assistance to civilian law enforcement agencies by military officers around Clark and soldiers under his command has prompted a flurry of questions to his presidential campaign. (Commanding officer says Clark had no direct role in Waco siege)

In the article, which appeared in some newspapers under headlines seemingly calculated to derail his candidacy, Clark is bailed out by Army Lt. Gen. Horace Grady "Pete" Taylor, who "takes the rap" for him, and campaign spokeswoman Mary Jacoby. Mention, too, is made of the investigation (read whitewash) conducted by President Bill Clinton's Justice Secretary Janet Reno, who has much culpability herself in ordering the Waco inferno.

"But critics," the article notes, "such as documentary filmmaker Michael McNulty say there are many unanswered questions about the deaths at Waco, including the nature of the military equipment that came out of Clark's division and whether it was used." (Another critic of the government's activities, Carol Valentine, who is curator of the Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum, believes that McNulty's film, Waco: Rules of Engagement, is itself a false opposition, but that's another issue.) There is considerable evidence, contrary to the protestations of innocence by Taylor and Jacoby, that Wesley Clark did, in deed, aid and abet the the horrific events of a decade ago.
 

The government attack that brought about the tragic deaths of nearly ninety (estimates vary) men, women and children on April 19, 2003 outside of Waco, is one of the defining moments of the Clinton years and is indelibly seared into the memory of all Americans who old enough to remember it. The siege that caused the fiery destruction of Mount Carmel, the Branch Davidian sect's religious community, has come to epitomize the consequences of the rejection of a fundamental principle upon which our nation was founded: That its citizens are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that no government, without just cause, can ever abridge. (Koresh and the Waco siege)

Death came to the unsuspecting that fateful morning, when with reckless disregard for human life—that's the more charitable view, others call it murderous intent—booms attached to tanks and other combat vehicles smashed through walls, it was contended,  to introduce tear gas (never minding, of course, that the very children they supposedly were trying to rescue could have been struck and killed by such acts of vandalism). Whether one chooses to believe the government's version or that of its critics, the bottom line is that none of those people would  have perished had the Feds not employed strong arm (overkill in the most literal  sense) tactics to arrest one man, Vernon Howell a.k.a. David Koresh, the group's leader—a man who easily could have been arrested, probably without violence, in town weeks before.

Ostensibly, the attack was directed by the FBI and ATF, who acknowledged the "loan" of military vehicles from nearby Fort Hood. But this doesn't accurately tell what happened. For that information, we need to look beyond the controlled media's sanitized version of events. One that brings to into focus the involvement one General Clark, who would later serve as the commander of the NATO forces that battled Yugoslavia's Communist dictator Slobodan Milosevic (this latter engagement, as will be shown in a moment, had much less to do with securing freedom for oppressed people as it did with providing prep work—like the Iraqi invasion—for the "peacekeeping" troops of an emerging world government). Clark enlisted the aid of Yugoslav thugs to carry out his plans in the War in Kosovo.

At www.electwesleyclark.com  a biographical sketch of the candidate dryly lists among Wesley Clark's accomplishments how:

As the Commander 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas (August 1992-April 1994), he transitioned the Division into a rapidly deployable force and conducted three emergency deployments to Kuwait.

No mention, of course, of any involvement with the assault at Waco. That is provided in the article "From Waco to Belgrade: Wesley K. Clark and America's 'Army of the Future'," where Ken McCarthy of www.brasscheck.com  writes: 

The initial reaction of virtually every person who hears about Clark's involvement in the attack on the Mt. Carmel Center of the Branch Davidians outside of Waco, Texas is surprise and/or disbelief: "I thought it was an ATF/FBI operation that went wrong
and all the military did was lend a few tanks."

Let's start by dispelling that myth. Here is the list of US military personnel and equipment that the US Justice Department admits were used at Mt. Carmel:



Military Personnel and Equipment

"Rescue" victim Eight-year-old Melissa Morrison, victim of the Waco Holocaust, shown before (left) and after (right) her "liberation" by Federal agents. Armored vehicles under General Wesley Clark's command were used in carrying out the fateful attack.
 

Personnel

Active Duty Personnel - 15
Texas National Guard Personnel - 13

Track vehicles

Bradley fighting vehicle (OMZ) - 9
Combat Engineer Vehicle (M728) - 5
Tank Retrieval vehicle (M88) - 1
Abrams Tanks (M1A1) - 2


(Source: Department of the Treasury, Report of the Department of the Treasury on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Investigation of Vernon Wayne Howell also known as David Koresh, U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1993)

In other words, the Waco raid represents a mini military assault (authorities said the virtually indestructible Abrams tanks were being used because Branch Davidian leader David Koresh had boasted about having anti-tank guns). "Attorney General Janet Reno," writes McCarthy, "attempted to explain away the 'FBI' use of US Army tanks as being equivalent to an innocuous 'rent a car' arrangement." So why such a claim from Reno? McCarthy offers this explanation:

No military commander "lends" 17 pieces of armor and 15 active service personnel under his command to anybody, let alone the FBI or any other law enforcement agency, willingly. The principle is very simple: my men, my arms, my show.

In a lawful operation, the command structure would have been publicly announced, but since the involvement of the military in Waco was entirely illegal and indefensible, it was necessary to paint the situation as an FBI operation. (emphasis added)

The obviously substantial presence of US military equipment used in the operation was dismissed as being equivalent to a "rent a car" service.

The US news media which received all of its information on Waco by dutifully attending FBI press conference briefings and then repeating them uncritically swallowed the "FBI in charge" story hook, line and sinker.

Whether Clark actually helped direct the assault on the Branch Davidians using the military force at Waco has not been documented, but it certainly came from his command, with his knowledge and without any objection on his part. Kelly Patricia O'Meara, in the Insight article mentioned at the beginning of this section writes:

West Point graduate Joseph Mehrten Jr. tells Insight, "Clark had to have knowledge about the plan because there is no way anyone could have gotten combat vehicles off that base without his OK. The M1A1 Abrams armor is classified 'Secret,' and maybe even 'Top Secret,' and if it was deployed as muscle for something like Waco there would have been National Firearms Act weapons issues. Each of these M1A1 Abrams vehicles is armed with a 125-millimeter cannon, a 50-caliber machine gun and two 30-caliber machine guns, which are all very heavily controlled items, requiring controls much like a chain of legal custody. It is of critical importance that such vehicles could not have been moved for use at Waco without Clark's knowledge."

"This is something that the general staff would know in the daily situation report or manning reports. Clark would have known and, given his obsession for micromanagement, there is probably someone who can place him on the scene. He wouldn't have been able to resist going in. At the very least there is no way he didn't have knowledge," Mehrten continues.

So what if the general was aware that his military equipment was being used against American civilians, and so what if he even participated in the planning? Wasn't he just following orders from above?

"To follow that order," explains Mehrten, "is to follow a blatantly illegal order of a kind every West Point officer knows is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. Clark's obligation was to say, 'No, I'm not going to do it.' Look, Clark went to the same institution I did and at West Point we had extensive instruction in military ethics and issues concerning how one avoids obeying an illegal military order. It is drilled into our heads from the earliest days as cadets that the 'I-was-just-following-orders' defense isn't necessarily a good one."

In short, even if Wesley Clark didn't directly assist in the Waco siege (and we say, "if,"  because, as will be touched on at the end of this, there are critics who have studied his career who insist that Waco bears all the hallmarks of a Clark-led civilian assault), he must have culpability in permitting the vehicles to leave Fort Hood. While Clark's supporters within and without the military have come through for him this campaign with much needed damage control concerning Waco, neither he nor his have uttered a word of condemnation concerning the government's heavy-handed tactics that played a crucial part in that tragedy. Some may argue that by not commenting one way or another he is merely taking the politically safer course, not seeking to alienate any potential voters with differing views on the subject, but, at a very basic level , his silence on the matter amounts to tacit approval.
 

Birds of a feather? A smiling Wesley Clark (center), then with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, posed in 1994 with Bosnian Serb General  Ratko Mladic (second from left), wearing each other's hat.  At the time Mlavic was known in Washington as a suspected war criminal; it was later shown that he ordered the murder of over 7500 unarmed Muslim males, aged 12-77, among other brutal crimes. On the above occasion, the two drank wine together, and Mlavic gave a bottle of  brandy and an engraved pistol to Clark , who defends the meeting but now says he was wrong to have accepted the gifts.
 

After Waco, General Clark received a number of promotions, eventually ending up as commander of NATO forces during the Kosovo War. Whether his promotions came as result of involvement with the Waco slaughter, as some have maintained, is conjecture, but what isn't conjecture is the death of more innocent civilians in the former Yugoslavia by soldiers under his leadership. As mentioned above, Clark had no qualms about working with street toughs. Later this month he is scheduled to testify in the Netherlands at the United Nations war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic. (Clark set to testify at trial of Milosevic) While discussing this on Meet the Press in November, Clark defended a friendly meeting he had with one of Milosevic's henchmen, General Ratko Mladic (see photo below), who is also wanted for war crimes, including the "ethnic cleansing" massacre of over 7500 Muslim men and boys in the enclave of Srebrenica, an act some describe as "the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II." (BBC Profile: Ratko Mladic) He is presently being sought by Interpol.
 

 A U.S. official has compared Clark's meeting with Mladic to "cavorting with Hermann Goering," the Nazi Reichsmarshall and Luftwaffe-Chief who committed suicide at the Nuremburg trials, after being sentenced to death for crimes committed during World War II. Clark defends it by saying Mladic was not indicted at the time and the meeting was to help bring about a peace treaty. A website supporting Clark quotes his book, Waging Modern War, in which he writes:

Meeting with Mladic was especially useful. Although the United States had not taken sides officially in the conflict, our concerns were clear. How many people, I reflected at the time, have the opportunity to size up a potential adversary face-to-face? He carried a reputation among the UN forces for cunning and forcefulness, I found him coarse and boastful. He knew far less than he thought about NATO, airpower, and the capabilities of the United States. (Clarkmyths.com)

But Mladic was on a government "watch" list of suspected war criminals when he met with Clark. Further, Clark was in violation of State Department's express wishes that he not to meet with the Serb. According to a World New Daily article: "The State Department immediately went into damage-control mode and cabled European embassies to assure them of no change in U.S. policy toward the Bosnian Serbs." (Clark hobnobbed with war criminal) So, while Clark and his apologists downplay the incident as a one-time occasion, the reality was different; his climb up the ranks is said to have stalled for a time at three stars because of his palling around with the bloody murderer. 

Wesley Clark's meeting with Radko Mladic, though, is far from his last friendly encounter with the sort of uniformed hoodlums American soldiers in the past risked their very lives to defeat. After assuming the NATO Supreme command in1997, Clark had close ties with Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) Chief of Staff Commander Brigadier Agim Ceku and KLA Leader Hashim Thaci, ties which cannot be so easily explained away.
 

Terrorists for "peace" This September 1999 photo shows Supreme NATO Commander Wesley Clark (right) , along with other NATO officers  in a show of unity with Kosovo Liberation Army leaders Hashim "Snake" Thaci (left) and Agim Ceku (next to Clark). The KLA, sold to the West as "freedom fighters," committed massacres, assassinations and other war crimes, engaged in narcotics trafficking and had ties to Osama bin Laden. Unlike his apparent once-only meeting in passing with Ratko Mladic, Clark had close ties to the KLA. Unlike other war criminals, not only did Ceku and Thaci escape prosecution, they have prospered in post-war Kosovo.
 

The KLA has justly been described as a group of Marxist-Leninist "narco-terrorists," signifying both its attacks on innocent civilians and its involvement in the illegal drug trade. Despite this well-documented reputation or, perhaps, oblivious to it, Senator Joe Lieberman said: "The United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same values and principles . . . Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values." (Washington Post, Apr.28, 1999) As William Norman Grigg, a senior editor of The New American, points out, Lieberman's equating of Communist thugs with our high-minded principles was seconded by American and British military leaders (including General Wesley Clark) stationed in Kosovo during the war there:

In congressional testimony last December, Ralf Mutschke, assistant director for Interpol’s Criminal Intelligence Directorate, noted: "In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Osama bin Laden." According to Mutschke, bin Laden also lent to the KLA the services of one of his military commanders, who led "an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict." (For more on the Islamic connection, visit  KLA-Islamic Links.)

While funding for the KLA may have come from bin Laden, as Mutschke pointed out, training for the KLA’s leaders came from American and British special forces and intelligence personnel. The March 12, 2000 issue of the London Sunday Times disclosed that "American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia," which began in March 1999. CIA officers who were sent to Kosovo supposedly to monitor a cease-fire between the KLA and the Serbian government actually spent their time "developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police." They also gave KLA commandos such gifts as "satellite telephones and global positioning systems." In fact, several KLA commanders "had the mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, the NATO commander." (Emphasis added; Behind the Terror Network Apparently, Clark's wasn't the only phone number of an important American possessed by the KLA. Mary Mostert writes: "The group suddenly burst on the world stage in 1998 as the favorite of the Clinton administration under then Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who was reported to have supplied KLA leader, Hasim Thaci, a satellite phone and her personal telephone number.
Wesley Clark, defender of KLA terrorists, joins race to White House)

The March 27th issue of The Herald of London revealed: "Both the UK and the US set up clandestine camps inside Albania to teach the KLA effective guerilla tactics.... Despite government denials on both sides of the Atlantic, SAS [British Special Forces] and US Delta Force instructors were used to train Kosovar Volunteers in weapons handling, demolition and ambush techniques, and basic organization."

To judge from its background, the KLA would seem an unlikely recipient of such favorable attention from the West. New York Times Balkans correspondent Chris Hedges points out that the group’s leadership is composed of "diehard Marxist-Leninists (who were bankrolled in the old days by the Stalinist dictatorship next door in Albania) as well as descendants of the fascist militias raised by the Italians in World War II." The January 21, 1999, issue of the French journal Liberation described the KLA as "totalitarian in its methods," and reported that its leaders have "remained largely true to the Maoist origins of its founders."

In 1993 Croatian Army Brigader General Agim Ceku (later in charge of the KLA) masterminded what is sometimes referred to as the Medak Pocket, a "scorched earth operation" that resulted in the total destruction of three Serbian villages and the massacre of over 100 civilians. From a report of Canadian "peacekeeping" forces, we read:

As the sun rose over the horizon, it revealed a Medak Valley engulfed in smoke and flames. As the frustrated soldiers of 2PPCLI waited for the order to move forward into the pocket, shots and screams still rang out as the ethnic cleansing continued.... About 20 members of the international press had tagged along, anxious to see the Medak battleground. Calvin [a Canadian officer] called an informal press conference at the head of the column and loudly accused the Croats of trying to hide war crimes against the Serb inhabitants. The Croats started withdrawing back to their old lines, taking with them whatever loot they hadn't destroyed. All livestock had been killed and houses torched. French reconnaissance troops and the Canadian command element pushed up the valley and soon began to find bodies of Serb civilians, some already decomposing, others freshly slaughtered.... Finally, on the drizzly morning of Sept. 17, teams of UN civilian police arrived to probe the smoldering ruins for murder victims. Rotting corpses lying out in the open were catalogued, then turned over to the peacekeepers for burial. (Cited, Michel Chossudovsky, NATO has installed a reign of terror in Kosovo)


Two years later, Clark crony Ceku headed Operation Storm
, an ethnic-cleansing effort many analysts believe was tacitly approved by NATO, which may also have supplied advisors for the offensive. Operation Storm sought to regain control of the Krajina region by driving out the Serbs and brutality was, once again, in much evidence:
 

Taliban, Kosovo style A well-armed  "freedom fighter" of the KLA, the terrorist group favored by  Clark. It was funded by various Islamic nations and individuals, including Osama bin Laden, and by its heroin sales.
 

According to an Amnesty International report, “Croatia: Impunity for killings after 'Storm,'” nearly the entire ethnic Serbian population of the region, estimated to be at least 180,000 people, fled in face of the attack. Hundreds of civilians were murdered, most of the victims being elderly and disabled persons who were unable to flee. The report estimates that 5,000 structures were torched by the advancing Croatian army.

According to The New York Times, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has determined that war crimes were indeed committed during Operation Storm. In a March 21, 1999 article, the Times revealed an unpublished report produced by the Tribunal. Among the report's assertions: “During the course of the military offensive, the Croatian armed forces and special police committed numerous violations of international humanitarian law.”

Hashim Thaci, the Kosovo Liberation Army's political leader backed by Clark and NATO, has his share of skeletons in his closet. Grigg writes:

During NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign against Serbia, the Clinton administration courted KLA frontman Hashim Thaci, who has since been given a position of prominence in the provincial government. This despite the fact that Thaci, as the June 25, 1999, New York Times reported, "carried out assassinations, arrests, and purges" of potential rivals for power. Thaci, whose nom de guerre was "Snake," counted among his victims a journalist named Ali Uka, who had made the mistake of publicly criticizing the KLA. Shortly thereafter, recalled the Times, Uka "was found dead in his apartment in Tirana, his face disfigured by repeated stabbings with a screwdriver and the jagged edge of a broken bottle."

When the crimes of the KLA became widely known, Ceku, Thaci and company did the same thing that many Eastern Bloc Communists seeking respectability in the West have done since the fictitious fall of Communism¼its name was changed. In part 1 of the article, "Terrorists attacking Macedonia are NATO troops, not 'rebels"", Jared Israel writes: 

The Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) was created out of the Kosovo Liberation Army by UNMIK, the United Nations administration in Kosovo. UNMIK simply gave the KLA terrorists new uniforms, new equipment, a new name, official UN status, a nice paycheck and a familiar racist-murderer for a leader [Real News 24/7: that is, Ceku].

This was taking place in September 1999, at around the same time Ceku posed with Clark in the above photo. Despite his new uniform, big shot NATO buddies and  identity as a U.N. "peacekeeper," Ceku was still up to his old tricks. Concerning this, Israel notes:

Now jump ahead to September 1999. This was the height of a second massive "ethnic cleansing" - this time the KLA was driving Serbs, "Gypsies," Slavic Muslims, Jews and others from Kosovo. And so Agim Ceku, veteran of Krajina in 1995 and Kosovo in the summer of 1999 - the two worst racist military assaults in Europe since World War II - became head of the Kosovo Protection Corps.

Meanwhile, Hasim Thaci set himself up ruler of Kosovo, a move which Clark and company also approved. The political arm of the KLA, Thaci's bailiwick,  became known as the "Democratic Party of Kosovo," while there was nothing truly democratic about it at all.

Christos defaced This icon was the target of attacks by the Kosovo Liberation Army, who have made the desecration and destruction of churches, monasteries and graveyards a high priority. "The ancient churches," declared an Orthodox bishop, "many of which had survived 500 years of Ottoman Moslem rule, could not survive 8 months of internationally guaranteed peace. Regretfully, all of this happens in the presence of KFOR and the U.N."
 

What was the relationship between Wesley Clark and KLA? In essence, they were part of the same fighting force. Mary Mostert, writing in the article cited above, states:

On February 18, 1999, at a Pentagon briefing on Kosovo, Captain Mike Doubleday observed, in trying to explain to a skeptical reporter who was concerned about the Air Force being manipulated by the KLA terrorists, "We are going to be very watchful that that kind of an occurrence does not happen, and we are not going to become an Air Force for the KLA."

Five days later, Senator Bob Smith, Republican of New Hampshire said on the floor of the Senate on February 23, 1999 stated, "We are in essence becoming the Air Force for the KLA."

Just as the KLA attacked civilians on the ground without hesitation, so Clark showed little regard for them in his air attacks. One of the targets of NATO bombers was the home of Slobodan Milosevic, despite its being located in a residential area. Hospitals, old-age homes, maternity wards and health clinics also were hit, as was the Serbian television station in Belgrade. Clark's callous disregard for human life can be seen in the following passage:

NATO justified the bombing of the Belgrade TV station, saying it was a legitimate military target. "We've struck at his TV stations and transmitters because they're as much a part of his military machine prolonging and promoting this conflict as his army and security forces," U.S. General Wesley Clark explained--"his," of course, referring to Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic. It wasn't Milosevic, however, who was killed when the Belgrade studios were bombed on April 23, but rather 20 journalists, technicians [Real News 24/7: including a makeup lady] and other civilians. (Wesley Clark: A war criminal?)
 

Also targeted were churches and monasteries. Colonel George Jatras, USAF (Ret.), who publicly challenged Clark about his record in Kosovo during a  book-signing by the general in 2001, writes:

For those in the audience who did not have a flier, I began to explain the picture which showed General Clark in a congratulatory handshake with Hashim Thaci, leader of the KLA, which under the noses of KFOR [Real News 24/7: an anagram for Kosovo Forces—the name for NATO forces in the region] had murdered or ethnically cleansed thousands of Kosovo Serbs and had destroyed more Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries than were destroyed in 500 years under the Ottoman Empire. (Gen. Clark at Borders)
 

KLA handiwork A Serbian Orthodox nun surveys the ruins of the 14th century Holy Trinity Monastery,  after it was demolished by the Kosovo Liberation Army in July 1999—two months before the KLA's Agim Ceku was named head of the NATO-sponsored Kosovo Protection Corps.
 

Colonel Jatras is not exaggerating. On the Crucified Kosovo webpage is a "Catalog of destroyed and desecrated Churches in Kosovo and Metohia" (click on church/monastery name to access before/after photos), while a map shows the locations at which the crimes were committed. Although the list only pertains to a five month period in 1999, no fewer than 76 attacks are reported. A search of the word "churches" on the Balkan Peace

website pulls up scores of links on the related subjects. Sometimes the troops of the KLA would leave a crude graffito signifying their presence, such as "UCK" (the Albanian equivalent of "KLA") scrawled across an icon. (See photo included in the report, Destruction of Christian churches and monasteries in Kosovo and Metohija since arrival of NATO, complied by the Berkley Kolo of Serbian-American Sisters.) 

The anti-Orthodox campaign did not not stop at the harming of religious structures.  A post from Belgrade on June 11, 1999,  reports that
 

According to the news agency AFP, Orthodox Bishop Artemije of Kosovo revealed that this week the Kosovo Liberation Army set two medieval monasteries on fire and killed a priest. The Bishop said that on Wednesday night he fled from Prizren, a city in the south of the province with some 250 Serbs, several of them religious, to the monastery of Gracanica, in the south of Pristina. (KLA Burns Two Monasteries)

As this murder was reported internationally at the time,  it is virtually impossible that General Wesley Clark was ignorant it. Yet just three months later, he was rubbing elbows with KLA terrorists. They were our "allies," don't you know? Much more on this important issue can be found at Kosovo.com, which includes a webpage entitled Destruction, which has extensive links, photos and videos. One of the links—Systematic Destruction—proves that this sort of activity continued at least into late 2002 and, again, with the tacit approval of NATO/U.N.

What became of Clark cronies Agim Ceku and Hashim Thaci? Well, not all war criminals are created equal: While Milosevic is standing trial in the Hague and a $5 million reward is being offered for the capture of the still-at-large Mladic, Ceku and Thaci are doing quite well, thank you. According to a item carried on December 8 of this year by the Balkan Reconstruction, the pair still have prominent positions in Kosovo: Ceku is still commander of the so-called Kosovo Protection Corps (who's being protected?) and Thaci heads the Kosovo Democratic Party. (Suspicions and Suspensions  More on Ceku)

Some analysts contend that by studying Wesley Clark's tactics and behavior in Kosovo, one can see disturbing parallels with the Waco raid, parallels that point to his involvement in blueprinting the earlier civilian slaughter. Lowell Ponte, in Wesley Clark and Waco, cites Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair on similarities between the Mt. Carmel conflagration and Kosovo:

“Certainly the Waco onslaught bears characteristics typical of Gen. Wesley Clark: the eagerness to take out the leader (viz., the Clark-ordered bombing of Milosevic’s private residence); the utter disregard for the lives of innocent men, women and children; the arrogant miscalculations about the effects of force; disregard for law, whether of the Posse Comitatus Act governing military actions within the United States or, abroad, the purview of the Nuremberg laws on war crimes and attacks on civilians….The role of the US Army [at Waco] throws into harsh relief the way prohibitions against the use of the US military for civilian law enforcement can be swiftly by-passed.” (Ponte links the Cockburn-St. Clair article.)

But these aren't the only similarities. An article carried by the American Free Press identifies seven, including:

  1. Symbolic destruction of property dear to the "bad guy" Yugoslavia: Milosevic's private home was bombed repeatedly in spite of the fact that it was not a military target and was located in a residential neighborhood. Waco: Tank operators repeatedly rolled over and destroyed numerous vehicles belonging to the church which Karesh, an avid car mechanic, had personally worked on.
  2. Obsession with silencing the victim's "propaganda" Yugoslavia: Clark repeatedly bombed Yugoslavian television and radio transmitters and stations, even though NATO had promised in writing not to attack stations. Several workers were killed in these attacks. Clark declared them "legitimate military targets" though their only function was news reporting and entertainment. Waco: One of the first acts of post-raid Waco was cutting off the complex's phone system to anyone but the FBI and disabling its short wave radio system. As the siege wore on, the electricity was also cut off, turned back on, then cut off again.
  3. Mislabeling the nature of the attacking force Yugoslavia: The war was painted as a NATO operation. In reality, the vast majority of funding, manpower, aircraft, targeting and munitions were provided by the US and the operation was commanded by a US general. The entire operation was in violation of the NATO charter, US law, and the UN Charter. Waco: The assault was painted as an ATF, then FBI operation. In reality, the training, tactics, equipment and essential manpower were provided by the US military and the operation was commanded by a US general. The entire operation was in violation of US law.
  4. Failure to plan for obvious contingencies Yugoslavia: No meaningful preparations were made for the likelihood of large numbers of refugees, who, after all, the war was supposedly being fought on behalf of. However, immense military power was arranged for. Waco: No ambulance was on call during the initial raid in spite of the fact that over 100 armed agents were involved and the complex housed numerous women and children as well as men who were thought to be armed. However, a convoy of armored vehicles was provided as a "backup." (General Wesley Clark From Waco to Yugoslavia: The US military was at Waco For the full list, scroll to near the bottom of the linked page, where it follows another list of general similarities.)

The military record of Wesley Clark has shown reckless disregard for innocent civilians and a contempt for Christians in particular. The prospect of him sitting in the White House ought to cause apprehension in all Americans who value their freedom, their property and even their lives. After all, do we really need another Waco?

Part VI: coming soon

 


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9-20 9-11 Pentagon photos show mystery engine part

 

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