There you go again, lol. Who says a pacifist is a traitor?
And, as you may know, Clinton has been called as a witness. This is not a make believe situation, this is a real world thing. And yes, precedent be damned, if there is credible evidence that CLinton is guilty of war crimes, he should be tried by an internation tribunal. Sort of hypocritical of us, if we only try one sovereign leader.
I know, being called as a witness is not the same thing as being tried for war crimes. But, I think it is the same precedent. And, I think he should testify. Especially in light of recent charges, Clinton has a lot to answer for.
--article
U.S. Was Ally of Al Qaeda in Kosovo
reuters.com
By Andrew Roche
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic told his war crimes trial on
Friday "genocidal" U.S. forces had been the unwitting ally of Osama bin
Laden in Kosovo, and demanded Bill Clinton and other Western leaders
come to testify.
Bin Laden's al Qaeda was "one of the fundamentalist groups which sent a
unit to fight in Kosovo" alongside Muslim Kosovo Albanians aided by the
United States against Serb forces in 1998-9, the fallen Yugoslav leader
told The Hague tribunal.
"The attacks on New York and Washington show what the terrorism you
sponsored looks like when it turns against you," he said in a speech
that ranged across centuries of history and much of the globe, and
exhausted court interpreters.
Milosevic, 60, was extradited from Belgrade seven months ago to a jail
cell in The Hague. On Tuesday his trial began for crimes against
humanity in Kosovo in 1999 and in Croatia in 1991-2, and for genocide in
the 1992-5 Bosnian war.
Prosecutors have this week portrayed him as prime mover in a decade of
massacres, torture, mass rape and expulsions by Serbs.
In a second day of reply to prosecutors' opening addresses, he blamed
the carnage entirely on his Balkan enemies and NATO. Echoing the
language of his indictment, he said the West itself had committed
"genocide and crimes against humanity."
"I'm asking what kind of tribunal this is, if you refuse to try people
for these crimes by the leaders and armies of NATO countries," a coolly
pugnacious Milosevic told judges.
On the fourth day of what is forecast to be a marathon case, he insisted
the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians who fled Kosovo in 1999
during the NATO air war against Yugoslavia had been driven out not by
Serbs but by their fellow Albanians.
The guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) "referred to all Albanians
who did not flee Kosovo as traitors," he said, creating an "illusion of
exodus." "There were hundreds of cameras waiting at the borders to show
alleged Serb misdeeds."
The motive was to justify NATO's attack, said Milosevic, showing the
court pictures of carbonized bodies of civilians killed by NATO bombs in
Kosovo and the rest of Serbia in 1999.
CHINESE EMBASSY BOMBING
NATO missiles destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, in what
Washington insisted was a mistake by Central Intelligence Agency target
planners using an outdated map.
"It is quite clear that (former U.S. president) Clinton wanted to go
down in history as the first man to bomb Chinese territory by bombing
the Chinese embassy," Milosevic said. "This was no accident."
Milosevic accused Germany of setting out to destroy old communist
Yugoslavia by its support for Slovenian and Croatian independence, and
by secret backing of Albanian "terrorists."
"The German intelligence service rallied up criminals from all over
Europe. They were pushed to Kosovo," he said.
Bin Laden, meanwhile, used anarchic Albania as a launchpad for violence
in the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe, he said.
Some Muslim "terrorists" in Kosovo, had they not been jailed by Serbia,
would now be "going in chains to Guantanamo Bay" from Afghanistan
instead, the white-haired Milosevic insisted.
"While Americans transport al Qaeda terrorists to Guantanamo...at the
same time they demand all Albanian terrorists be freed from prisons in
Yugoslavia," he added.
The involvement in the Balkans of Mujahideen guerrillas from Arab states
and Afghanistan is well-documented, and U.S. agents followed the trail
of bin Laden and his followers in Albania and Kosovo itself, before the
September 11 attacks.
Accusing NATO of the use of especially lethal cluster bombs, he showed
the court a photograph of a Serb woman killed while plowing her field
and corpses of children in pajamas.
"This is an example of bestiality, targeting people in this way," he
said, adding NATO bombed at night to maximize deaths among sleeping
civilians. He showed pictures of shattered hospitals, an old people's
home, buses, houses and workplaces, some strewn with charred and
bloodied bodies.
After NATO occupied Kosovo in June 1999, they allowed Serbs to be killed
or forced out by Albanian "terrorists" and "savages." More than 100 Serb
Orthodox churches were razed in a campaign he likened to Taliban
destruction of Buddhist statues.
Kosovo, seen by Serbs as a historic heartland, was now run by an
"Albanian drug mafia" and the sex-slave trade, he said.
CALLS CLINTON, ALBRIGHT, BLAIR, SCHROEDER
"I am going to call witnesses here and I want it to be possible to
question Clinton and Albright and Kinkel and Schroeder and Kohl and
Dini... Kofi Annan... Blair," he said, listing Western and U.N. leaders
involved in Balkan peace talks.
Milosevic wants them to testify that the West used him as a peacemaker
in the Bosnian war before turning against him.
Under the tribunal's procedures Milosevic is expected to produce a list
of witnesses he wants called. The three judges have the final say on
whether witnesses are subpoenaed.
The reformist Yugoslav government, which handed Milosevic to The Hague,
on Friday called his testimony "disgusting." But the Russian parliament
branded the tribunal a "political" court which had failed to charge NATO
states for atrocities.
During his afternoon speech, Milosevic compared Clinton's strategy in
fighting the Kosovo war to that of Adolf Hitler's: to establish a
strategic base from which to attack Russia. He described the policy the
Austro-Hungarian empire had adopted toward the territories of the
crumbling Ottoman empire in the 19th and 20th centuries, that of keeping
Serbia weak and the Balkans divided, he said. Presiding Judge Richard
May urged Milosevic to slow down so interpreters could keep up.
Dressed in a navy suit and a tie in the red, blue and white Serbian
colors, Milosevic sits flanked by seated guards in a courtroom sealed
off from the public gallery by a bullet-proof glass wall and equipped
with computer screens and cameras.
Milosevic is conducting his own defense, after refusing to appoint
counsel or enter a formal plea on the grounds the court has no right to
judge him, but is advised by Belgrade lawyers.
Judges have entered not guilty pleas on his behalf and appointed three
lawyers as "friends of the court" to ensure he gets a fair trial. The
"friends" on Friday appealed for judges to give him leeway in the length
of his address, and he was allowed to continue on Monday until 1 p.m.
Milosevic could face life in prison if convicted at the end of an epic
trial some expect to last at least two years. |
