Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 1999...
Truthseeker, you are great PR for the jihadists. Unfortunately, only the uninformed will fall for your hype. The rest of the world, including the entire International Intelligence community, understands that the UN-NATO-US attempts to create an independent terror state in Kosovo was based on lies and staged "massacres". The truth unraveled after "1999".
Atrocities: Fact, Fiction, and Hyperbole
...Two incidents which were important in rallying support—including that of Green Parties—for NATO's military action were the alleged "Racak massacre" and the murder in Goden of 20 teachers in front of their pupils. Both must be viewed with skepticism.
In mid-January the alleged massacre of 45 Kosovars at Racak was a major media event. After the powerful first impression of the "massacre" reached the public mind, questions began popping up. French TV stations and newspapers Le Monde and Le Figaro questioned the absence of shell casings or blood where the bodies were found and the fact that no eyewitnesses turned up, even though Racak had its share of journalists.
The American diplomat who publicized the "massacre" was William Walker, a war crimes investigator. It came to light that William Walker had been involved in the "Iran-Contra" affair with Oliver North. Walker apparently had years of experience in covert operations in Latin America before being assigned to Kosovo. Rollie Keith, who was a Kosovo Verification Monitor during February and March of 1999, wonders if Walker was assigned to assist the KLA in staging the massacre in order to help prepare the public for military intervention. The Los Angeles Times asked if the massacre had been faked by the KLA putting civilian clothes on the bodies of their own military dead before William Walker contacted the press.
The other incident was reflected in a April 29 report by Reuters that 20 teachers had been murdered in front of their students in the Kosovo village of Goden. Skepticism mounted with the information that Goden had 20 houses and a population of 200. Few 200-person villages have 20 teachers. A report from the Guardian of April 9 had told a slightly different story: Serbs had came into Goden, lined 20 men (including 2 teachers) against a wall, and told women and children to leave the village. One woman who fled told reporters "We don't have the slightest idea whether our men are alive, dead or massacred!"
This would certainly constitute a criminal act by Serb forces. But the press wasn't satisfied with a story that "20 Kosovo men were probably killed after their families had been driven out." Thus, the released version described 20 teachers being murdered in front of their pupils.
Retired Canadian Major General Lewis MacKenzie, who commanded UN troops during the 1992 Bosnian War, believes that governments have learned the value of hiring PR firms to put the right spin on military actions. In an April 15 story in the Vancouver Sun, he reported that "One Washington-based firm continues to brag on its Web site that it successfully introduced the hot terms 'holocaust, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and concentration camps' to the lexicon of journalists covering the war." |
