https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/ Disaster Message Service Discussion Board en-US Thu, 30 Apr 2026 01:57:20 +0000 wpForo 60 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/3/#post-4263 Mon, 31 May 1999 22:56:00 +0000
I've put my life on the line for my country before. "

Have you ?"

No you haven't I don't believe a word of it. You probably defected or faked an injury, how could a mouth spitting that many lies per second be trusted in the Army ? I don't know anyone who could trust you with his cigarettes, let alone his life.

You are probably an ignominous draft-dodger, like your beloved Billy faking a prayer at Arlington today.

You are a shame for your country and you have no honour whatsoever.]]> Kosovo War nick https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/3/#post-4263 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/3/#post-4262 Mon, 31 May 1999 22:39:00 +0000 Kosovo War nick https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/3/#post-4262 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4261 Mon, 31 May 1999 22:31:00 +0000 BELGRADE, May 31 (Itar-Tass) - A NATO air raid last night has killed at least 11 people at a sanatorium in the town of Surdulica, which is located 290 kilometres south of Belgrade. The sanatorium accommodates Serb refugees from Croatia
and Bosnia.
Missile strikes killed six people in a nearby home for the elderly.

Nighttime air raids on the capital Belgrade left one person dead and several others injured in downtown Zvezdozara neighbourhood. Blasts of bombs and missiles damaged many buildings on Revolution Boulevard. Attacks on Belgrade's suburb Ripnja
destroyed three houses.

NATO's air power repeatedly attacked Serbia's power network. Air strikes set on fire Nikola Tesla electric station 30 kilometres from Belgrade. Bombing caused extensive destruction of a relay electric station near the Vojevodina
province's administrative centre Novi Sad and left the city without power supply.
In Kosovo province, NATO planes unloaded dozens of bombs and missiles. One struck a television and radio transmitter at the mountain resort of Brezovica.

Air strikes destroyed a bridge over the Southern Morava river in the city of Vladicin Han and damaged houses in the vicinity of the bridge.
NATO planes cracked down on Vranje, Nis, Leskovac and Aleksinac, in which tens of houses were reduced to rubble.
At 11 p.m. Moscow, time, or half an hour after an all-clear to nighttime bombing was sounded, air raid alerts howled anew in Belgrade and several explosions rumbled soon thereafter.
Over the past 24 hours, a record-high number of air raids was mounted on Yugoslavia in 68 days of the NATO aggression. Air raid alerts sounded five times.]]> Kosovo War nick https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4261 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4260 Mon, 31 May 1999 20:47:00 +0000 Kosovo War guidomasterofreality https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4260 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4259 Mon, 31 May 1999 19:51:00 +0000 and is posting this kind of stuff...
realy sad.]]> Kosovo War dani https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4259 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4258 Mon, 31 May 1999 18:32:00 +0000 Kosovo War maja https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4258 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4257 Mon, 31 May 1999 17:47:00 +0000
I've put my life on the line for my country before.

Have you?

!!THERE ARE NO NATO BOMBS FALLING IN YUGOSLAVIA!!

!!ONLY METEORS!!]]> Kosovo War guidomasterofreality https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4257 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4256 Mon, 31 May 1999 17:17:00 +0000
Founded by Ramsey Clark, Former U.S. Attorney General

Go to: Home Page
Current Urgent Issues

Is the U.S./NATO leadership planning a ground war?

Sign up Online to Volunteer for or Endorse the June 5
March on the Pentagon!/ Endorsers Lists

Wash DC - Saturday, June 5th,National March on the Pentagon to stop bombing Yugoslavia, starts at 12 noon at the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial and marches to the Pentagon.

SAN FRANCISCO->June 5 -- Mass March and Rally to Stop the War.
Gather, 11 a.m. UN Plaza, Market St., between 7th & 8th Sts.
March, 12 noon to Dolores Park, 18th & Dolores St. for rally beginning at 1 p.m.


more at:

http://www.iacenter.org/]]> Kosovo War dani https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4256 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4255 Mon, 31 May 1999 11:35:00 +0000
May 29, 1999

OP-ED

AT HOME ABROAD / By ANTHONY LEWIS

Which Side Are We On?

The indictment of Slobodan Milosevic by the International War
Crimes Tribunal told us nothing new about his character or his
record. He has been carrying out crimes against humanity
since 1991, when his forces leveled the Croatian city of Vukovar and
executed 260 men in a Vukovar hospital.

But the indictment does make a difference, a profound one. It
clarifies the nature of NATO's war against Mr. Milosevic over
Kosovo. And it requires those who have been critical of that war to
think again about which side they are on.

Just as Mr. Milosevic is the first serving head of state to be charged
with war crimes, so this war is a first. The reason was eloquently
stated by President Vaclav Havel last month in a speech to the
Canadian Parliament, reprinted in The New York Review of Books.

"This is probably the first war that has not been waged in the name
of 'national interests,' " President Havel said, "but rather in the name
of principles and values. . . .

"Kosovo has no oilfields to be coveted; no member nation in the
alliance has any territorial demands on Kosovo. . . . It is
fighting out of concern for the fate of others. It is fighting because no
decent person can stand by and watch the systematic
state-directed murder of other people."

NATO air attacks have killed Serbian civilians. That is regrettable.
But it is a price that has to be paid when a nation falls in behind a
criminal leader. It happened in Germany. And it has happened again
in Serbia.

How can a young man, a Serbian paramilitary, demand money from
an Albanian family for a child's life -- and, when they have none to
give, knife the child? That, and other savageries, could take place
only because an evil leader had infected his people with the notion
that others are less human -- are untermenschen.

Even Serbs distant from the atrocities have been affected. Reports
from Belgrade say most people see themselves as victims. They
are oblivious to what Serbian forces have done to other human
beings over the last eight years -- oblivious to Vukovar, to the rape
camps and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, to the massacres in Kosovo.

In 1992 the Serbian commander in Bosnia, Ratko Mladic, told his
gunners in the hills around Sarajevo, "Burn it all." And they did:
hospitals, universities, mosques, homes. That should be
remembered when Serbs today describe themselves as victims.

That NATO's purpose is just does not, of course, mean that it has
fought the war wisely. It has not. Serious military analysts are
agreed that the alliance should not have forsworn the use of ground
troops at the start of its campaign, and should not have begun the
air war so tepidly.

Nor was the war inevitable. American diplomacy went in fits and
starts before the final crisis, seeming to lose its way in dealing with
Mr. Milosevic's broken promises on Kosovo.

In the critical months beginning in January 1998 President Clinton
was persistently distracted by a special prosecutor obsessed by
sex. And Mr. Milosevic well knew that.

But we are in the war now, and for the most urgent political as well
as moral reasons we must win. Even achieving NATO's declared
objectives in Kosovo will not necessarily end the menace of
Slobodan Milosevic. Unless he is captured, he will no doubt make
more trouble in Montenegro and elsewhere. But victory, limited
though it be, is essential.

The indictment of Mr. Milosevic may change the politics of the war in
this country too. Many Republicans have tried to use the war
politically. That was the strategy of Representative Tom DeLay, the
G.O.P. whip, when a motion to support the war came before the
House. He urged Republicans to vote no, making it Bill Clinton's war
-- an astonishing position for a party that usually touts its patriotism.
The motion lost on a tie vote.

The President should go to the country now, on the strength of the
Milosevic indictment, to tell people what this war is about. He needs
stronger public support as a moment of truth approaches.

A summit meeting of the seven leading economic powers and
Russia will be held in Cologne on June 18. If the air war has not
brought Mr. Milosevic to accept NATO's demands by then, the
prospect of winter means that the unthinkable will have to be
confronted: a ground war.]]> Kosovo War zoja https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4255 https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4254 Mon, 31 May 1999 11:32:00 +0000
May 29, 1999

VOICES

To Some Midwesterners, Milosevic Indictment Gives War New Meaning

By DIRK JOHNSON

ROCKFORD, Ill. -- With no end to the bloodshed in Yugoslavia
after two months of NATO bombing, Marcia DeClerk, a
54-year-old computer programmer who initially favored the
airstrikes, started to wonder if maybe the American troops should
just come home.

"When things drag on," she said, "you start to lose sight of what
you're there for."

But the indictment of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, on
war crimes charges by a U.N. tribunal has washed away her
doubts.

"We've got to stop him," said Mrs. DeClerk, tending a flower garden
on a brilliant spring day in this Midwestern city of 150,000 people.
"You can't ignore the people dying, the homeless. It would be wrong
for us to look the other way."

In more than two dozen interviews conducted at barbershops and
bookstores, shopping malls and motorcycle dealerships since the
indictment of Milosevic, the people interviewed for the most part
expressed support for American military action in Yugoslavia.

"These horrible things we've been hearing -- they're true," said
Duard Bennett, a 38-year-old engineer sitting astride a Harley
Davidson motorcycle.

This old factory town on the Rock River, encircled by corn and bean
fields, has traditionally been guided by a middle-of-the-road political
ethos. Conversations with people here several days ago, before the
indictment of Milosevic, revealed a growing restiveness about the
presence of American troops in Yugoslavia, and plenty of second
guessing about whether President Clinton had acted too hastily. But
the sampling of those interviewed today tended to amplify quite
another question.

"Why weren't we there long ago?" asked James Jackson, 59, who
works in the real estate business.

"It's been obvious that Milosevic has been guilty of war crimes for a
long time."

Jackson and many others called for the use of ground troops to
bring a quicker end to the war.

"Not quite enough and a little too late," said Brad Hyland, 42, an
engineer, describing the American military strategy. "We need to
commit to ground troops or we're not going to get the job done."

To be sure, many people remain opposed to American involvement
in Yugoslavia.

"It's a European concern -- it's not our thing," said Spring
Thompson, 22, a clerk at a convenience store along U.S. Route 20.
"I feel terrible about the awful things that are happening to those
people. But it's just not for us to stick our noses into."

Others criticized the American entrance into Yugoslavia but said
there was little choice now but to fight to the end.

"Unfortunately, I think we're stuck there now," said Larry Steltmann,
56, an executive for a gas-burner manufacturer here. "I don't think
we utilized the diplomatic options effectively. We didn't use Russia,
which could have been helpful."

Some people said they did not trust Clinton, expressing concern
that the president might be eager to secure a legacy that would
eclipse his impeachment. At the very least, said Steltmann, it is
difficult to have faith in a leader who has been untruthful with the
people before.

"Everybody wonders if he's telling the truth," said Steltmann. "Even
most of his supporters will tell you they don't really trust the guy."

Dean Hamilton, a 76-year-old retired phone company worker,
faulted Clinton for being naive about military affairs and
underestimating the mettle of the Serbs.

"You don't announce right off that you're not going to use ground
troops," said Hamilton, as he stood outside the Cherryvale shopping
center. "It puts you in a bad position to negotiate. Of course, Clinton
doesn't have the nerve to face the political repercussions of sending
ground troops."

But the president had a defender in Frank Livingston, a 37-year-old
barber, who said it was quite a stretch to tarnish Clinton's foreign
policy because he had earlier tried to conceal an extramarital affair.

"Despite his private life, he makes sound judgments as a president,"
said Livingston, who added that he was inclined to favor American
military involvement if the White House deemed it necessary.

The apparent difficulty in stopping Milosevic has surprised many
people here.

Leonard Hahn, a 46-year-old technician for an aerospace company,
said he initially shrugged off Milosevic as a pipsqueak despot who
would wilt under the thunderstorm of bombs.

"I thought we'd go in, drop the bombs, and he'd quickly back down,"
said Hahn. "I think everybody thought this would be over in 30 days."

For Dan Saalfeld, 19, who has peers entering the Army, the
American military action at first seemed to be a case of
unwarranted adventurism.

"I thought, we really shouldn't be there," he said. "It wasn't our
business." But Milosevic's indictment and the details of the war
crimes have provoked a change of heart.

"We have to take a stand," said Saalfeld, who plans to enroll at
Boston University in the fall. "People being killed simply because
they belong to an ethnic group, you just can't let that happen."

Larry Creamer, a 48-year-old manager for Federal Express, said he
could not fathom how anyone needed a tribunal to validate the
accounts of war crimes.

"All you had to do was look on TV," said Creamer. "America should
be ashamed of itself if we don't stop this brutality."

Phil Nelson, 46, a carpenter, said he had little hope that Milosevic
would ever be brought to trial.

He also worried that the indictment could make Milosevic less willing
to negotiate. "His back is against the wall," Nelson said. "He's got
nothing to lose now."

Creamer's wife, Linda, a 48-year-old bookkeeper, expressed
concern about her 18-year-old son, and said she wished the United
States could take a break from acting as "everybody's policeman."

"Isn't it time somebody else around the world stood up and rose to
the challenge?" she asked.

Susan Moore, a homemaker in her 30s, said she had agonized
about the nation's proper role in the conflict.

Now she has become convinced that American ground troops
should be sent, even though it would almost surely mean some
casualties.

"It wouldn't be the first time America lost lives in a fight for freedom,"
she said. "But that's what being an American is all about."]]> Kosovo War zoja https://www.viexpo.com/kosovo-war/archive-through-may-31-1999/paged/2/#post-4254