WAS IT CLINTON'S FOLLY OR WESLEY'S WAR?
January 25, 2004
By Toby Westerman
Copyright 2004 International News Analysis Today
www.inatoday.com
The name Dr. Helena Ranta means nothing to most Americans, but it should.
In 1999, Dr. Ranta led the team of forensic investigators researching several mass graves in the village of Racak, in what was then the Serb province of Kosovo. During a recent interview with the German news daily Berliner Zeitung, Dr. Ranta put into question one of the prime reasons given for NATO's 1999 air war, and opened to speculation why the United States led the 78-day assault against the people of Serbia.
Slobodan Milosevic, an old-style Communist dictator ruled Yugoslavia, and Serbia was the larger of the two states comprising the Yugoslav republic. Milosevic was, in reality, also the leader of Serbia.
The leading American diplomat in the region at the time, William Walker, declared that the graves at Racak were the result of Serb soldiers massacring 45 ethnic Albanian Muslim civilians.
Several days after Walker's statement, the U.S.-led attack began. On the one-year anniversary of the supposed massacre, the former political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Hashim Thaqi, confirmed that the Racak incident "marked a turning point in the history of Kosovo." The reports of a massacre at Racak convinced the West - and particularly the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton - that military action was necessary to save the lives of thousands of ethnic Albanian Kosovo Muslims from slaughter.
The problem is that Walker did not have any real evidence to support his claim. The event that provoked the U.S.-led attack, which was led by now-presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark, probably never happened.
Dr. Ranta told Berliner Zeitung that in 1999 she had information that a bloody battle had taken place near Racak between Serb troops and ethnic Albanian Muslim rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army. According to Dr. Ranta's interview, the graves may have been the result of the burial of fallen soldiers and rebels, and not evidence of Serbian cold-blooded murder.
Dr. Ranta's findings were ignored, but Walker's statements prevailed, leading to war.
In an attempt to bring the truth to light, Dr. Ranta is demanding that evidence connected with Racak, including photographs of the scene, be released. Dr. Ranta believes that photographs exist which would demonstrate that non-Serb authorities tampered with the physical evidence at Racak.
While no one wishes to defend the actions of a Communist dictator - or any other brand of tyrant - the people of Serbia paid a heavy price for a crime that Milosevic apparently did not commit.
Milosevic, like Saddam Hussein, was a petty despot attempting to become a regional power, but, unlike Saddam, Milosevic did not have ties to Muslim terror networks, nor was he seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction. The Serbs were - and are - in a deadly struggle against the allies of Al Qaeda and other terror groups.
The Clinton-era war against the Serbs, and the subsequent NATO/U.N. occupation of Kosovo has not led to peace between Serb and ethnic Albanian, but to the expulsion of nearly all Serbs from Kosovo, the establishment of a virtual gangland state within Kosovo under the very eyes of the occupying authorities, and a deep, bitter resentment against the West on the part of the Serbs. This bitterness is expressing itself in the renewal of nationalism and the desire for revenge.
Caught in the middle of the ethnic hatred are thousands of American troops still serving in Kosovo.
Although the U.S. media is not reporting Dr. Ranta's observations and demands, it is slowly becoming obvious that the Clinton-era attack on Serbia was at best a blunder, at worst an expression of devastating military power against an uncooperative leader, and his hapless subjects.
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