<span style='color:green'><b>The recent Balkan wars: Bosnia and Kosovo - and media distortions</b> </span>
<b>The Bosnian war</b>
Allies and lies - BBC News, 22 June, 2001:
The official policy of the US was to stay out of the war. The article deals with how instead of staying out of the war, they were covertly involved. Headings include:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Covert [air] drops by the US
US Bugging the UN commanders and officers <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Bosnian war was the first major test of the West's resolve in the post-Cold War era, and one that it unambiguously failed.
Prevarication, competing national agendas and lack of moral courage on the part of politicians and diplomats worsened an already horrific situation, while on the ground UN peacekeepers with inadequate support and confusing orders wrestled with a situation for which they were ill-trained. Into this already complicated situation came the ultimate "wild card", the United States of America, the world's only superpower. <b>A small group at the head of America's foreign policy elite intervened covertly</b> in what it had previously called "Europe's problem".
It was driven by a mixture of media-fuelled public opinion, simplistic moral outrage and personal ambition to make a name in the "only game in town". <b>Its easy answer for Bosnia's ills was "lift and strike" - re-arm the Bosniaks (mostly Bosnian Muslims) and Croats and bomb the Serbs.</b>
...
The air drops were only the tip of the iceberg. <b>A team of retired US officers planned the bloody Croatian "liberation" of the Kraijina and the subsequent invasion of western Bosnia by the Croatian Army</b> in the summer of 1995. The US also provided intelligence to the Croats, flying unmanned reconnaissance drones off the Adriatic island of Brac. <b>More significantly the US</b> launched a huge signals and electronic intelligence gathering operation in Croatia to <b>provide targeting information not for Nato or the UN, but for Croatia alone.</b> <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
BBC News, July, 11 2001 - transcript of <i>Allies and lies</i>:
This transcript of the video production is much longer than the article above and contains more information on the intervention of the US: its bugging of officers, its air drops to the Muslims and Croatians, its training and equipping of the Croatians and the Muslims of Bosnia.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In an investigation across six countries, Correspondent has uncovered a series of incidents which has tested the Western Alliance to breaking point.
MOLDESTAD (V/O): "...the Americans were controlling the entire Bosnian air space -- on their own"
ROSE (V/O): "My own office [...] was bugged by the Americans."
JOULWAN (V/O): "...how would I know what the State Department or the CIA was doing?"
This is a story about Americans behaving badly. About thousands of un-necessary deaths. About an alliance in crisis. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The United States</b> had no faith in a negotiated settlement to the war. Senior officials in the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council believed that the only solution possible was what they called "lift and strike". They <b>wanted to re-arm and train the Croats and the Muslims and then encourage them to fight an all-out war against the Bosnian Serb Army</b>. "Lift and strike" was totally contrary to the UN mandate and in breach of the Arms Embargo. It was Washington's secret agenda.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Defence analyst Tim Ripley believes that the US plot to train and equip the Bosnian Muslims directly led to the terrible death-toll at Srebrenica later in 1995.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Note that this is not the war in Kosovo of the late 90s where the media showed Serbs persecuting the Muslim ethnic Albanians. This the Bosnian war of the early 90s: the one where the Serbs were the victims and were sent packing from their homes (as shown in news reports) by Croats and Muslims.
'Voices of Moral Obtuseness' or 'Voices of Immoral Bigotry'? - Antiwar.Com, 29 September 2001:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->in 1995, <b>with US military aid and technology, Croatian forces brutally ethnically cleansed over 650,000 Serbs from Croatia</b>, including 250,000 from those ancestral lands in the Krajina.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>The Bosnian war</b>
Allies and lies - BBC News, 22 June, 2001:
The official policy of the US was to stay out of the war. The article deals with how instead of staying out of the war, they were covertly involved. Headings include:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Covert [air] drops by the US
US Bugging the UN commanders and officers <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Bosnian war was the first major test of the West's resolve in the post-Cold War era, and one that it unambiguously failed.
Prevarication, competing national agendas and lack of moral courage on the part of politicians and diplomats worsened an already horrific situation, while on the ground UN peacekeepers with inadequate support and confusing orders wrestled with a situation for which they were ill-trained. Into this already complicated situation came the ultimate "wild card", the United States of America, the world's only superpower. <b>A small group at the head of America's foreign policy elite intervened covertly</b> in what it had previously called "Europe's problem".
It was driven by a mixture of media-fuelled public opinion, simplistic moral outrage and personal ambition to make a name in the "only game in town". <b>Its easy answer for Bosnia's ills was "lift and strike" - re-arm the Bosniaks (mostly Bosnian Muslims) and Croats and bomb the Serbs.</b>
...
The air drops were only the tip of the iceberg. <b>A team of retired US officers planned the bloody Croatian "liberation" of the Kraijina and the subsequent invasion of western Bosnia by the Croatian Army</b> in the summer of 1995. The US also provided intelligence to the Croats, flying unmanned reconnaissance drones off the Adriatic island of Brac. <b>More significantly the US</b> launched a huge signals and electronic intelligence gathering operation in Croatia to <b>provide targeting information not for Nato or the UN, but for Croatia alone.</b> <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
BBC News, July, 11 2001 - transcript of <i>Allies and lies</i>:
This transcript of the video production is much longer than the article above and contains more information on the intervention of the US: its bugging of officers, its air drops to the Muslims and Croatians, its training and equipping of the Croatians and the Muslims of Bosnia.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In an investigation across six countries, Correspondent has uncovered a series of incidents which has tested the Western Alliance to breaking point.
MOLDESTAD (V/O): "...the Americans were controlling the entire Bosnian air space -- on their own"
ROSE (V/O): "My own office [...] was bugged by the Americans."
JOULWAN (V/O): "...how would I know what the State Department or the CIA was doing?"
This is a story about Americans behaving badly. About thousands of un-necessary deaths. About an alliance in crisis. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The United States</b> had no faith in a negotiated settlement to the war. Senior officials in the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council believed that the only solution possible was what they called "lift and strike". They <b>wanted to re-arm and train the Croats and the Muslims and then encourage them to fight an all-out war against the Bosnian Serb Army</b>. "Lift and strike" was totally contrary to the UN mandate and in breach of the Arms Embargo. It was Washington's secret agenda.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Defence analyst Tim Ripley believes that the US plot to train and equip the Bosnian Muslims directly led to the terrible death-toll at Srebrenica later in 1995.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Note that this is not the war in Kosovo of the late 90s where the media showed Serbs persecuting the Muslim ethnic Albanians. This the Bosnian war of the early 90s: the one where the Serbs were the victims and were sent packing from their homes (as shown in news reports) by Croats and Muslims.
'Voices of Moral Obtuseness' or 'Voices of Immoral Bigotry'? - Antiwar.Com, 29 September 2001:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->in 1995, <b>with US military aid and technology, Croatian forces brutally ethnically cleansed over 650,000 Serbs from Croatia</b>, including 250,000 from those ancestral lands in the Krajina.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->