http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-03/27/039r-032799-idx.html

-- Can (theybeserious@this.com), March 27, 1999

Answers

'Groud' should read 'Ground'.

-- Can (theybeserious@this.com), March 27, 1999.

If the NATO alliance goes into Yugoslavia with troops in the next few days Russia will have no choice but to engage or lose all credibility with their client states. I cannot believe this ill- concieved and idiotic plan was carried out. What in the Hell is Clinton thinking? He is right on Russia's doorstep and well within the Chinese umbrella of operation and concern. There is no possible way that any escalation of the civil war going on there could have destabilized the region to the extent this savage air campaign has. And as long as we're talking about genocide here, at what point does undefensible high tech weaponry become outright murder? Is there ANY honor in bombing an opponent from an invisible craft which he cannot fight back against? Is there ANY honor in throwing four hundred state of the art fighters against a fifteen plane air force, or launching robot missiles from a thousand miles away while satelites in outer space overlook the battleground? What is the moral distinction between this and biological or nuclear weapons? The chief terror those weapons hold is that you ARE POWERLESS TO DEFEND YOURSELF AGAINST THEM, EXACTLY THE SITUATION OUR TECHNOLIGICAL SUPERIORITY GIVES US ON THE CONVENTIONAL SCALE. I'm personally a lot less proud to be an American today than I was a week ago, and that's something that has happened to me a lot since Bill Clinton came into office.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), March 27, 1999.

Technological superiority with one stoopidendous flaw driving the insanity. "Use it or lose it." Idiots want to use it, thus ensuring we all lose it. Idiots. The world will be toast.

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-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), March 27, 1999.

Nikoli...usually you and I are somewhat apart on our take of a situation. Not this time. If we send ground troops into the Balkans to 'stop the genocide', I'm afraid the genocide will continue...only, it'll be Americans that'll be dying. There is no way that outsiders like the NATO countries can pacify THAT region. Clinton has NO idea what he is playing with over there. I heard Clinton described on a local talk show as a 'Constitutional Sociopath' and I'm forced to agree.

What about all the countries that are watching Little Billy play with his soldiers in the sand box? Ones like North Korea, China, Syria and the would-be despots in Africa? What happens if Bill drops the ball....again? Will they take it as a license to subvert or invade the country of their choice??? Knowing that Billy might get mad but he won't do much except 3 or 4 days of maybe flying planes over and dropping bombs. Knowing that the power they can gain by making the populace suffer under the bombs of "that great bully, the United States of America". I think the only thing that Bill and the other kids have accomplished is to solidify the factions behind "Slobo". (What an appropriate name that is for a villain).

I agree. I'm not sure I'm proud to be an American right now. I spent an awful lot of time serving this country but for what??

Please, Dear God. Don't let him do this!!

-- Lobo (Hiding@woods.com), March 27, 1999.

Massacre. How could they even *think* of it? Somebody go give them a briefing on history! How about Gary North -- isn't he an historian? When I was a child I always knew this "grown-up" scam was a charade, a dangerous joke. I was smarter at 7 than I am now! First impressions were all accurate. Get me out of here!

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-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), March 27, 1999.

Nikoli,

I think you pretty near the mark.

To add to the mix, the Serbs are some TOUGH fighters. The hatreds and loyalties there go back beyond our National existance. In my opinion if NATO goes in with gound troops it will loose big time in just the confrontation with the Serbs not even counting all the points you've made.

--Greybear

ps, Nicoli give ol_grey_bear a shout over at Yahoo when you get a chance.

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), March 27, 1999.

Thanks Lobo and Greybear. I swear I'm so damned mad about this I could spit nails. These people are Playing Games with the lives of Millions of people. I keep hearing the reason we just use air power and never finish what we start is because the American people won't stand for the casualties. Well why is THAT? Could it be because we had no business being there in the first place? Could it be because no father or Mother or Wife or Child wants to lose his or her loved one in some foreign civil war that had absolutely nothing to do with us? In WW-II nobody whined about the body count, everyone knew the casualties were for a good and honorable cause. What arrogance to declare ourselves the morally upright bastion of world police actions. I think the first American tank to cross that border ought to have a handpicked crew. Clinton, Cohen, Albright, and Tony Blair. Oh, and whoever owns CNN along to ride and film the show.

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), March 27, 1999.

Leska. If you find somewhere else to go, PLEASE let me know and I'll start packing. I never thought that my BB address would become so appropriate.

-- Lobo (Hiding@woods.com), March 27, 1999.

They're going to send in ground troops: just look at the propaganda. After the first night of bombing, the Serbs, so we were told, escalated attacks against the ethnic Albanians. The ONLY way to stop this is with ground troops. As soon as we have established absolute air superiority, we'll go in. Who doubts there are already Ranger outfits in Kosovo now, providing forward intel? But good luck; as I mentioned on a different post, the Montenegran Serbs are considered the toughest fighters in Europe. The Germans couldn't subdue them, despite a ferocious campaign of reprisals, which I doubt NATO would be willing to engage in. Vietnam redivivus. Nikoli speculated on a different thread whether Clinton (and the managerial class) are so evil they WANT us nuked. One has to wonder about our selective righteousness--having ignored the slaughter in subSaharan Africa, Timor, Chiapas, Central America, why choose THIS fight at THIS time? Russia is hungry, divided, in an apparent state of chaos: why ON EARTH would we seek to goad them? Especially when we were seeking to establish rapprochement over Y2K nuclear control issues? I'm pretty jaded, but these events are astonishing; so ill-conceived, so ill-timed that one is tempted to impute diabolical underpinnings to these events (that old line from 'War Pigs' runs through my head: "Satan laughing spreads his wings"). Pray for peace, pray for mercy.

-- Spidey (in@jam.com), March 27, 1999.

Occam's Razor suggests that it is nothing more complex than the fact that Slick is utterly out of his league and over his head, as are the mediocrities who serve him. Rightly understood, that is the scariest fact of all.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), March 27, 1999.

And Spidey, and all---call or write your senators and congressmen/women. YOU are THEIR polls. Each call represents 100 people. Each letter represents 1000.

-- FM (vidprof@aol.com), March 27, 1999.

I have serious doubts that Kosovo is as simple as "good" vs "evil", although most westerners are limited to such thinking. From unsubstantiated sources, I have heard that Albania was essentually trying to take-over Kosovo (in spite of recent Serbian concessions to Abania) since so many "ethnic Albanians" now live in Kosovo. This is much like Mexico in the US SW, where owing to immigration and differences in fertility one group displaces another (although the fighting is still "civilized" in the US SW). Further, there are other "ethnic" groups (including Greece) in Kosovo, according to one source. No, I don't have links - that is what I am looking for.

Since this is a Y2K group, and we are getting off-topic a bit, can anyone point out a fairly reputable source of information on what is *really* going on, such as a reliable USENET group, or anything better than CNN?

I read that the intelligence community feels that there is no such thing as "absolute truth", only different "spins" on it. Still, I would like more than the US government/media "spin".

-- Anonymous99 (Anonymous99@Anonymous.com), March 27, 1999.

For those of you geeks like myself who are avid Babylon 5 fans, I have an explanation for all of Clinton's lifelong general recklessness and the peculiar turn of events of late:

Clinton has been impregnated with a "Keeper" by Draks or some other agents of the Shadows.

Now back to reality. It certainly does sound like ground forces could be on the way. The propaganda spewing from the mainstream news media is leading us down that path. How do we do it? Provoke the Serbs into attacking the small peacekeeping force in Macedonia, and using that attack as a pretext for a large invasion?

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), March 27, 1999.

Has this been posted here before? Sorry, I can't keep up.

Dateline Atlanta, (1863)--- Members of the European Alliance today launched massive strikes against Abe Lincoln's Union army in support of the secessionist southern states who wish to protect their ethnic lifestyle and retain their plantation slaves. The Northern states campaign to destroy southern autonomy and interfere in southern domestic affairs in the guise of human rights is viewed as an aggressive act by the European Alliance.

---Got wadding?

Hallyx

"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." ---Adolf Hitler

-- Hallyx (Hallyx@aol.com), March 28, 1999.

Anyone who listens to Rush has had the pleasure of hearing a young marine call Tony Snow on Thursday and effectively read his orders to Kosovo. They say "Peacekeeper" but his unit knows they are going. His leave was cut short and he is probably there now, since his job is recovery team for pilots.

My favorite ER and Aeromedical Doc, at Lifeflight here in Cleveburgh is off "doing his month" of active duty, somewhere in Texas, except that his friends here in C-town can't seem to find him........

He would be a front line guy because of his running aeromed experience, plus, his current responsibility for the US included mass casualty training, and WMD response training.

Damn I wish I had a winecellar!!!!

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (reinzoo@en.com), March 28, 1999.

Very interesting article up on MSNBC:

When Will The War Come Home?

[ snippet For Educational Purposes Only ]

"... There are parallels, too, with Nixons predecessor, Lyndon Johnson. Congress  with only brief debate  has allowed Clinton to launch a policy that has the potential to involve U.S. troops in the Balkans for many years to come. Yet Clinton insisted Thursday that his goals could be achieved only through air strikes and denied that ground troops were needed to impose order.

Columnist Walter Lippman wrote in June 1965 when the Johnson administration was emphasizing the use of air power to defeat the Viet Cong: All experience goes to show that wars cannot be won by bombing alone.

Are the American people willing to follow the logic of the Yugoslavia attack to its conclusion? Perhaps, but the war still seems far away and the great national debate on stationing American soldiers in the Balkans has yet to begin. "
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-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), March 28, 1999.

And now this up on AP Breaking News:

McCain Says There Should Be Threat Of Ground Troops

3/28/99 -- 1:31 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) - Administration officials said again Sunday they have no plans to put combat troops on the ground in Kosovo. But one senior senator said the threat of such intervention may be crucial to ending Serb attacks on ethnic Albanians.

``We have to exercise every option,'' Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said on ABC's ``This Week.'' If Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is convinced ground troops are an option, McCain said, ``it could lend impetus to convincing him that he cannot win and we will not allow him to win.''

McCain, a prisoner-of-war during the Vietnam War and a critic of the administration's Kosovo policies, said now that military strikes have begun, ``We have to do whatever it takes. All of us would grieve at the loss of a single American. But when you go into these things the primary purpose cannot be the safety of your forces, it has to be the achievement of your strategic and tactical goals.''

But administration officials, led by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Defense Secretary William Cohen, repeated President's Clinton's position that he has no intention of sending ground troops to Kosovo unless the Serbs and Kosovars first sign a peace agreement.

``If there's a peace settlement, then he has indicated we'd be prepared to contribute a small amount of a peace-keeping force, of the total, but absent that, we're going to continue with the air campaign,'' Cohen said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.''

Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it took 60,000 NATO ground troops just to keep the peace in Bosnia. Fighting hostile Serbian forces in Kosovo, he said, ``would involve hundreds of thousands of ground troops over a rather protracted period of time and in a very dangerous situation.''
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-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), March 28, 1999.

CFR/State Department types are swarming all over the media outlets today with the same message - "The situation in Kosovo is so dire that it may be necessary to send in ground forces." Considering the American collective intelligence and the awesome abilities of Clinton's PR people, I suspect that we will gleefully embrace the tar baby.

-- No No (nono@nogo.com), March 28, 1999.

A nice little unwinnable groundwar with lots of body bags would be the perfect diversion from an expected Y2K collapse. Too bad our troops have to be cannon fodder for the political elite's machinations. (BTW--where's Hardliner: was he called up? Hope not.) Always remember that the bad guys benefit from chaos.

-- Spidey (in@jam.com), March 28, 1999.

Threatening to use ground forces is a pretty high risk game of Chicken. Who blinks first? The Serbs certainly feel they have nothing to loose....

-- Kozak (Kozak@Ukie.com), March 28, 1999.