Reply #16: Clarks record

[Nicholas_J]

Of doing some rather nasty things in the Balkans would eventually bring bad press and cause even more problems for him than any other. Clark was fairly careless in ordering strikes that ended up killing large numbers of civilians.

In a 70 day period alone, he ordered 31,000 bombing raids that killed many civilians, and was about to order the boarding of Russin ships in the area. Clinton had to order him to not do so as to avoid World War III.

To justify the bombing raid, Clark claimed that the train's speed had made it impossible for the pilot to divert the bomb. Then he showed the attack on a video filmed from the head of a rocket-propelled AGM-30 bomb.

What Clark failed to say was that the film was shown at three times its normal speed. It was a gross propaganda trick.

A German daily newspaper, the Frankfurter Rundschau, exposed this U.S./NATO gimmick in its Jan. 6, 2000, edition.

As the newspaper put it: "During the Kosovo war, NATO used two video films to try and demonstrate that a bomb attack on a passenger train was an unavoidable accident. ... But the films were played through at least three times the normal speed."

The FR also said that the U.S. Air Force admitted it found out months after the attack on the train that the videos had "given a false picture of the events leading up to the attack." But, an Air Force spokesperson told the FR, "We saw no reason to publish the films after we noticed the mistake."

On April 13, 1999, NATO warplanes killed at least 75 to 100 ethnic Albanian refugees and injured at least 30 more in a convoy crossing a bridge near Djakovica in Kosovo, the Associated Press reported. At the same time, another U.S.- directed bomber hit an ethnic Albanian village in Kosovo, killing at least 20 inhabitants and injuring many others, according to a French Press Agency reporter at the scene.

Were these purposely targeted? Or were they the inevitable "mistakes" of a war machine geared up for the kill and searching for targets?

http://www.iacenter.org/nowar_record.htm

I mean, In general. I must say I like Clark, but he did go a little overkill in the Balkans.