KOSOVO CASUALTIES OF NATO AGRESSION 1999 & BEYOND & OTHER INFO: ================================================================= American Casualties: ---------------------- Contrary to popular opinions, there were NATO casualties. - On May 5th, 1999, a U.S. helicopter guunshhip crashed inside Albania, very near Kosovo border, killing the above mentioned crew. Their AH-64 Apache went down 1:30 AM. The crash occurred about 80km northeast of Tirana. There were few more Apaches which crashed or were destroyed before this incident. The U.S. also lost 11 or more fighter jets in the Balkan campaign. They claim the pilots of those aircraft were rescued safely. But that is a question to debate... The special teams which saved them... how did they enter the area in such an unscrupulous/unseen way that they were not killed themselves ? A 5 - 23 - 99 issue of German Weld am Sonntag newspaper quoted a classified NATO report stating that the U.S. Apache helicopter that crashed in Albania on 5 - 5 - 99 was "likely shot down by Serb forces." According to the newspaper, the NATO report came to this conclusion "from the fact that the chopper erupted into a fireball in mid-air before crashing to the ground." Swedish Aftonbladet newspaper also quoted the classified NATO report suggesting that the Apache exploded in mid-air, possibly as a resolt of a should-missile SAM impact. - On April 26th, same AH-64 Apache was shot down, there are conflicting reports if 2 american soldiers survived, the claim is there were rescued from the hostile territories by special rescue troops but there are claims the rescuers were also killed, there is no evidence to substantiate this claim. - On November 14th, 24 members of UN 'huumannitarian aid' crashed in Kosovo, nobody revealed the true circumstances of the crash. Bad weather was probable cause. British Casualties: ----------------------- - Since the 'end' of war in Kosovo in 1999, at least 11 British troops have died on active service in 'peacekeeping' missions: Sapper Collins, 22, died in 2001 after youths hurled a lump of concrete throught the windscreen of his Land Rover. Trooper Slater, 20, was killed when his armoured car struck a mine near the Macedonian border. There were talks of some american dead, but no names were revealed. Bombardier Tinnion died September 2000 during a raid on the base of ther West Side Boys militia where 6 British soldiers were being held. Private Lloyd, 18, and Lance Corporal Vanstone, 27, with the Nato-led peace keepers in Bosnia were killed in December 1999 when their armoured car went off a bridge. A bomb disposal expert with a land mine clearance team was killed in September 1999 in Bugojna, central Bosnia, after being given a hand grenade by a boy. The devide exploded as the soldier tried to make it safe. Two british soldiers Gareth & Rai along with two civilians were killed in Kosovo, Negrovce on June 21st 1999, as they tried moving explosives from a school. They were the first british casualties of the war, british soldier died in Pristina, December 17 2001 and there were few others we dont know about. On April 9th, 2001, during the Macedonian-Albanian terrorist war, two British Nato pilots were killed when an RAF Puma helicopter carrying three crew members and four british soldiers crashed near the border of Kosov and Macedonia. The dead were Captain Andrew Crous, 28, of the Army Air Corps, Flight Lieutenant James Maguire, 31, both based in Benson, Oxfordshire. Since May 1999, there are between 3 and 5 american service men killed in Kosovo. Iraq: ======= - There are some special operations soldiers killed in Iraq, names have not been revealed in a similar fashion the CIA uses when one of theirs gets killed. They may release names 40 years after their death but by then nobody cares nor will anybody remember them. On July 22, on the attack on Qusay and Uday's hideout, no american forces were killed, except for one person who was seriously wounded, it's not sure if he survived, but in revange attacks, the next day on July 23rd, Army Specialist Brett Christian, 27, from the 2nd Battalion, North Royalton, Ohio was killed when the convoy he was in was attacked with rocket propelled grenades in Mosul, where Saddam's sons were killed. The original cause of death, roadside bomb improvised explosive. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 US APACHE PILOTS DIE, CLINTON "MOURNS" TROOPS AFTER BEING SHOT DOWN Subjects: Aircraft accidents & safety, Helicopters, Fatalities Locations: Yugoslavia Companies: NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Document types: News Dateline: SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany Publication title: Chicago Tribune. Chicago, May 6, 1999. After two F-16s and a stealth fighter were shot down President Clinton sought Wednesday to underscore NATO unity, show his support for american troops and buttress the "moral case" for war. Speaking at this NATO air base in Germany, Clinton told a cheering crowd of more than 2,000 American military personnel and family members to look around at their own diversity to remember why they are risking their lives in a tiny province of southeastern Europe. "Our mission in Kosovo has nothing to do with trying to acquire territory or dominate others," he said from a stage inside a hangar. "It is about something far more important-creating the kind of world where an innocent people are not singled out for repression, for expulsion, for destruction just because of their religious and ethnic heritage." (Pure BS) Timing made Clinton's plea, seconded by the top military and diplomatic advisers who joined him, especially poignant. He delivered his remarks just 12 hours after an Apache helicopter crashed early Wednesday during a training exercise in Albania, making its two dead crew members the first NATO casualties during the campaign. The chopper crashed on the border of Yugoslavia and Albania. Later investigations prooved that Serbian forces infiltrated the territory and shot down the chopper. There was no storm or bad weather at that time to indicate otherwise. The Defense Department named the two crewmen as Chief Warrant Officer David A. Gibbs, 38, of Massillon, Ohio, the Apache's chief pilot, and Chief Warrant Officer Kevin L. Reichert, 28, of Chetek, Wis., the pilot/weapons officer. "Today we grieve with their families and pray for them," Clinton said. The Apache crashed in flames in rugged terrain about 50 miles northeast of its base near Tirana, Albania's capital. It was flying a night training mission, and at least one of the pilots was believed to be wearing infrared night-vision goggles. Wednesday's incident marked the second time in less than two weeks that one of the much-vaunted Apache helicopters crashed even before they have been introduced into combat. The crew involved in the first crash escaped injury. But top NATO and American military officials said the shooting would not affect plans to use the Apaches eventually. And they said they believed they had prepared the American people for the fact that taking on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would mean casualties. Earlier, during a stop at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Clinton met with Gen. Wesley Clark, the alliance's supreme commander, and NATO Secretary General Javier Solana to discuss the progress of the air war and contingency planning for eventual use of ground troops to accompany ethnic Albanian refugees back into Kosovo after a peace settlement. The administration and NATO insist there are no plans to launch a ground invasion of Kosovo. Later, at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Clinton met with the three American prisoners of war released by Belgrade Sunday and welcomed them "halfway home" but reiterated he would like to see all the displaced Kosovars return home as well. The president also said that he expects to receive soon a recommendation from Defense Secretary William Cohen on whether to release two Serb POWs held by U.S. forces. Cohen said he was inclined to release them once Red Cross representatives finish examining them. But Cohen contended that to release the Serbs would not be a goodwill gesture to Milosevic, even though the Yugoslav leader released the American soldiers after meeting with a religious delegation led by Rev. Jesse Jackson. "I would not indicate any reciprocal gestures," he said. "I don't believe that Milosevic acts out of any generosity." Top military officials repeated their contention that Milosevic and his troops in Kosovo are on the run. In Brussels, Gen. Clark ticked off a series of damage figures that illustrate efforts to "further tighten the strategic noose around Serbia." "In the last 48 hours, we've hit 10 armor concentrations, 11 artillery positions, three command posts, three radars and assembly areas, and 13 groups of trucks," Clark said. "Thousands of these forces in Kosovo are now in hiding, which at least stops them from doing what they were doing before. And when they're not in hiding, they're repairing what we've damaged." BUT THAT IS HARD TO PROOVE, MOST OF THE POSITIONS AND THINGS THEY THINK THEY DESTROYED WERE DECOYS, POOR SUBSTITUTIONS OF THE ORIGINAL. (Looks like a tank from a mile, but when you get closer to it, it's something else) Clark and other military leaders spoke a day after Gen. Klaus Naumann, chairman of NATO's Military Committee, strongly criticized the allies' effort in the early weeks of the war. Naumann said NATO's political leadership had hampered its military capabilities in Yugoslavia, particularly with its strict constraints on targeting to avoid civilian casualties. Asked about Naumann's comments, Clark said: "Every military operation has to be governed by the political ends that it seeks to attain. We did not enter this operation with an intent to crush Serbia or attack the people of Serbia." Clark acknowledged that "paramilitary thugs" still are a threat in Kosovo. He then heaped praise on what he said is a burgeoning number of Kosovo Liberation Army troops, Albanian rebels from whom the administration has tried to keep its distance because of the KLA's own excesses. Besides monitoring the progress of the war, a substantial amount of Clinton's time at NATO headquarters and later at Ramstein was spent discussing ways to cope better with the continued forced expulsion of Kosovar families. "We're getting a very uneven flow," said Brian Atwood, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. "If we keep getting that kind of average outflow from Kosovo, we're talking about, in the next month, possibly as many as 200,000 more refugees." Milosevic's "central plan is to use them as human shields," shuffling families in and out of villages as well as out of Kosovo to destabilize neighboring states, Atwood said. And "he's using them along roads to protect his convoys." Atwood said his agency was preparing for the worst: the possibility of handling 1.5 million refugees in the winter cold. In Washington, the Pentagon said there was no evidence of hostile fire against the downed Apache but an investigation into the crash was continuing. Because of their vulnerability to ground fire, Apaches fly most of their tank-hunting missions at night. Clinton has not yet signed the order to send the Apaches into action in Kosovo, officials said, despite continuing Yugoslav military aggression in the province. He already lost 12 or more of them and they would be a good target. According to Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Wald, the Pentagon's chief briefer, the Apache "might have hit a bird, or a wire (power line)." He said there were other Apaches in the vicinity. "We said all along there'll be risk," said Wald, himself a combat pilot. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chicago Tribune ANALYSTS: MILOSEVIC MAY BE COUNTING ON A DIVIDED KOSOVO ? by Michael Kilian, Washington Bureau. April 7, 1999 Edition: CHICAGOLAND FINAL Section: NEWS Dateline: WASHINGTON ________________________________________________________________________________ Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic's unsuccessful bid Tuesday for an Easter cease-fire may be a strong indication that he thinks he has won his war in Kosovo or soon will. Some analysts in Washington anticipate that his next step may be offering to negotiate a settlement calling for the partition of Kosovo into Serbian and NATO zones, based largely on the territory that Milosevic's troops have subjugated in two weeks of forced evacuations directed against the province's ethnic Albanian population. This would be far from the terms of a NATO victory that the Clinton White House and its critics have insisted upon but would allow NATO a means of settling the conflict without having to take on the Yugoslav army in a full-scale ground war. While the U.S. and its allies have declared what they consider an acceptable outcome, Milosevic has been ruthlessly creating facts on the ground more to his liking. "The administration has been playing checkers," said Bill Taylor, director of military and political studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "while Milosevic has been playing chess." As Milosevic's tanks and armored personnel carriers continued to rampage through Kosovo undeterred by nightly allied air attacks throughout Serbia, President Clinton and other NATO leaders repeatedly stated they are in the fight to win. In rejecting Milosevic's Orthodox Easter cease-fire Tuesday, Clinton said the Serbian leader "could end it now," but only if he agreed to NATO's terms. "I don't say that `victory' is a good word for it," National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said Tuesday, "but the objectives of the NATO mission are quite clear: We want Milosevic first to stop his aggression against the Kosovo Albanians; second, to withdraw his troops; and, thirdly, to embrace the agreement that was reached in France, which allows for a secure environment for Kosovars and would entail the return of the refugees." Administration officials remain publicly optimistic that the NATO bombing will yet force a Serbian retreat from Kosovo, but many analysts believe that can be achieved only by an all-out land war. And the U.S.-drafted peace plan signed by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership but rejected by the Serbs, which the administration envisioned as a blueprint for at least an interim political settlement, seems, to many experts, unrealistic in the aftermath of the Serb atrocities. Serbian military and police units appear to have secured most of the Kosovo territory that Milosevic desired, having also driven close to half the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo out of the country into refugee camps. "He's on the verge of success right now in his own mind," said one high-ranking Pentagon analyst with long experience in Yugoslavia. "He will probably very shortly make an offer and he will very shortly have established a partition line in Kosovo that he can be comfortable with." The U.S. went along with the de facto partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina into a Croat-Muslim region and Serb region in the Dayton peace talks, a formula for ethnic separation that Milosevic may seek to repeat with Kosovo. The analyst said a likely partition line from Milosevic's point of view would run from the Albanian border east to Decani, north to the outskirts of Pec, east along the main highway to the provincial capital of Pristina and then south past Urosevac to the Macedonian border. Though Serbia would lose the major southern Kosovo town of Prizren, with its historic Serbian Sveta Bogorodica Ljeviska Church and Monastery of the Archangel Michael, it would retain the Gracanica monastery and sacred Kosovo Polje battlefield southwest of Pristina, where Serbs were defeated by invading Turks in 1389, as well as the Patriarchate of Pec, historic seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the Visoki Decani Monastery in Decani. Milosevic would control the main highways and lines of communication in the province, border access to Macedonia, and important mining areas around Kosovska Mitrovica northwest of Pristina. "That would be their position going in," the analyst said. "(They) will take everything to the north and the east of the province and let the central and the southern and far western portion be populated by the Albanians." The analyst said he expected Milosevic to make such an offer before the scheduled NATO summit in Washington on April 24. "Whatever his words are, he'll say: `We've all misread each other. We've all used too much force. You guys are bad. I'm good. It's time to end the bloodshed. I will secure and keep the peace up to this geographic point. You and the West are invited and allowed to support and help all the Albanians who want to come into this other part of Kosovo I don't control.' " In a briefing Monday, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon reiterated that Milosevic "has to stop the fighting, he has to withdraw his troops so they don't remain there holding this empty territory, he has to accept democratic self-government and he has to allow the refugees to return." The Pentagon analyst said Milosevic might agree to all that, but not throughout Kosovo. "Milosevic could take every one of those criteria and, in the context of partition, say he could do that within the area he would vacate and leave to the Albanians." Hammer said Clinton is opposed to partition and wants Serbia to keep Kosovo as a largely autonomous province able to govern its own internal affairs. But he said it was conceivable that, for a time, Serbian and NATO troops could be occupying different parts of Kosovo along a truce line similar to partition. If the U.S. and NATO are to have victory, it is vital that they have troops on the ground occupying Serbian territory, said Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Victory means the well-being of the ethnic Albanian people and getting at least some of Kosovo back for them," he said. "Any other measure should be dismissed out of hand." O'Hanlon said he feared that, because the bombing campaign has failed to deter Milosevic's aggression, the Clinton administration might want to extricate itself from the crisis by declaring its "degradation" of the Yugoslav military a "victory." "There'll be a lot of photographs taken in Kosovo and they're going to show some horrible things," he said. "No one will want to reward Milosevic in any way after that." PHOTO: A man stands outside his damaged home Tuesday in the southern Serbian town of Aleksinac after NATO missiles hit the center of the city & killed many. U.S. President Clinton and America did not stick true to their support for embargo against Yugoslavia. The embargo was illegal. Nobody was allowed to deal with Yugoslavia. The only person charged with violating the sanctions was poor old chess genius Bobby Fischer. What crime did he commit ? He played a chess match. How come Boris Spasky, his opponent was not charged with 'the crime' ? Bill Clinton describes how the US Government violated the economic sanctions then in force in former Yugoslavia: "Because we knew Bosnia's survival was at stake, we had not tightly enforced the arms embargo. As a result, both the Croatians and Bosnians were able to get arms, "which helped them survive" (My note: So, where is the mention that Yugoslavia was protecting their union and they did not start this war in the first place). We had also authorized a private company to use retired U.S. military personnel to improve and train the Croatian army." KLA (Kosovo 'Liberation Army) was later also trained by american forces, it turned out a big mistake, something the american government does not want to admit, KLA was later branded a terrorist organization along with Al Quida. Amazing mistakes. They could have been easily prevented if it was not for ignorance, like I said many times... Ignorance is the playground of the fools. And let's not forget the bombing of the Chinese Embassy where 5 people died... why ? Because old maps of Belgrade were used, the bombers thought Milosevic was hiding there... LOL !!! The Illegal NATO war in Yugoslavia caused the deaths of over 2000 innocent civilians, destructions of many facilities which had nothing to do with the war, 20+ billions of dollars in desctruction of economy & infrastructure, environment, buildings, bridges, places of worship, hospitals, etc... Clinton, just after well publicised sex scandal needed ratings boost, so Kosovo was his only option, he also wanted to be remembered as a great military hero/leader. Yes, people like him, Solana, Blair, NATO leaders, they surely are great heros worth remembering... A worthy cause everybody supported. - By: Jan Paul Lubek, The Historian