Milutin writes:
> Martin wrote:
> >The situation in Yugoslavia threatens the system by threatening to spread
> refugees all over Europe, putting stress on the EU economy during a time
> when there are already stresses on the system in Asia and South America.
>
> But what if the Serb military killed all of them instead of ethnical
> cleansing them?  No refugees then.

One meaning of the term ethnic cleansing refers to killing off the
ethnic group by killing young men who are able to fight and young
women who are able to reproduce.  I'm sure we will find that this has
been going on, as we found in Bosnia.  But in the present situation, a
huge flood of refugees began to appear at the borders right after the
bombing started.  Why?  It is probably an effort by the Serb military
to get the world to stop the bombing by making NATO look bad.  It has
worked as far as making NATO look bad.  But NATO was not actually
dropping bombs on the refugees.  The refugees interviewed by Norwegian
reporters are saying they are not fleeing from the bombs; they are
fleeing from the Serb police and soldiers who are threatening their
lives, taking their money, and forcing them to hit the road.
Personally, I would leave anyway, and I think many of the refuggees
are leaving without being told, just to get out of the way.  So these
interviews might not be all that trustworthy.  Still, we didn't see a
huge flood of refugees in the Bosnian war.  There we found mass
graves.

Then the flood of refugees must be the result of deliberate tactics on
the part of the Serbs.  But if they killed ethnic groups in the
Bosnian war, while in this war they are using them to create a flood
of refugees for PR purposes, and, if you argue that the bombing is
causing the flood of refugees, then I think you must acknowledge that
the bombing is actually keeping that ethnic group alive.  That is
*not* my claim, however.  My point is just that by reasoning that the
bombing is the cause of the current situation, you paint yourself into
the corner of also having to acknowledge that the bombing is actually
preventing ethnic cleansing of the kind seen in the Bosnian war,
described above.

> It's hard to make sense of this all, but I'm confident that US/NATO war
> planners are experts.  They understood bombings would cause a massive wave
> of refugees from Kosovo and went ahead anyways.  This tells me it was a
> expected and maybe even desired.

I don't think they did see it.  I think they have become so proud of
their bombing accuracy that they believed they wouldn't kill or injure
many civilians.  Generally, that has been true.  People normally flee
from bombing of the kind the US used in wars past, which was called
carpet bombing.  But they don't bomb that way anymore.  B-52s don't
even fly over the target.  They don't even fly over Kosovo.  They fly
to a point out in the Mediterranean Sea and launch a half dozen cruise
missiles, which then take an hour to reach their targets guided by the
satellite GPS system.  The coordinates for these targets must be known
in advance, and they must be known accurately to withing a few meters.
Some of the coordinates can be determined from satellite photographs,
but many targets have to be identified from the gound as being
military targets, and coordinates cannot be determined from satellite
photos if the area is covered with clouds, which it has been since the
NATO action began.  That means the coordinates were certainly known
before the attacks began, which almost certainly means we had people
on the ground walking through the towns identifying military targets
and acquiring their coordinates with portable GPS systems.  It would
take a lot of time to acquire all that data.

Yes, I'm sure there was a lot of planning, but if they had expected
this flood of refugees they would have been better prepared to handle
it.

> But the moment something occurs, that is a result of the refugees and
> benefits NATO, then we will know.

I think you are right.  It is to NATO's advantage for the refugees to
be out of the way.  It will make targeting easier for attack
helicopters that will go in when weather permits, and it will make
things easier on ground troops if they go in, because they won't have
to be as concerned for public safety given that the public won't be
there.

martin

Martin Smith                    Email: [log in to unmask]
P.O. Box 1034 Bekkajordet       Tel. : +47 330 35700
N-3194 HORTEN, Norway           Fax. : +47 330 35701