Clinton Administration WHOPPERS

[Sean Osborne]

http://www.aim.org/aim_report_print/4969_0_4_0/

BILL CLINTON'S KOSOVO WHOPPER

Of all the whoppers told by former President Clinton in his now famous September 24 Fox News Channel interview with Chris Wallace, perhaps the most outrageous was his claim that he was involved in "trying to stop a genocide in Kosovo…" In fact, Clinton's bombing of the former Yugoslavia killed more people than died in this "genocide." And his policy benefited Osama bin Laden and the global Jihad. Yet Clinton insisted to Wallace that he had tried to kill bin Laden.

In the year before the bombing, according to U.N. and other sources, some 2,000 people had been killed in a civil war in Kosovo. By contrast, a conservative estimate offered by Rep. Curt Weldon is that 6,000 were killed by U.S. and NATO bombs. Some estimates go far higher.

It's strange as well that Clinton complained to Wallace about the "neocons" attacking him when many of the same neocons in 1999 supported Clinton's war on Yugoslavia. The war was never approved by the U.N. or the U.S. Congress and in fact violated the War Powers Act. The main beneficiary of the intervention was a Muslim terrorist group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with links to bin Laden, who had declared war on America in 1996, bombed our embassies in Africa in 1998, and would later, of course, orchestrate 9/11.

When former CIA official Michael Scheuer came forward after the interview to say that the Clinton Administration "had eight to ten chances" to kill bin Laden and "they refused to try," he is making a statement that goes far beyond acknowledging Clinton Administration incompetence or a lack of will. The fact is that Clinton had a pro-Muslim foreign policy that actually benefited bin Laden and facilitated 9/11. Most Republicans don't mention this because too many of them were duped into backing Clinton's misguided policy in Kosovo. President Bush, then a candidate, even backed U.S. military intervention through NATO there.

Yet Scheuer's CIA also has a lot to answer for. It is noteworthy that the CIA issued a January 2000 report that essentially whitewashed the terrorist nature and Islamic connections of the KLA. The only public release of this dubious report came through Rep. Eliot Engel, in a posting on the website of the National Albanian American Council, which supports an Albanian Muslim takeover of Kosovo.

The Hoax-Begotten War

That report was prepared under CIA Director George Tenet, who gave February 2, 1999, testimony referring to the Serb "massacre at Raçak," which provided the pretext for NATO intervention against Serbia but which turned out to be a hoax. (See our April-A 2000 AIM Report, "The Hoax-Begotten War.")

Tenet was, of course, kept on by President Bush. Not only were Tenet's fingerprints all over the failed and deceptive policy in Kosovo, he told Bush that finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a slam dunk.

Interestingly, Al-Jazeera celebrated the fifth anniversary of 9/11 by airing several al-Qaeda videos, one of which showed two of the 9/11 hijackers saying their actions were designed to avenge the suffering of Muslims in Bosnia and Chechnya. Nothing demonstrates the bankruptcy of the Clinton policy more than that. Not only did Clinton order the CIA to help the KLA in Kosovo, he ordered the CIA to arm and train the Bosnian Muslims and even approved Iranian arms shipments to them so they could establish a Muslim state there. Still, that wasn't good enough for the Jihadists. Nothing appeases them.

The Clinton policy of supporting the same extremist Muslim forces in Europe that subsequently attacked us on 9/11 is far more controversial than the policy of regime change in Iraq, which was officially a policy of Clinton, Bush and the Congress. Kosovo was never a threat to the U.S., and Serbia didn't even pretend to have weapons of mass destruction.

[Sean Osborne]

http://www.aim.org/aim_report_print/4969_0_4_0/



Albright's Whopper

The media black-out is what enables Albright, in a lecture on religion and international affairs at Georgetown University on September 18, to declare, "Of all that we accomplished during my time in office, I'm proudest of what we did in Kosovo because we stopped the killing, and people are back in Kosovo living a free life."

A free life when Christian Serbs are fleeing and their homes and churches in Kosovo are being destroyed?

Albright's outrageous comments provide the answer in stark terms to the question: Whose side was the Clinton Administration on in the clash of civilizations between Islam and the West? All of the "missed opportunities" to kill bin Laden, and the interventions on behalf of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, didn't give us anything but more anti-American attacks, more terrorism, and, finally, 9/11.

Compounding the failure of the Clinton policy in Kosovo, the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group recently released a report saying that the international community "must avoid creating a weak state" and that the territory must have its own army. Left unsaid is that it would be an army dominated by former members of the KLA. That would be the ultimate reward for terrorism. The terrorists would become the official army of Kosovo.

Buried in the report, on page 8, you will find an interesting piece of information. It states that "A tiny but growing minority is turning to Wahhabi Islam," the dangerous brand of Sunni Islam underwritten by Saudi Arabia, which is also financing the building of many mosques in Kosovo. But this should come as no surprise. That element was always there, nurtured by the Clinton policy. Now it gathers force again, just as it did before 9/11.

It won't be enough to oppose independence for Kosovo. The terrorism problem will remain regardless of whether it is a province, territory or a state. But a U.S. position against independence will at least reflect belated recognition that the Clinton policy of encouraging terrorism in Kosovo has finally come to an end. The Bush Administration must side with Serbia in this important chapter in the clash of civilizations.

[Ryan Ruck]

You must want a record for longest thread in TAA history Sean.