AN OPEN LETTER TO LIEUTENANT GENERAL MICHAEL SHORT!

Commander, 16th Air Force,
United States Air Forces, Europe
Commander, Allied Forces, Southern Europe

Dear General Short:

On 21 October, Reuters reported: "His voice breaking
with emotion at a Senate hearing, the U.S. Air Force general who headed NATO's spring bombing of Serbia lashed out at France on Thursday for repeatedly vetoing proposed targets in Belgrade." You were also quoted as saying, "This is a personal thing with me." You explained that your son flew 40 missions in the A-10 in Kosovo and that he was hit by an SA-13, and that, "He called me that night on a secure phone and the first words were 'Don't tell mom'."

As the wife of a retired Air Force fighter pilot and the mother of two sons, I share your concern for the safety of those whom we love; however, General, just as my husband was a legitimate target when he flew his missions over Vietnam, your son was a legitimate target, unlike the civilians he bombed.

Lest what I have to say be misconstrued as being anti-military or anti-American, let me make it clear that I love our country and I have always supported our military. However, I deplore the fact that young Americans such as your son were ordered to attack a sovereign nation, in violation of international law and the basic tenants of NATO. When the initial attacks against the military and political structure of Yugoslavia failed, those young men were ordered by you and your superiors to wage a war of terror against the civilian population. Our warriors go into battle trusting in the honesty, honor and ethics of their superiors. "Theirs is not to reason why. Theirs is but to do or die." You and the other lackeys of the Clinton administration failed them.

I now ask you, General:

- Was it your son whose bombs hit a bridge in central Serbia crowded with traffic and pedestrians on a Sunday afternoon, where 17 people were wounded and nine people died, including "a priest with his head blasted away?" (Reuters, 30 May).

Or was it your son who, four minutes after the initial attack, hit the bridge again just as help arrived for the surviving victims?

- Was it your son whose bombs decapitated a Serbian child? "We found the head of a child in a garden and many limbs in the mud. But you don't want to report that. CNN filmed the bodies, but they don't show them on television" (The Independent, 29 April).

- Was it your son whose bombs dismembered Serbian children making it almost impossible to match the children's torsos with their arms and legs, although several were recognized by their sneakers? (The Guardian, 18 May).

- Was it your son whose bombs buried people alive under tons of rubble from destroyed apartment buildings?

- Was it your son whose bombs hit the convoy of ethnic Albanians reducing the victims to ashes, and then have your NATO pimp spokesperson, Jamie Shea, have the gall to deny that NATO pilots, possibly your son, were responsible for this atrocity by blaming it on the Serbs?

- Was it your son who bombed hospitals, schools, orphanages, cemeteries, churches, 14th century monasteries on the World Heritage list, in a barbaric act to destroy Serbian culture, society and religion?

- Was it your son whose bombs hit oil supplies polluting the air so that civilians couldn't breath, as well as water supplies, civilian apartments, civilian factories so as to destroy the quality of life and terrorize those who were not killed?

And let us not forget the pollution of the Danube caused by NATO bombs which has affected all the surrounding nations' international trade costing them millions of dollars.

- Was it the depleted uranium from the shells of the Gatling Gun on your son's A-10 that poisoned the soil and the air of the Serbian people so that their children will be born deformed, and rendered the soil unfit to produce food for the people to eat?

- Or perhaps it was your son who bombed the Chinese Embassy in another "mistake."

Besides hitting the Chinese Embassy, your not-so-smart bombs damaged the embassies of Italy, Switzerland, Pakistan, India, Libya, and Iraq.

Not only could your smart bombs not find the right target, they couldn't even find the right country as they hit Macedonia once and Bulgaria five times.

NATO pilots bombed Yugoslavia more in 78 days than Hitler did in all of World War II. Can you understand what that means to a people who were our allies in two world wars? It was the Serbian nationalist leader, General Draza Mihailovich, who rescued over 500 downed American pilots while Croatian and Bosnian/Kosovar/Albanian Muslims at the same time were turning them over to the Germans for execution.

Prior to the impending bombing of Serbs in Bosnia, which turned out to be a rehearsal for Kosovo, retired Air Force Major Richard Felman, President of the National Committee of American Airmen Rescued by General Mihailovich, Inc., placed an ad in The Washington Times on 9 June 1994. In his emotional appeal, Major Felman said, "It would be the cruelest of ironies and break our hearts to see our fellow Americans go charging into Bosnia with their guns blazing to kill the very Serbian people who saved our lives while at the same time helping some of the people who were shooting at us and turning us over to the Germans."

The ad went on to say, "Mr. President, where is America's sense of honor, decency and gratitude to those on foreign soil who save American lives? Do we return their sacrifice and kindness by killing them?"

Apparently, the answer is, Yes, for in August of 1995, NATO, in violation of its mission as a defensive force, assumed the mantra of an offensive force by dropping over 6,000 tons of bombs within a two-week period on Bosnian Serbs hitting hospitals, churches, schools and homes.

This act of US-led NATO aggression was based on the Markale marketplace massacre. The disgraceful irony is that a UN report confirmed that Bosnian Muslim forces had committed the atrocity. The UN report was also confirmed in European newspapers, such as The [London] Sunday Times which headlined, "Serbs 'not guilty' of massacre, Experts warned US that mortar was Bosnia." (1 Oct 95). Further substantiating the claim that Muslims forces had committed the massacre, a British think tank, The Islamic Affairs Analyst, wrote, "US Framed Serbs for Market Bombing." (18 Oct 95).

Just as we betrayed the Serbian people in World War II and delivered them into the hands of the communist dictator, Marshall Josef Tito, himself a Croat, we betrayed the Serbian people for a second time in this century when we took sides against them in this latest Balkan tragedy.

And the horror we have wrought on innocent civilians doesn't stop there. NATO cluster bombs continue to kill children.

And just what has our illegal and immoral air campaign against a sovereign nation accomplished? Since KFOR entered Kosovo, General, this great victory of which you are so proud, these "peacekeepers" have stood by while the 200,000 Serbian men, women and children who remained in Kosovo have been reduced to fewer than 12,000, with the number steadily approching zero. While the eradication of Serbs is taking place, NATO and the media remain silent.

Serbian nuns are being gang raped or forced to stand naked before their KLA tormentors, Serbian priests are being beaten and murdered, "Grannies" have been targeted for special horrors, such as decapitation, drowning (in bathtubs), stabbing or raped and the atrocities continue.

The demonization of the Serbian people is complete. Christian humanitarian organizations are collecting millions of dollars to help ethnic Albanians but not one penny goes to a hungry or suffering Serbian child. The 1999 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, France's Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) or Doctors without Borders, (DWB) recently expelled the Greek arm of DWB because the Greeks showed compassion by treating those injured in Yugoslavia during NATO's bombing campaign, just as they showed compassion when Greece was the first country to go to Turkey's aid following the tragic earthquake. However, administering to a dying Serbian child is in violation of the inhumane US-led sanctions which prevent any medical assistance to the Serbian people. It appears that the Hippocratic Oath by France's Medecins Sans Frontieres stops at the Serbian border.

But cruelty towards the Serbian people does not stop there. President "I Feel Your Pain" Clinton has decreed that there will be no fuel for Serbs facing a harsh winter until Serbian President Milosevic is thrown out of office in spite of the fact that tens of thousand of Serbs have demonstrated against Slobo at great risk to themselves.

What the president is offering the Serbs is, "You can either die by freezing or by starving to death through my sanctions." Some choice!

The American people are finally beginning to realize that they have been lied to in order for this President to justify NATO's war on innocent civilians and to send our sons and daughters into harm's way. "War Reports: The Lies Are Unraveling," writes Agence France-Press, March 31. "The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia must stop, the moderate Kosovo Albanian political leader Ibrahim Rugova told journalists in Pristina Wednesday." The American people were told that Rugova, along with his entire family had been executed by Serbs. However, while that was being reported by the American media, they were alive and well and had taken refuge in Belgrade from the Kosovo Liberation Army, but the lie was more believable.

Considering the following. There were:

- No mass graves containing the bodies of ethnic Albanians. Thus far several hundred bodies have been found, not an astounding number in a land where ethnic stife and war have been going on since 1992. This number is a far cry from the lie of 100,000 that President Clinton used in his successful effort to demonize the Serbian people.

- No 600,000 ethnic Albanians trapped in Kosovo either lying in mass graves, starving, or too afraid to go home as claimed by President Clinton when he lied to the American people (USA Today, 1 July)

- No "genocide" as the American people were led to believe. A tragedy, yes. A genocide, no. I know of no genocide that provided modern buses and trains (referred to as "boxcars" by the media so that the insinuation would not be lost) to take refugees to the borders of Macedonia and Albania and not to the gas chambers. Hardly any mention was made that many ethnic Albanians fled to Serbia proper and Montenegro to escape NATO's bombs.

- No great numbers of ethnic Albanians fleeing Kosovo until NATO began its bombing campaign of terror which prompted one refugee to say to Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma when he was visiting the refugees, "We wouldn't be here if it weren't for YOU (the United States). "Mirvei, a tall Albanian woman clutching her four-month-old baby, looked bewildered when asked if Serbian troops had driven her out. 'There were no Serbs,' she said. 'We were frightened of the bombs.' - Red Cross officials say many of the most recent arrivals [in Macedonia] intend to return to Kosovo as soon as the NATO bombardment stops." [London Sunday Times, March 27].

- "The number of civilians killed during the war in Kosovo may be no more than 2,500, according to a British Sunday Newspaper. The figure was estimated by a Spanish pathologist sent to the southern Serbian province immediately after the end of hostilities last summer to look for the bodies of ethnic Albanians killed by Serb forces. It contrasted sharply with a claim by U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen at the height of the NATO bombing in May that up to 100,000 ethnic Albanian men were missing and might have been murdered." (Reuters, 31 Oct). In other words, General, we dismembered a sovereign nation, a founding member of the United Nations based on lies of mass murder and atrocities when there were no more than 2,500 civilian deaths, on all sides. Why? Because the tiny nation of Yugoslavia had to be destroyed as an example to other nations which might defy of the New World Order. Hitler said in 1939, "The great masses of people will more easily fall victims to a Big Lie than to a small one." President Clinton threw out the hook, and the American people took the bait.

And with whom have we jumped into bed? We have jumped into bed with a bunch of narco-terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) cutthroats who were trained in Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan and who have now established their own mini-Afghanistan in Kosovo.

The most disgusting picture that sticks in my craw is the one of Hashim Thaci, leader of the KLA, kissing Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, on both cheeks after he had just executed six of his top officers. And just what have we succeeded in doing? We have succeeded in turning over Serbia's Jerusalem to these cutthroats.

And finally, I return to the Reuter's dispatch where you said, "this is a personal thing with me." Just what did you think, General, was happening to Americans of Serbian descent, many of whom still have fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers living in the Mother country, watching your son destroy a nation and a people? Was that not "a personal thing" for them?

The Serbian people survived 500 years of suffering under the Ottoman Empire. They survived the atrocities committed under the Nazis by their fascist Croatian and Muslim enemies. They survived under Tito's brutal communist system. Now through our ignorance, our gullibility and a deliberate, concerted campaign of lies and disinformation to destroy these heroic people, they are facing annihilation by a hostile world.

And finally, General, welcome to the New World Order you have helped to create. Maybe the job you did in Kosovo and your performance at the Senate hearing will get you another star on your shoulder. Wear it in shame.

Stella L. Jatras