12 MAY 2000 -- NEWS UPDATES

From the Mickey Mouse Network:

False Pride? U.S. Hit Count For Kosovo Lower Than First Thought

NATO War Criminal, U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, during a press conference in Sarajevo, on April 25, 2000.

By Robert Burns The Associated Press W A S H I N G T O N, May 8 -Shortly after NATO's air war in Kosovo last year, an Air Force damage assessment team sent into the Serbian province found the destroyed remnants of only 14 Serb army tanks, 18 armored personnel carriers and 20 artillery and mortar pieces, officials said today. That is far fewer than NATO originally believed were destroyed in 78 days of airstrikes, although the Air Force team later used satellite photographs and other sources to raise estimates of destroyed Serb heavy weapons, Air Force Brig. Gen. John D.W. Corley told a Pentagon news conference. Corley is director of studies and analysis at the Air Force's European headquarters in Germany. He headed the postwar assessments of airstrikes inside Kosovo.

'Catastrophic Damage'

Those figures include the 14 tanks and 18 armored personnel carriers found in the field with "catastrophic damage," plus strikes deemed to have been successful based on indirect evidence such as imagery from satellites, U-2 spy planes and unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, plus interviews with pilots and airborne forward air controllers who did the target spotting for allied strike aircraft during the war.

Corley said the Air Force counted 26 tank carcasses in Kosovo, although other officials later said this included 12 self-propelled artillery pieces. The Air Force included the 12 in the tank category because the howitzers looked like tanks from the air and are used in combat much as tanks are.

Long-Contested Claim

Almost immediately after the war ended last June with Slobodon Milosevic, Serbia's president, capitulating to NATO's terms, critics began claiming that airstrikes against mobile targets in Kosovo such as tanks - as opposed to strategic targets elsewhere in Yugoslavia, such as buildings in Belgrade - were less effective than NATO claimed.

Last July 1 at a Pentagon news conference, Clark announced he had ordered a "bomb damage survey" of Kosovo, but in the meantime he believed 110 Serb tanks and 210 armored personnel carriers had been hit.

Corley, speaking to reporters by telephone from Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., denied that NATO exaggerated its claims.

"In no way have we ever overstated, understated" the effectiveness of the air campaign, he said.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the argument about how many tanks and other heavy weapons were struck is beside the point. "We obviously hit enough tanks and other targets to win," he said.

FUTHER THOUGHTS

I sent the report to a friend of mine, and got the following reply:

>I like how the part about:

>"Corley said the Air Force counted 26 tank carcasses in
>Kosovo, although other officials later said this included 12
>self-propelled artillery pieces. The Air Force included the 12 in
>the tank category because the howitzers looked like tanks from
>the air and are used in combat much as tanks are."

>I got news for you, Jack.  Self-propelled artillery pieces are not the
>same things as tanks.  "[They] are used in combat much as tanks are?"
>Give me a break.

>Tanks are used to engage other tanks, to go into hostile territory and
>do fire support for infantry, and keep other heavy land based fire power
>away from friendly infantry.

To which I replied:

That just confirms what Z magazine reported earlier: when the U.N. counted Yugoslav tanks as they left Kosovo, there were *more* tanks than NATO had estimated. Which means NATO is either lying or incompetent, or both. Even the above quote shows how the military tries to "fudge" their results count by including certain weapons as tanks that clearly are NOT tanks.

Propaganda and lies -- on both sides. That's what Clinton's dirty little war in Kosovo was all about.

-Timmy Ramone