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   Vol.64/No.21            May 29, 2000 
 
 
Pentagon admits military hits in Kosova bombing were inflated
 
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS  
One year ago Washington bombarded Yugoslavia for 78 days, carrying out 38,000 sorties. At the time the Pentagon claimed its high-tech precision-guided weapons inflicted massive damage to military targets. NATO officials claimed 110 Serb tanks were destroyed, along with 153 armored personnel carriers.

Pretending to protect Kosovars under attack by the chauvinist regime in Belgrade, the U.S. rulers' real aim was to deal a blow to the workers state in Yugoslavia and edge out their imperialist rivals.

The U.S. military brass now admits its figures were greatly exaggerated. When NATO troops entered Kosova, they discovered the U.S.-led force had actually destroyed 14 tanks, and found only 12 self-propelled artillery pieces and 12 wrecked armored personnel carriers.

Writing about these admissions in a May 12 column in the New York Daily News, Lars-Erik Nelson labeled this finding a "scandal," pointing out that "the entire military establishment pretended that high-tech, highly expensive, precision-guided, 21st-century weapons had brought Serbia to its knees."

Nelson commented, "In fact the really crippling damage to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's little tyranny--the old-fashioned destruction of civilian power plants and bridges--could have been performed by World War-era B-17 bombers."

The real target of this assault was the working people of Yugoslavia and the infrastructure of the country. Military analyst Chuck Spinney admitted as much. "We knew how to do that kind of bombing in the '30s," he stated. "This was a World War II-type bombing though more accurate. We were bombing Yugo plants, wineries, anything to raise the pain of the people. Our military was incapable of dealing with the Serbian military, so it attacked the civilian structure."

Frederick Forsyth, writing in the May 15 Wall Street Journal, reported that U.S.-led forces "managed to kill 14 times more Serb civilians than uniformed soldiers" and other troops.  
 
 
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