The Return: A Book for Frances about Life and Death
             Preface
            Back Cover
      You're in Charge: A Guide to Becoming Your Own Therapist
            Introduction: The Art of Self Observation
             On Dreaming
            Foreign Editions
   Since the New Deal: An Annotated Chronology of the Events That Have Changed the United States
             The C.I.A. (excerpt)
             Origins of the Cold War (excerpt)
             Some Quotations that Demonstrate the Underlying Philosophy Since the New Deal

 
      Afghanistan, "Terrorism," and Blowback   About Anthrax
     Some Thoughts on 9-11-2001

Pre-1989 Albanian Rule in Kosovo Discriminated Against ALL non-Albanian Minorities Why is there Civil War in Kosovo, Why Did Clinton Get Involved and What has Been Accomplished?

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The most careful ongoing effort to post to the Web information on NATO losses gathered from newspaper, radio, TV, and e-mail reports all over Europe, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Greece, and Yugoslavia itself now lists more than 300 NATO aircraft of all kinds as having been downed or disabled by early June. Several F-117 stealth fighters were lost. Recently, two B-2 stealth bombers appear to have gone down over Yugoslavia. Several B-52s were shot down. A minimum of four Apache helicopters (two were said to have been lost in "training exercises") were downed before the U.S. announced it would not use them. At least 25 UAVs were downed, and more than 200 cruise missiles were hit in the air. Macedonian and Greek sources have verified the passage of dozens of coffins through their countries.

Whatever the exact figures, which NATO will not publicize, it is true that General Wesley Clark asked twice to increase the numbers of aircraft committed to the war. On May 8 it was announced that 176 additional aircraft would be brought into action. At the end of May it was announced that an additional 68 aircraft would join the war. These were only American aircraft. Additional helicopter rescue crews were also brought in, since efforts to rescue downed NATO pilots often resulted in the loss of helicopers, their crews, and some commando units. Some military experts feared that if another serious military front were to open up elsewhere in the world, the U.S. would be hard pressed to respond adequately.

Indeed, the war against Yugoslavia may have the effect of undermining the mystique of Western air power that had developed in the bombing of Iraq, a poorly defended desert state. Intelligence communities will not be fooled. In Yugoslavia, Stealth fighters and bombers have proven not to be invincible, and their remains are now in the hands of other countries for scientific and engineering analysis. Older Russian-built AAA and SAM sites, handled by well trained Yugoslav crews, proved to be effective against aircraft. Shoulder-held missiles have been very destructive. The Russian-built MIG-29s, flown by competent pilots, acquitted themselves well in air-to-air combat with NATO aircraft. The MIGs that were lost were almost all destroyed on the ground in air raids.

Because NATO was largely unable to get at truly military targets, it soon had to broaden its definition of "military" to go after the civilian infrastructure. Some describe what resulted as a campaign of terror to intimidate Yugoslavia into surrendering. One result is what the Defense & Foreign Affairs article reported as morale problems among the NATO military. They found themselves fighting a war in which "there are questions about the wisdom of the orders they are receiving, and a total lack of clear strategic (let alone military) objectives."

NATO took to bombing public buildings, bridges, rail lines, fertilizer plants, automobile factories, plastics factories, shoe and clothing factories, pharmaceutical plants, post offices, power plants, refugee columns, trains, buses, and other essentially non-military targets. Numerous bombs and missiles struck purely residential neighborhoods or small isolated villages. NATO has destroyed much the infrastructure of the Yugoslav economy, putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work and creating widespread suffering for civilians, whose deaths have outnumbered military casualties by 4 to 1. GDP has declined by an estimated 25 percent.

Since 300 schools were hit in "collateral damage," the country had to close down its educational system. Collateral damage also affected hospitals, libraries, museums, cemeteries, and numerous religious sites and shrines. Recent attacks on electrical installations and water supplies have endangered the lives and health of large numbers of civilians. Hospitals could not run dialysis equipment or incubators, bakeries could not bake bread, fresh water could not be pumped. Unable to defeat the Yugoslav military through the air and unwilling to confront them on the ground, NATO resorted to making hostages of Yugoslav civilians in a shameful campaign aimed primarily at the helpless.

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© Janette Rainwater 1997-2004

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