KOSOVO

LIES, LIES AND MORE LIES - 3

"Aspect 4. Is NATO's bombing of Serbia even legal? The US and Britain argue that it is, that the use of force "to prevent an overwhelming human catastrophe" is permitted under international law. International legal experts challenge that. They argue that under existing international law, Yugoslav crimes do not make the bombing legal. According to the UN Charter, the use of force is allowed in only two circumstances: "Self-defence against a direct attack" or "Carrying out a specific mandate by the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security."

The UN has not authorised the use of force against Yugoslavia: such an enabling resolution has not even been tabled at the world body, for the very good reason that all parties know that Russia and China would veto it. Therefore NATO's bombing seems to be in clear breach of the UN Charter. It also seems to be in clear breach of NATO's own founding document, the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty. Article 5 of this endorses the use of force "… only to repel an armed attack against a NATO member."

On that basis, it would seem, Clinton and Blair have high-handedly taken it upon themselves to be the arbiters of what is, and is not, a threat to world peace. How come Spain does not take the two to the International Court of Justice?

Final question: Can liberals wage war? Military

scientists have long debated this, especially after the US fiasco in Vietnam. They are particularly suspicious of Clinton, a draft dodger with a well-known phobia about the military and armaments. From his very first days in the Presidency, he has worked hard at seeking to emasculate the US Army and strip it of its fighting capability.

Judging by the hangdog air now worn by both "Bomber" Blair and "Cruise" Clinton Kosovo - strictly a liberal adventure - is again proving the military strategists right. With the mass graves overflowing, the whole Balkans beginning to unravel and the fragile NATO alliance showing signs of fracturing, Washington colleagues report that Clinton, so triumphant after winning the impeachment battle, is today "a grey and faltering figure, visibly affected by the enormity of the unfolding crisis." Nor is Blair doing much smiling in public these days. No surprise there.

Reports from Europe indicate that the war is increasingly unpopular among the NATO countries, all of whom blame Billy Boy Clinton and the US generally for having pressured them into fighting this war. Let things deteriorate much further, and Clinton and Blair could quite easily end up with zero support. But there is a silver lining in all this. This is a grim time for internationalists. It could well be that the Kosovo can of worms will bring about the final demise of David Rockefeller's monstrous New World Order.

NATO's high altitude bombing raids on Kosovo may still play well on CNN. But more than a month into hostilities, a multitude of questions hover over this strike-first-think-later US-dominated operation. Primarily: why after so many months of strategizing, with such huge inward flows of military and political intelligence, did they manage to get it so wrong? And just who sold the NATO allies on their bright, shiny fantasy of a bloodless, lightning victory achieved on the cheap with missile strikes and aerial bombing alone, without ground support?

Much of the blame for the latter rests with Clinton and his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright: a lady known, not without reason, to her staff as Madam Half-Bright. Seemingly carried away with her odd reputation of having cojones (balls), Albright last year adopted the unlikely role of military tactician. She informed the world that US cruise missiles, striking from hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away, in combination with laser-guided aerial

bombing, all of it involving virtually no casualties for the strike force involved, had "transformed the face of future wars."

Such confidence was, of course, built on US experience in the Gulf War: the so-called "turkey shoot" on Iraq's "highway of death." And there she was right: in Iraq, the US F-1174s did own the skies. In advance of US planning for the Kosovo campaign, it is reported, Strategist Albright was the most vocal advocate of the "feelgood" military guidelines. In the face of overwhelming aerial assault, she argued, Milosevic would be bombed into capitulation and forced to the negotiating table.

It hasn't happened: one reason being that where a "turkey shoot" might succeed in a desert region like Iraq, target con-ditions differ markedly in the mountainous, heavily forested Balkans. US faith in Albright's air doctrine is now sadly collapsed, the lady herself embarrassingly discredited. Result?