No recent conflict in memory evoked more popular support on the right and left than the 1990s Balkan wars. They culminated in 1999 with a 78 day NATO air assault on Serbia whose leader, Slobadon Milosevic, was unfairly cast as the villain. The conflict lasted from March 24 to June 10 on the pretext of protecting Kosovo's Albanian population. It was all a ruse. Kosovo is a Serbian province. It still is, but it's under NATO occupation with plans to make it independent and complete the "Balkanization" of Yugoslavia.

In the run-up to war, the propaganda was familiar. Tony Blair called it "a battle between good and evil; between civilization and barbarity; between democracy and dictatorship." British defence secretary, George Robertson, was even worse saying intervention was needed to stop "a regime which is bent on genocide," and Bill Clinton also raised the specter of "genocide." Each case was the equivalent of elevating Bunker Hill to Mt. Everest or maybe the heavens.

So how did unreported facts on the ground refute the official myth? The Balkan wars destroyed a country to keep predatory capitalism on a roll for new markets, valued resources and cheap exploitable labor. Slobadon Milosevic was the fall guy and ended up in the Hague where he was hung out to dry by the ICTY US-run court. There he was effectively silenced, denied proper medical care and forced in the end to take his secrets to the grave with him.

Earlier, however, war raged in his country for 78 mercilessly days as a sort of earlier version of "shock and awe." NATO bombing killed 500 civilians, caused an estimated $100 billion in damage, and according to Amnesty International (AI), was responsible for "serious violations of the laws of war leading in a number of cases to the unlawful killing of civilians." Translated in language AI rarely uses - NATO committed war crimes, but only its victims were punished. They were carried out on the pretext of averting a humanitarian crisis that didn't exist so NATO invented one.

Here are facts unreported in the mainstream. One month before the bombing, the German Foreign Office stated that a "feared humanitarian catastrophe threatening the Albanian civil population had been averted (and) public life (in larger cities) returned to relative normality." Instead of genocide, NATO reported after the war that 2000 people were killed in Kosovo on all sides in the year prior to the bombing, and the US-backed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) did most of it.

NATO's attack was the culprit. It caused a humanitarian crisis, and the flood of refugees occurred when the bombing began. So did lootings, killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage according to an OSCE study. The media response was breathtaking. It "exactly reverse(d) cause and effect suggesting that bombing was justified (to halt) the flood of refugees it had in fact created." Once again, the lies were breathtaking.

The authors note that like for the Iraq conflict, this war "was made possible by audacious government manipulation of a public denied access to the truth by an incompetent and structurally corrupt media. Every British paper (and American ones, of course) except one took a pro-war line" editorially, and journalists "proudly proclaimed their role in supporting the 'humanitarian intervention' " when there was none.

The authors also note that "Editors and journalists do not drop bombs or pull triggers, but without their servility to power the public would not be fooled and the slaughter would have to end" or would never have begun. No nominally democratic government can stand up against the majority will of its people - provided they know about "the complicity of the corporate mass media in mass murder." Another alternative also works against which they're defenseless - ignore them, denounce them and seek reliable independent news and information sources ...

[Source: Stephen Lendman, "Reviewing David Cromwell and David Edwards' 'Guardians of Power' ...", Atlantic Free Press (Netherlands), January 10, 2008]