The Gen. William C. Westmoreland Credibility Prize

Carl Remick cremick at rlmnet.com
Thu Apr 15 07:30:35 PDT 1999


This coveted honor goes to Gen. Wesley K. Clark. From today's NY Times:

"Earlier Wednesday the NATO Commander, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, said he had evidence the Serbs had shot up the refugees [traveling in a convoy] after allied pilots attacked military vehicles near Djakovica, in southwest Kosovo. But he did not produce the evidence, and later in Washington, the Pentagon spokesman, Kenneth H. Bacon, said General Clark no longer believed that was true and did not have supporting evidence."

And from today's LA Times:

"Last week, NATO initially blamed Yugoslavia for the bombing of a row of houses in Kosovo's provincial capital, Pristina, that killed 10 Serbian and ethnic Turkish civilians. Later, the alliance acknowledged that its own bombs were to blame.

"On Monday, an allied strike on a railroad bridge left a passenger train in flames, taking 14 civilian lives, according to Yugoslavia. The train appeared on the bridge just after the attacking plane released its bomb, according to film taken from the nose of the plane. With smoke obscuring much of the scene, the plane circled back and bombed the other end of the bridge just as the train slid across.*

"On Tuesday, NATO bombers struck targets in Pristina that apparently had no military use: a graveyard, a bus station and a playground."

*Cf today's NY Times: "The single-mindedness of that strike, pursued even after the pilot knew he had mistakenly hit the train with his first missile, reflects a ruthlessness that seems inconsistent with antiseptic notions of an air war."

Carl Remick



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