I realize that the Chinese media is loudly trumpeting the rejection of Clinton's apology by the Chinese government and is claiming that it was not a mistake. But that is no reason for you to repeat such silly stuff. This was obviously an incredibly stupid thing to do, considerably stupider even than starting the bloody war in the first place.
This morning's Washington Post presents the issue as follows. Supposedly the Chinese embassy was located in a different part of Belgrade until just a few years ago. It physically resembles the building that was the supposed target. It is on the same street and only about a block away. It has a low-lying building behind it that resembles a warehouse that was thought to be a storage area as well.
None of this justifies this unjustified bombing, none of which is justified in my mind anyway. But it is also pretty clear that this was a blunder. Despite the word "Intelligence" in its title, there is no guarantee that the CIA is all that intelligent or competent or able to avoid errors.
BTW, the map actually came from the National Imaging and Mapping Agency, NIMA, although it was drawn from a map originally provided by the CIA and not updated.
Also, further evidence of the total incompetence here is that US diplomats had actually visited this embassy, attending receptions there. But, there is no reason to believe that bombing targets are passed by diplomats before being acted on. There is a lot of bungling and incompetence out there and it should not be dismissed. Barkley Rosser PS: I am personally affected by this latest development as a professor from Beijing Normal University is supposed to be visiting in my department next year to work with me. His application for a US visa is currently sitting in the US embassy in Beijing where I don't think that it is getting acted on very quickly...... -----Original Message----- From: Henry C.K. Liu <hliu at mindspring.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Sunday, May 09, 1999 6:43 PM Subject: Re: NATO bombs Chinese embassy
>
>As for American explanation on the embassy attack as a identification
error,
>it is totally without credibility.
>US/NATO has been bragging about the bombing effectiveness with
statistically
>low "collateral" damage. They have been bragging about the reliability of
>their target lists.
>In addition to claims of surgical precision, US/NATO has also declared the
>firm policy of wanting to avoid the spread of the "war".
>The embassy of a major power is an important facility so that it is
>unbelievable that US/NATO would not have an off limits target map listing
>all the embassies before the start of the bombing campaign. It would be
>standard operating procedure.
>It appears more likely that anti-China forces in the US government and
>military, especially in the CIA, purposely mislead NATO military command
>into attacking the Chinese embassy to create an incident that would put the
>Chinese government (as well as NATO and the Clinton Administration) in
>positions of confrontation and to
>create problem in domestic politics in both countries.
>These anti-China forces want to stop the emerging peace offensives and hope
>for a Chinese veto at the UN Security Council.
>This is part of the anti-China pattern of alleged Chinese spying, alleged
>Chinese interference in American elections, etc., etc., all done against
the
>wish of the Clinton Administration but nevertheless became major issues in
>US-China relations that put the Clinton Administration on the defensive.
>The US government is responsible for its failure to manage US internecine
>domestic politics and for its incompetence in administering its bureaucracy
>and military and for allowing the anti-China elements within it to create
>an incident that leads to hostile confrontation between the two countries.
>This sort of incidents happened all through America history, from the
>assassination of Kennedy to Watergate, to the Tonga Gulf Resolution, to all
>the anti-Clinton scandals.
>
>Doug posted a London press report earlier:
>
>"some specialists believe that the strike on the Chinese embassy suddenly
>exposed the existence of "a special direction" in the
>war against Yugoslavia, which is conducted only by the United States and
has
>aims, different from those proclaimed by the NATO command.
>
>The fact that the bombing of the building was conducted by a special
>force of the U.S. strategic aviation, which is not subordinated to the
>NATO command and which flew from the American territory, confirms this
>supposition.
>
>Earlier, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported, referring to military
>sources, that the U.S. conducts, in actual fact, two wars against
>Yugoslavia: The U.S. has another "closed" list of targets, along with
>the one submitted to NATO. Other NATO members, apart from Britain, are not
>notified of these targets."
>
>Henry C.K. Liu
>
>"W. Kiernan" wrote:
>
>> Hello lbo-talk!
>>
>> It's impossible for me to believe that targeting a bombing strike
>> against the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was an accident or a
>> coincidence; there's just no way. My company does GPS (Global
>> Positioning System) surveying and aerial mapping, so I know it would be
>> trivially easy for our government to have established geodetic
>> coordinates for map control points in Belgrade. It would be quite a bit
>> harder to do so in, say Pyongyang, but not anywhere that a.) we have an
>> embassy of our own, and b.) our agents can drive, unmolested, around the
>> city in cars. Even off-the-shelf commercial GPS receivers would do the
>> job.
>>
>> Using real-time kinematic GPS surveying, we achieve sub-decimeter
>> accuracy for our hydrographic work in real-time - we steer the boat down
>> the planned profile lines according to the satellite signal. And the
>> signal you receive with a commercial GPS receiver is dithered with
>> digital noise, but the military has special decoders which cancel the
>> noise, so their GPS locations are even quicker and more accurate than
>> the GPS surveys my company performs.
>>
>> As far as identifying the buildings on an aerial photo or a street map,
>> that should have been even easier, you don't need anything but a car, a
>> map and a pencil. Hell, you can do it on foot; I have, lots of times.
>>
>> Allegedly this bombing raid was conducted with one of our gold-plated
>> B-2 bombers, which means that this one sortie probably cost over a
>> million dollars. Am I supposed to believe that the U.S. Air Force
>> conducted a million-dollar raid involving a two-billion-dollar bomber
>> and no one bothered to double check the target coordinates first?
>>
>> Maybe Clinton, Blair, Reich Marshall von Clark, etc., did not intend to
>> bomb the Chinese embassy, but somebody in the data pipeline did, and the
>> odds aren't bad that that someone was located in Langley, Virginia.
>> This incident absolutely reeks of CIA dirty trickery.
>>
>> As I would not care to participate in a new World War any time soon, I
>> certainly hope that the Russians will supply NATO's high command with
>> geodetic coordinates for their embassy as soon as possible, and I also
>> hope the NATO bombardiers will carefully compare them with their target
>> lists. Who knows, maybe those excitement-loving boys at Langley have
>> listed the Russian embassy's coordinates as the location of the Belgrade
>> Ammunition Works or something like that.
>>
>> Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net
>>
>> Doug Henwood quoted the Times (London):
>> >
>> > WAR IN EUROPE
>> > Poor intelligence caused embassy attack
>> > CIA blamed for bomb blunder
>> >
>> > YESTERDAY Nato admitted it had bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade
>> > after mistaking it for a Yugoslav government office. At least three
>> > people were killed in the attack, which threw diplomatic efforts to
>> > end the war into turmoil.
>>
>> Peace threat narrowly averted!
>>
>> > Alliance officials said they had believed the building was
>> > Yugoslavia's federal directorate of supply and procurement, which
>> > organises weapons imports and exports. It was hit by three 1,000lb
>> > precision-guided freefall weapons, thought to have been dropped by a
>> > B2 stealth bomber.
>> >
>> > Last night Nato diplomats were looking to General Wesley Clark, the
>> > supreme allied commander who now has sole authority for selecting
>> > targets, to take responsibility. Allied intelligence agencies,
>> > including the CIA, were also facing severe criticism. "It is
>> > absolutely incredible not even to know where the embassy of such an
>> > important world power is situated," one diplomat said.
>> >
>> > General Walter Jertz, Nato's military spokesman, denied that Nato
>> > planners had used outdated maps and said they had no reason to know
>> > the locations of all the embassies in Belgrade. "Particularly as we
>> > were not going to attack the Chinese embassy, we were not trying to
>> > find out where it was," he said.
>>
>> So it was a coincidence? Of all the accidental targets in the world,
>> the bombs just happened to fall on the Chinese embassy? Jesus, what a
>> load.
>>
>> > Javier Solana, Nato's secretary-general, announced a formal
>> > investigation, promising that the results would be made public. The
>> > apparently disastrous failure of Nato's intelligence prompted
>> > speculation that false information had come from a hostile agent,
>> > and compounded anger over the bombing.
>>
>> Absolutely pure unmitigated bullshit. Screw you, Solana, what kind of
>> idiot do you take me for? You don't get geodetic coordinates from a guy
>> in a trench coat in a Belgrade alley.
>>
>> > ...President Bill Clinton offered condolences to China for "a tragic
>> > mistake". But Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Russian envoy trying to
>> > broker a peace deal, described Nato's action as "barbarism".
>> >
>> > The embassy, purpose-built for the Chinese in 1993, was hit during
>> > the heaviest bombardment of Belgrade in more than six weeks of
>> > bombing. Witnesses said two missiles struck the roof and one
>> > penetrated its side. Two journalists and a reporter's wife died.
>> > A fourth victim was reported missing. Chinese diplomats, some with
>> > bloodstained clothes, watched in tears as rescuers brought out 21
>> > injured.
>> >
>> > Jamie Shea, Nato's spokesman, described the embassy bombing as "a
>> > terrible accident", saying the alliance regretted the loss of life
>> > and injuries but would not be deflected from its campaign to destroy
>> > President Slobodan Milosevic's military machine...etc., etc.
>>
>> whereupon Michael Pollak wrote:
>> >
>> > When you juxtapose boneheadedness like this with the excellent
>> > analyses coming out of Stratfor, it makes it seem like they fired
>> > all the good spooks. Maybe we should follow the neo-liberal recipe,
>> > abolish the agency, and contract the work out.
>>
>> Forget about having my company do it, pal! Fuck that. We're
>> self-insured, and ordinary construction work is dangerous enough as it
>> is. G. F. Young Inc. don't do no combat zones.
>
>