By Stella L. Jatras 

Dear General Short: 

On 21 October, Reuters reported: "His voice breaking 
with emotion at a Senate hearing, the U.S. Air Force 
general who headed NATO's spring bombing of Serbia 
lashed out at France on Thursday for repeatedly vetoing 
proposed targets in Belgrade."  You were also quoted 
as saying, "This is a personal thing with me."  You 
explained that your son flew 40 missions in the A-10 in 
Kosovo and that he was hit by an SA-13, and that,  "He 
called me that night on a secure phone and the first 
words were 'Don't tell mom'." 

As the wife of a retired Air Force fighter pilot and the 
mother of two sons, I share your concern for the safety 
of those whom we love; however, General, just as my 
husband was a legitimate target when he flew his 
missions over Vietnam, your son was a legitimate 
target, unlike the civilians he bombed. 

Lest what I have to say be misconstrued as being anti- 
military or anti- American, let me make it clear that I 
love our country and I have always supported our 
military.  However, I deplore the fact that young 
Americans such as your son were ordered to attack a 
sovereign nation, in violation of international law and the 
basic tenants of NATO.  When the initial attacks 
against the military and political structure of Yugoslavia 
failed, those young men were ordered by you and your 
superiors to wage a war of terror against the civilian 
population.  Our warriors go into battle trusting in the 
honesty, honor and ethics of their superiors.  "Theirs is 
not to reason why.  Theirs is but to do or die."  You and 
the other lackeys of the Clinton administration failed 
them. 

  I now ask you, General: 

- Was it your son whose bombs hit a bridge in central 
Serbia crowded with traffic and pedestrians on a 
Sunday afternoon, where 17 people were wounded and 
nine people died, including "a priest with his head 
blasted away?"  (Reuters, 30 May).  Or was it your son 
who, four minutes after the initial attack, hit the bridge 
again just as help arrived for the surviving victims? 

- Was it your son whose bombs decapitated a Serbian 
child?  "We found the head of a child in a garden and 
many limbs in the mud. But you don't want to report 
that.  CNN filmed the bodies, but they don't show them 
on television" (The Independent, 29 April). 

- Was it your son whose bombs dismembered Serbian 
children making it almost impossible to match the 
children's torsos with their arms and legs, although 
several were recognized by their sneakers? (The 
Guardian, 18 May). 

- Was it your son whose bombs buried people alive 
under tons of rubble from destroyed apartment 
buildings? 

- Was it your son whose bombs hit the convoy of ethnic 
Albanians reducing the victims to ashes, and then have 
your NATO pimp spokesperson, Jamie Shea, have the 
gall to deny that NATO pilots, possibly your son, were 
responsible for this atrocity by blaming it on the Serbs? 

- Was it your son who bombed hospitals, schools, 
orphanages, cemeteries, churches, 14th century 
monasteries on the World Heritage list, in a barbaric 
act to destroy Serbian culture, society and religion? 

- Was it your son whose bombs hit oil supplies 
polluting the air so that civilians couldn't breath, as well 
as water supplies, civilian apartments, civilian factories 
so as to destroy the quality of life and terrorize those 
who were not killed?   And let us not forget the pollution 
of the Danube caused by NATO bombs which has 
affected all the surrounding nations' international trade 
costing them millions of dollars. 

- Was it the depleted uranium from the shells of the 
Gatling Gun on your son's A-10 that poisoned the soil 
and the air of the Serbian people so that their children 
will be born deformed, and rendered the soil unfit to 
produce food for the people to eat? 

- Or perhaps it was your son who bombed the Chinese 
Embassy in another "mistake." 

Besides hitting the Chinese Embassy, your not-so- 
smart bombs damaged the embassies of Italy, 
Switzerland, Pakistan, India, Libya, and Iraq.  Not 
only could your smart bombs not find the right target, 
they couldn't even find the right country as they hit 
Macedonia once and Bulgaria five times. 
 

NATO pilots bombed Yugoslavia more in 78 days than 
Hitler did in all of World War II.  Can you understand 
what that means to a people who were our allies in two 
world wars?  It was the Serbian nationalist leader, 
General Draza Mihailovich, who rescued over 500 
downed American pilots while Croatian and 
Bosnian/Kosovar/Albanian Muslims at the same time 
were turning them over to the Germans for execution. 
Prior to the impending bombing of Serbs in Bosnia, 
which turned out to be a rehearsal for Kosovo, retired 
Air Force Major Richard Felman, President of the 
National Committee of American Airmen Rescued by 
General Mihailovich, Inc., placed an ad in The 
Washington Times on 9 June 1994.  In his emotional 
appeal, Major Felman said, "It would be the cruelest of 
ironies and break our hearts to see our fellow 
Americans go charging into Bosnia with their guns 
blazing to kill the very Serbian people who saved our 
lives while at the same time helping some of the people 
who were shooting at us and turning us over to the 
Germans."  The ad went on to say, "Mr. President, 
where is America's sense of honor, decency and 
gratitude to those on foreign soil who save American 
lives?  Do we return their sacrifice and kindness by 
killing them?" 

Apparently, the answer is, Yes, for in August of 1995, 
NATO, in violation of its mission as a defensive force, 
assumed the mantra of an offensive force by dropping 
over 6,000 tons of bombs within a two-week period on 
Bosnian Serbs hitting hospitals, churches, schools and 
homes.   This act of US-led NATO aggression was 
based on the Markale marketplace massacre.  The 
disgraceful irony is that a UN report confirmed that 
Bosnian Muslim forces had committed the atrocity. 
The UN report was also confirmed in European 
newspapers, such as The [London] Sunday Times 
which headlined, "Serbs 'not guilty' of massacre, 
Experts warned US that mortar was Bosnia." (1 Oct 
95).  Further substantiating the claim that Muslims 
forces had  committed the massacre, a British think 
tank, The Islamic Affairs Analyst, wrote, "US Framed 
Serbs for Market Bombing." (18 Oct 95).  Just as we 
betrayed the Serbian people in World War II and 
delivered them into the hands of the communist 
dictator, Marshall Josef Tito, himself a Croat, 
we betrayed the Serbian people for a second time in 
this century when we took sides against them in this 
latest Balkan tragedy. 
 
And the horror we have wrought on innocent civilians 
doesn't stop there.  NATO cluster bombs continue to 
kill children. 

And just what has our illegal and immoral air campaign 
against a sovereign nation accomplished? 

Since KFOR entered Kosovo, General, this great 
victory of which you are so proud, these 
"peacekeepers" have stood by while the 200,000 
Serbian men, women and children who remained in 
Kosovo have been reduced to fewer than 12,000, with 
the number steadily approaching zero. While the 
eradication of Serbs is taking place, NATO and the 
media remain silent.   Serbian nuns are being gang 
raped or forced to stand naked before their KLA 
tormentors, Serbian priests are being beaten and 
murdered, "Grannies" have been targeted for special 
horrors, such as decapitation, drowning (in bathtubs), 
stabbing or raped and the atrocities continue.   The 
demonization of the Serbian people is complete. 
Christian humanitarian organizations are collecting 
millions of dollars to help ethnic Albanians but not one 
penny goes to a hungry or suffering Serbian child.   The 
1999 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize,  France's 
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) or  Doctors without 
Borders, (DWB) recently expelled the Greek arm of 
DWB because the Greeks showed compassion by 
treating those injured in Yugoslavia during NATO's 
bombing campaign, just as they showed compassion 
when Greece was the first country to go to Turkey's aid 
following the tragic earthquake.  However, administering 
to a dying Serbian child is in violation of the inhumane 
US-led sanctions which prevent any medical 
assistance to the Serbian people.  It appears that the 
Hippocratic Oath by France's Medecins Sans 
Frontieres stops at the Serbian border. 

But cruelty towards the Serbian people does not stop 
there.  President "I Feel Your Pain" Clinton has 
decreed that there will be no fuel for Serbs facing a 
harsh winter until Serbian President Milosevic is thrown 
out of office in spite of the fact that tens of thousand of 
Serbs have demonstrated against Slobo at great risk to 
themselves.  What the president is offering the Serbs 
is, "You can either die by freezing or by starving to 
death through my sanctions."   Some choice! 

The American people are finally beginning to realize 
that they have been lied to in order for this President to 
justify NATO's war on innocent civilians and to send our 
sons and daughters into harm's way.  "War Reports: 
The Lies Are Unraveling," writes Agence France-Press, 
March 31.  "The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia must 
stop, the moderate Kosovo Albanian political leader 
Ibrahim Rugova told journalists in Pristina Wednesday." 
The American people were told that Rugova, along with 
his entire family had been executed by Serbs. 
However, while that was being reported by the 
American media, they were alive and well and had 
taken refuge in Belgrade from the Kosovo Liberation 
Army, but the lie was more believable. 

Considering the following.  There were: 

- No mass graves containing the bodies of ethnic 
Albanians.  Thus far several hundred bodies have been 
found, not an astounding number in a land where ethnic 
stife and war have been going on since 1992.  This 
number is a  far cry from the lie of 100,000 that 
President Clinton used in his successful effort to 
demonize the Serbian people. 

- No 600,000 ethnic Albanians trapped in Kosovo either 
lying in mass graves, starving, or too afraid to go home 
as claimed by President Clinton when he lied to the 
American people (USA Today, 1 July) 

- No "genocide" as the American people were led to 
believe.   A tragedy, yes.  A genocide, no.  I know of no 
genocide that provided modern buses and trains 
(referred to as "boxcars" by the media so that the 
insinuation would not be lost) to take refugees to the 
borders of Macedonia and Albania and not to the gas 
chambers.  Hardly any mention was made that many 
ethnic Albanians fled to Serbia proper and Montenegro 
to escape NATO's bombs. 

- No great numbers of ethnic Albanians fleeing Kosovo 
until NATO began its bombing campaign of terror which 
prompted one refugee to say to Senator Inhofe of 
Oklahoma when he was visiting the refugees, "We 
wouldn't be here if it weren't for YOU (the United 
States).  "Mirvei, a tall Albanian woman clutching her 
four-month-old baby, looked bewildered when asked if 
Serbian troops had driven her out.  'There were no 
Serbs,' she said.  'We were frightened of the bombs.' - 
Red Cross officials say many of the most recent 
arrivals [in Macedonia] intend to return to Kosovo as 
soon as the NATO bombardment stops."  [London 
Sunday Times, March 27]. 

- "The number of civilians killed during the war in 
Kosovo may be no more than 2,500, according to a 
British Sunday Newspaper.  The figure was estimated 
by a Spanish pathologist sent to the southern Serbian 
province immediately after the end of hostilities last 
summer to look for the bodies of ethnic Albanians killed 
by Serb forces. It contrasted sharply with a claim by 
U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen at the height of 
the NATO bombing in May that up to 100,000 ethnic 
Albanian men were missing and might have been 
murdered."   (Reuters, 31 Oct).  In other words, 
General, we dismembered a sovereign nation, a 
founding member of the United Nations based on lies of 
mass murder and atrocities when there were no more 
than 2,500 civilian deaths, on all sides. Why?  Because 
the tiny nation of Yugoslavia had to be destroyed as an 
example to other nations which might defy of the New 
World Order.  Hitler said in 1939, "The great masses of 
people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a 
small one."   President Clinton threw out the hook, and 
the American people took the bait. 

And with whom have we jumped into bed?  We have 
jumped into bed with a  bunch of narco-terrorist Kosovo 
Liberation Army(KLA)cutthroats who were trained in 
Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan and who 
have now established their own mini-Afghanistan in 
Kosovo.  The most disgusting picture that sticks in my 
craw is the one of Hashim Thaci, leader of the KLA, 
kissing Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, on both 
cheeks after he had just executed six of his top 
officers.  And just what have we succeeded in doing? 
We have succeeded in turning over Serbia's Jerusalem 
to these cutthroats. 

And finally, I return to the Reuter's dispatch where you 
said, "this is a personal thing with me."  Just what did 
you think, General, was happening to Americans of 
Serbian descent, many of whom still have fathers, 
mothers, sisters and brothers living in the Mother 
country, watching your son destroy a nation and a 
people?   Was that not "a personal thing" for them? 

The Serbian people survived 500 years of suffering 
under the Ottoman Empire.  They survived the atrocities 
committed under the Nazis by their fascist Croatian 
and Muslim enemies.  They survived under Tito's 
communism.  Now through our ignorance, our gullibility 
and a deliberate, concerted campaign of lies and 
disinformation to destroy these heroic people, they are 
facing annihilation by a hostile world.  And finally, 
General, welcome to the New World Order you have 
helped to create.  Maybe the job you did in Kosovo and 
your performance at the Senate hearing will get you 
another star on your shoulder.  Wear it in shame.