# Slobodan Milosevic - Bad Rap? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 2, 2001, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slobodan-milosevic-bad-rap/70994 "2001-07-02T18:57:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2001, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slobodan-milosevic-bad-rap/70994/41 "2001-07-11T00:01:48Z")
Well, I believe Oscar Arias said that if the world knew the extent of what the Reagan administration did in Central America, the whole lot of them would be sitting in prison. ---
**Author:** ![ErnestEverhard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ab992/32.png) [@ErnestEverhard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ErnestEverhard)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2001, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slobodan-milosevic-bad-rap/70994/42 "2001-07-11T14:57:24Z")
Is Milosovic getting a bad rap? It seems like it to me. Check out [http://www.emperors-clothes.com](http://www.emperors-clothes.com), for some challenging opinions. One or two other thoughts; 1. How can a man publicly known as the Butcher of Belgrade possibly get a fair trial? 2. How would Blair/Clinton have reacted to the violent secession of Wales or California? 3. The Hague?? Even NATO spokesman Jamie Shea has admitted it is NATO’s ‘friend’. 4. [http://www.emperors-clothes.com](http://www.emperors-clothes.com), worthy of being mentioned twice! If anyone knows the conclusive truth, could they direct me to it. Thanx Ernie ---
**Author:** ![Freedom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Freedom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freedom)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2001, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slobodan-milosevic-bad-rap/70994/43 "2001-07-11T15:20:41Z")
I came to this thread agreeing with IzzyR, but after searching around google for relevant cites, I’ve pretty much changed my mind. I still have a shred of doubt that the genocide was just propaganda, but I think there would just have to be too many people involved for it to be a conspiracy. [http://www.ideajournal.com/jones-kosovo.html](http://www.ideajournal.com/jones-kosovo.html) > [@](#): > > Confronting “what the French said were Serbian attempts to keep them out,” they searched the facilities and “reported to the [War Crimes] tribunal in The Hague that they had uncovered piles of ethnic Albanians’ clothes, shoes, family photos and identity documents in the smelting area and near the mine shafts.” They also stated “that the vats had been thoroughly cleaned before Serbian troops stationed in the complex left. The cleaned parts stood in stark contrast with the filth that characterizes the other parts of the mine. There were several large ash heaps, … and French troops found numerous empty bins of hydrochloric acid.” Moreover, urgent concern was expressed by investigators and Kosovar Albanians alike “that the evidence is being slowly removed or destroyed by Serbs still inside the complex. French soldiers who were in the mine a few days ago say some of the piles of clothes and belongings have disappeared.”(30) > [@](#): > > How much longer might it have given the Serb occupants of Trepca to destroy the evidence reported by French eyewitnesses, **or to dump it in the mile-deep mineshafts** that the investigators’ technology apparently could not plumb?(32) > [@](#): > > Five years ago, in Europe’s worst massacre since the Second World War, thousands of non-combatant men were executed or tortured to death at Srebrenica.(35) In the year or two after the massacre – in which women and children, but not elderly men, were expelled to safety in Bosnian government-controlled territory) – **the Red Cross compiled a list of some seven thousand missing Muslim men. No more than a handful have turned up alive. Some 3,000 of their corpses have now been exhumed and piled up in the combination memorial and mortuary at Tuzla,** and hundreds more are added every spring and summer.(36) The rest of the men, it is now generally acknowledged by all except Serb apologists and optimistic relatives, are also dead. I still think that America and Nato committed their own war crimes by targeting civilians. I also think that we pumped up the propaganda to justify our involvement over there. But I’m not going to sit around and think the Milosevic wasn’t knowingly presiding over a terrible atrocity. I still think he should be tried by his own country. If they don’t currently have the will, then it should wait until they do. ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2001, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slobodan-milosevic-bad-rap/70994/44 "2001-07-11T19:04:48Z")
I think that removing MS from Serbia is part of a power struggle within that country. There are still a great many of his beneficiaries in place who have much to lose and the resources to cause lots of problems. With MS out of the way the current government has a chance of clearing them out, to replace them with who knows what. A trial in Serbia would be divisive and would probably threaten the nascent democracy, this might well prompt Montenegro to break away adding more difficulties. One only has to look at Pinochet and the divisions in Chile as a result of his being declared unfit for trial as an exasmple. Reomve the snakes head and the body can only thrash around innefectually, you can then deal with it at your leisure. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2001, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slobodan-milosevic-bad-rap/70994/45 "2001-07-11T20:04:37Z")
I believe Pinochet WAS declared fit to stand trial, wasn’t he? ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2001, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slobodan-milosevic-bad-rap/70994/46 "2001-07-12T08:51:01Z")
[Sad to say that he will not face trial](http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1430000/1430508.stm) , technically he can if his condition improves but this is unlikely. Back to Milosevic [here](http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/in_depth/europe/2001/yugoslavia_after_milosevic/default.stm2) is a site with links to others which pretty much covers the whole issue. ---
**Author:** ![IzzyR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/2acd7d/32.png) [@IzzyR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IzzyR)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slobodan-milosevic-bad-rap/70994/47 "2001-07-16T17:21:33Z")
**freedom** I read through your link. Some comments: 1. The paragraph that preceded your quotes said > [@](#): > > The question of the destruction of bodies and evidence brings us to the subject of the Trepca mines in northern Kosovo, which were widely alleged in the early days of the KFOR occupation to have served as the site for the disposal of hundreds, even thousands, of bodies. **Now the International Criminal Tribunal states it has found “no solid evidence” of atrocities at Trepca.** The idea that the evidence has been destroyed is speculation, and not very likely IMHO. The Serb army, which would have been the ones committing the atrocities, had already left the area at the time of the covering-up. The idea seems to be that Serb civilians went out and destroyed the evidence in order to cover up for their Serb buddies. And this in an area that - if not “secured” - was at least under the control of the NATO forces. I would be more inclined to believe that the initial reports were not reliable, as so many such reports ultimately turn out to be. 1. Your third quote concerns the earlier Bosnia situation, with regard to which the chain of command is unclear, as noted earlier. 2. Some of the writer’s conclusions would appear to be attributable to a kind of circular assumption that “Serbs commit atrocities”, therefore we can assume that they must have committed them. e.g. this > [@](#): > > Consider now the lessons of recent Balkans history. Past Serb practice, especially when it comes to gender-selective exterminations, is so well-established after a decade of genocide in the Balkans that to dismiss it amounts to holocaust denial. As Bosnian Prime Minister Hasan Muratovic accurately described the overriding Serb strategy in 1996, “Wherever they [the Serbs] captured people, they either detained or killed all the males from 18 to 55 [years old]. It has never happened that the men of that age arrived across the front-line.” Mark Danner, a year before the Kosovo war, depicted the standard operating procedure as follows: > > 1. Concentration. Surround the area to be cleansed and after warning the resident Serbs … intimidate the target population with artillery fire and arbitrary executions and then bring them out into the streets. > 2. Decapitation. Execute political leaders and those capable of taking their places: lawyers, judges, public officials, writers, professors. > 3. Separation. Divide women, children, and old men from men of “fighting age” – sixteen years to sixty years old. > 4. Evacuation. Transport women, children, and old men to the border, expelling them into a neighboring territory or country. > 5. Liquidation. Execute “fighting age” men, dispose of bodies.(14) > This prescription for expelling the target population and liquidating “battle-age” men wherever possible seems to have been followed to the letter in Kosovo. **It would be surprising if it had not been** , given the unquestionable scale of the Serbs’ genocidal assault,(15) which uprooted 800,000 civilians and sent them flooding into surrounding territories. Perhaps eight years of accumulated evidence from the Balkans **makes it incumbent on the sceptics to explain why the Serbs would not follow this procedure in seeking what was clearly a “final solution” to the “problem” of Kosovo’s ethnic-Albanian majority. Why, for example, would the Serbs want to have left alive the bulk of battle-age men they encountered, to regroup in exile and launch an endless guerrilla and terrorist campaign against the Serb occupiers?** I don’t think this has any basis at all in reality - if there was such a policy, the number of casualties would have to have been far higher, considering the size of the population. 1. Also, this > [@](#): > > In all, between seven and ten thousand Kosovoars have been reported missing, and the tally can be expected to rise strikes me as strange. I would think that the number of deaths tends to rise as time elapses, but the number of missing would tend to decrease, as many of the missing turn out to have been dislocated. 1. In general I would note that the article was written about a year and a half ago, and his predictions about the ultimate number of casualties do not seem to have been born out. All media accounts that I’ve seen give the number as between 5 and 10 thousand. (This appears to include Serbs as well, as follows, and probably includes combatants). 2. The article contains the following > [@](#): > > On November 10, 1999, the ICTY released its first official findings from Kosovo. It gave the number of corpses exhumed as 2,108, from just over one third (195) of the 529 grave sites the Tribunal had examined so far. Calling the crimes “among the most horrible and massive the world has ever seen,” chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte stressed that the eventual total could be far higher, and “we would not expect the forensic evidence in isolation to produce a definitive total.” To which the footnote says > [@](#): > > 1. Reuters dispatch, November 11 1999. Some of the victims, however, were Serbs, and the Tribunal was also reported to be considering war-crimes charges against the Kosovo Liberation Army. Strangely, I don’t think this has happened, and haven’t heard any mention of such charges being impending. Media reports about bodies in mass graves tend to give the impression that they are all the result of Serb atrocities. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slobodan-milosevic-bad-rap/70994.md?page=2)