Antiwar.com Blog

General Ante Gotovina, hunted by the Hague Inquisition over his role in the 1995 blitzkrieg against the Krajina Serbs, was arrested in the Canary Islands (Spain) on Wednesday evening.

Croatian authorities, who have steadfastly maintained that Gotovina was not in Croatia, breathed a sigh of relief. But Gotovina’s arrest, for all the pleasure that it gives the Head Inquisitor Carla Del Ponte, will have interesting political side-effects.

For years now, Washington and Brussels have been using Gotovina as leverage against Zagreb, invoking Croatia’s “cooperation” with the Inquisition (or lack thereof) whenever they wanted something. Now that Gotovina has been arrested, that leverage is gone.

As for Gotovina personally, he’s got reason to hope. Just last week, the Inquisition acquitted top KLA commanders of running a torture camp, and
sent them back to Kosovo for victory parades. Their indictments were used as an example of ICTY’s “fairness” and “impartiality,” aimed at Serbia, just as Gotovina’s indictment was. Perhaps a couple months from now, Gotovina will also be acquitted for lack of evidence, so the Inquisition could get back to its appointed task of blaming everything in the Balkans on the Serbs.

Remember the mystery surrounding the crash of the British RAF Hercules on Purple Finger Day in Iraq? It was widely reported as a shootdown, but of course, we’ve had to wait for the “facts” to be determined by the state. Here, nearly a year later, is the official pronouncement:

The RAF Hercules plane which crashed in Iraq killing 10 British servicemen in January had come under “hostile fire”, Defence Secretary John Reid has said.

Mr Reid said the investigation board had concluded “the aircraft crashed because it became uncontrollable after hostile ground to air fire.”

Other British reports give more details, though they are apparently not going to be confirmed by the official report.

IRAQI rebels used a heavy machinegun to down a British C-130 transport, killing all 10 servicemen on board, a newspaper reported today, quoting the results of a 10-month probe.
[…]
A ministry of defence spokesman said he could not confirm the accuracy of the report in The Sun, but added there would be a briefing tomorrow on the findings of the investigation into the January 30 crash near Baghdad.

At least one round, probably from a Soviet-made Dshke heavy calibre machine-gun, penetrated the fuel tank in the plane’s right wing during the incident, according to investigators quoted by the newspaper.

The “very lucky shot” caused a massive explosion that sent the four-engined Hercules plummeting to the ground in a fireball, it said.

The plane was “hedge-hopping” – flying fast and low in a combat zone, usually a highly effective means of avoiding enemy ground fire, the newspaper said.

The downed aircraft was on a 70km flight north from Baghdad to the major coalition special forces base at Balad. The Sun said it belonged to the RAF’s elite 47 squadron, who move elite forces soldiers covertly all over the world.

The defence ministry has declined to comment on reports that members of Britain’s elite Special Air Service were aboard the flight.

when he wrote in The Education of a Christian Prince: “It happens sometimes that princes enter into mutual agreements and carry on a war on trumpted-up grounds so as to reduce still more the power of the people and secure their own positions through disaster to their subjects. Wherefore the good Christian prince should hold under suspicion every war, no matter how just.”

From The Onion:

In a transcript of an intercom exchange recorded in March 2002, a voice positively identified as the vice president’s identifies himself as “the Lord thy God” and promotes the invasion of Iraq, as well as the use of torture in prisoner interrogations.

A close examination of Bush’s public statements and Secret Service time logs tracking the vice president reveals a consistent pattern, one which links Bush’s belief that he had received word from God with Cheney’s use of the White House’s telephone-based intercom system.

The news cycle moves ever so quickly, as new scandals overtake those from yesterday. Late in November, Washington and London responded with indignation when British tabloids alleged the intent of George II and Tony the True to bomb Al-Jazeera for daring to oppose the Empire. After a week or so, the scandal blew over – after a fashion – to be replaced by the hubbub over Imperial torture camps in Europe and elsewhere. Only a few, like Robert Fisk, mentioned that bombing Al-Jazeera would have had a precedent in the Balkans. After all, most Imperial actions these days do. Continue reading “Killing Journalists”

Bush tries mightily to put a positive spin on his many failures as he grovels to the Council on Foreign Relations. Perhaps the most subdued insisting we’ve heard from him in a while.

No questions, please.

partial transcript
mp3