From your story:

So um...thats exactly what I just told you. We did not drop bombs that were radioactive. We used projectiles (shells) that were made with depleted uranium.

The Serbs themselves decided to make these shells into flak jackets. I hardly see how that is our fault...we didnt sell the the jackets or force them to wear the jackets.

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I watched the german video yesterday that OSCE was in Kosovo before the bombing 1999 and they stated there was 39 killing in Kosovo before the bombings took place. You should not be too suprised there since Bush did lie about going to war in Iraq. Same thing happened here. They just needed a reason to fool the public. There was never any ethnic cleansing in Kosovo by the Serbs. It is all propaganda and the truth is finally coming out.

Depleted Uranium, Just The Tip of the Iceberg in Serbia
by Jeremy Scahill

BELGRADE — Already in Serbia the effects of NATO’s depleted uranium munitions are apparently being felt by members of the Yugoslav Army who fought in Kosovo. Two former soldiers were recently discovered to have cancerous eye tumors. The Belgrade weekly tabloid Nedeljni Telegraf recently reported that three officers from the Army’s Pristina Corps died of leukemia, while 10 others now suffer from the disease; four of them terminally. They join the dozens of soldiers involved with the wars in the Balkans now sick from what is being referred to as “Balkans Syndrome.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t until soldiers from Western countries began dying of cancer and getting sick that depleted uranium in the Balkans became an international issue for the corporate media. A fact not lost on people here.

“The West wouldn’t give a (*)(*)(*)(*) if their troops weren’t getting sick and dying,” says 53 year-old taxi driver Nenad Bulatovic. “If we get sick, that’ s collateral damage. We call that America’s Milosevic Syndrome.”

While leading scientists and environmentalists in Serbia are indeed concerned about the effects of DU munitions, they say it is just the tip of the toxic iceberg. “Depleted uranium is just one page in a very thick book of the ecological and health catastrophe caused by the NATO bombing,” says Vukasin Pavlovic, Director of the Belgrade-based ECOCenter.

Pavlovic’s group has just issued a ground-breaking report titled “Environmental Impacts of the NATO War in Yugoslavia.” Though the report does deal with the question of depleted uranium, it seeks to sound alarm bells about the lesser-publicized effects of NATO’s targeting of petrochemical factories, oil refineries and chemical plants during the 1999 bombing.

"War-induced negative effects cannot be viewed as collateral damage, because they are not induced by unintentional targeting, but by the deliberate and planned destruction of industrial and other environmentally hazardous systems,” the report states.

During the bombing it became domestic wisdom not to eat fish from the Danube River because of concerns the NATO bombardment had contaminated the international waterway.

Their fears are certainly not unfounded.

One of the stunning revelations in the report is the sheer quantity of toxins released into the Danube, the source of drinking water for 10 million Europeans. The report highlights NATO’s April 14-15th strikes on the Petrochemical Industrial Complex in Pancevo, which lies on the banks of the Danube, 10 miles outside of Belgrade. Within moments of the bombings, a devastating toxic cocktail poured into the river. This included some 3,000 tons of alkalis, 1,400 tons of vinyl-chloride monomers (VCMs), 1,000 tons of ethylene dichloride and 800 tons of 33% hydrochloric acid, according to the report. Attacks on the plant also resulted in an estimated 20 tons of highly carcinogenic VCMs entering the atmosphere. In 78 days of attacks, the petrochemical plant was bombed 9 times.

“NATO didn’t use chemical weapons during the bombing,” says Dr. Zorka Vukmirovic, a leading environmental physicist and one of the authors of the report. “But indirectly it caused the effects of chemical weapons use. If you release so many hazardous substances, major air pollutants and carcinogens in the vicinity of big cities like Belgrade and Nis, it is obviously a deliberate action against the civilian population.”

But NATO’s attacks on the Pancevo petrochemical plant are not limited to Serbia. Environmental groups and environment ministries from throughout the Balkans have discovered contamination of the Danube in several other countries. There are also studies from Greek environmentalists that the bombing caused increased pollution levels in the air over the northern Greek city of Xanthi.

The ECOCenter’s report also raises particular concern over the repeated attacks on an oil refinery situated in a populated area in Serbia’s second largest city Novi Sad. The report estimates that over the course of 12 NATO attacks on the refinery, some 80,000 tons of crude oil were incinerated, exposing the city’s residents to a high concentration of hazardous, carcinogenic and toxic substances multiple times during the bombing.

“These compounds have a high cancer risk, particularly when inhaled,” writes Professor Pavlovic. “Their deposition in the environment also jeopardizes other environmental media, particularly food storages and grain silos.”

“The people of Novi Sad are and will continue to be victims of the NATO bombing,” says Dr. Vukmirovic.

The report estimates that up to 50% of the sites targeted by NATO warplanes were “industrial and other hazardous objects with high environmental risks.” Professor Pavlovic is now calling for modification of international war law conventions and standards. “Crimes against nature and its ecosystems must be added to the list of war crimes,” he says. “International war law should confirm that ecocide, equal to genocide, is the most harmful and most dangerous form of destruction of nature.”

The environmental destruction wrought by NATO’s attacks continues to pierce through everyday life in Serbia. Dr. Vukmirovic says she doesn’t drink the milk from a leading dairy farm near Pancevo for fear of contamination, “I only buy milk from Subotica (in the north of Serbia),” she says. Professor Pavlovic admits, “I love fish soup, but all of the scientists I know who are monitoring the Danube tell me not to eat it, so I just go without.”

These sentiments are echoed at Green Markets around Belgrade where people make it a practice of asking merchants where their food is from. “We know they lie sometimes if they have goods from an area heavily hit by NATO,” says Mirjana, a mother of 2. “It just makes me feel better to ask.”

There are also fears in the agricultural sector here that goods exported from Serbia will eventually require labels with warnings about their safety.

Though the discussion of depleted uranium is certainly not new in Serbia, the current publicity makes it difficult to go anywhere without encountering a discussion or mention of DU. “Carla Del Ponte should take her depleted uranium out of this country before she takes Milosevic,” a 70-something pensioner said outside the press conference of the Chief War Crimes Prosecutor when she was in Belgrade last week (He was not allowed in to the press conference).

In Kosovo, NATO has identified some 112 sites where it acknowledges using depleted uranium munitions. But NATO has not given the government in Belgrade a comprehensive list for the rest of Serbia. Estimates from the Yugoslav Army say that as much as 1.5 tons of DU was dropped on other areas of Serbia. Authorities in Belgrade have to date confirmed 5 sites in Serbia other than Kosovo where depleted uranium munitions were used. Four of these have been fenced off and declared public health risks.

Since NATO’s bombing ended in June 1999, a number of reports from international agencies have examined the environmental impact of the NATO bombing. In several instances, these studies have supported NATO’s contention that the consequences are negligible. In the first visit of the United Nations Environmental Program to Serbia weeks after the attacks ended, the agency declared they found no negative impact of the use of depleted uranium. When asked what methodology was used to search for DU contamination, the head of the delegation, Pekka Havisto, said they had taken random soil samples in Serbia. Scientists here say that’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Rather than publicizing the fact that NATO refused to provide the UNEP with a map of areas targeted by DU munitions, the agency elected to declare it had found no significant health risks.

“The United Nations tried to diminish or reduce the scope and negative environmental impacts of the NATO campaign,” says Professor Pavlovic.

Eventually NATO released the map of 112 sites in Kosovo, most likely a fraction of the actual total. Now, almost two years after the bombing campaign started, the UN has begun analyzing the areas. But that’s just Kosovo. The rest of Serbia remains in the dark because of NATO’s refusal to make public the full extent of its DU use.

Without a highly detailed map of areas hit by depleted uranium, future health consequences may be the only way to discover where measures might have been taken to prevent further tragedies.

Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist based in Belgrade. He reported live daily for Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! during the 1999 NATO war and was one of the few foreign journalists in Belgrade to witness the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in October. He can be reached at jeremys@EUnet.yu

Serb Karadžić is Europe's Bin Laden, says Holbrooke

SARAJEVO -- Richard Holbrooke maintains that he "never made a deal with Hague fugitive Radovan Karadžić".

The American diplomat, who helped create the Dayton peace deal that ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, yesterday in Sarajevo denied allegations that he reached an agreement with the former Bosnian Serb president.

The long-standing claim, recently repeated by the Hague Prosecution's former spokeswoman Florence Hartmann, says that Karadžić received guaranties he would never be arrested if he withdrew from Bosnia's political life.

“I did not make any kind of deal with Karadžić, he is a war criminal. He is the Osama Bin Laden of Europe,” Holbrooke said to a Bosnia-Herzegovina television station.

He said that "Karadžić made up the story and leaked it to the media".

Holbrooke added that he is very disappointed by the fact that Karadžić and Ratko Mladić have not been arrested yet, adding that their arrests must be a priority and that “nothing should continue until the two of them are brought to face justice,” Beta news agency said.

The former U.S. diplomat aslo said that the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina have the chance to create a modern country “with the capital of Sarajevo, and two existing entities.”

“The central institutions need to be strengthened in Sarajevo, and there must be work put in to reconciliation,” Holbrooke said, adding that the Bosnia-Herzegovina education system, the division of schools by ethnicity, "is the most dangerous thing for Bosnia".

“In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the children are learning three different, fake histories and that is wrong,” he said.

Holbrooke is in Bosnia-Herzegovina with a team of reporters and cameramen from CNN, who are making a documentary film on the Srebrenica war crimes.

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Proud American!

Communism/Socialism is similar to legalizing burglary and murder!

"Propaganda" ? According to whom? You,a serb?

Why would Human Rights Watch lie for one?

Bush wasn't in power back then. And if only 39 people were killed before the bombings, NATO wouldn't have intervened in the first place. Serbia lives in denial, so nothing new there.

Please post a link to a statement made by Bush that you can prove was a lie.

You seem to be saying that since you believe Bush lied about something that had to do with Iraq, I should just accept your hearsay as truth.

Sorry. I cant do that.

By contrast, we already know that you were mistaken (I am giving you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't lie) about the US dropping radioactive bombs on Serbia.


Had they simply surrendered, maybe we could have determined that. But we were unwilling to take their word for it.


If it is, you have not posted links to any of it yet.

btw - The second story you posted is just an editorial. It proves nothing except the opinion of the author.

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Do you speak German? If you do I will post the link to the German made youtube video.

I have no reason to lie about anything. I said rich with uranium. Bombs were depleted with uranium or whatever it is.

Almost all of these articles are opinions.

No one on here accepts youtube videos as evidence of anything. We have no way of verifying them and they can be faked too easily. So it doesnt matter if it is in German or not.



You dont have to lie to be wrong. Lying requires intent. I have no way of really knowing your intent.

I cant take your word for stuff because this is an anonymous forum. I have no way of verifying anything you say. Thats why people on here like to see links to 3rd party sites.


And you were wrong. None of the bombs had depleted uranium. Even your own source says they were SHELLS. Shells are not bombs. Shells are used in guns and fired as a projectile (from guns or tanks or artillary). Bombs are dropped from planes.

Thats an example of what I said above. You were not lying, but you were still wrong.



No one on here will accept an editorial as evidence of anything. Editorials are the same thing as these posts...they are the opinions of the author. They are not actual news.

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Fair enough Sadistic_Savior.
How about your sources. Where do you get your sources from? Any links? I would like to see how you formed your opinion is what I am saying...

Yes. I posted several in this thread already. I post links all the time.


Mainstream news; BBC, CNN, FOX, MSNBC. Major papers. I accept some internet sources (Factcheck.org is a good one) as long as they provide sources as well.

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