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Wanted: Guns for hire [U.S. TRAINING NLA IN MACEDONIA!]
Foreign Affairs Front Page News
Source: World Net Daily
Published: July 10 Author: Col. David H.
Hackworth
Posted on 07/10/2001 22:45:19 PDT by oxi-nato
Last month, American troops in
Macedonia rescued 400 Albanian rebels who were members of the 113th UCK
(Kosovo Liberation Army) Brigade.
This operation didn't pass the smell test
for me. I couldn't stop asking myself why NATO brass would risk the lives of
80 American paratroopers to save a band of heavily armed cutthroats bent on
overthrowing the established government of a country that our president and
State Department have repeatedly stated they are committed to save.
The act was kind of like an FBI SWAT team
rescuing Timothy McVeigh minutes before the execution. My first thought was:
Whose side are we really on? My second was: What's the objective here –
stabilizing or destabilizing Macedonia?
The UCK brigade – dug in around Aracinovo,
four miles north of Skopje, and the capital of Macedonia – had been surrounded
for two weeks, under heavy attack by Macedonian government forces and on the
verge of destruction. Imagine how we'd feel if one of our units was about to
take out a rebel brigade whose objective was to overthrow our government, when
out of nowhere a Canadian paratroop company swooped in and saved the enemy
force? Of course, the Macedonians were fit to be tied.
Sources in the U.S. Army in Kosovo
familiar with the 3/502nd Airborne Battalion's rescue operation confirm that
the mission was all about saving the "17 'instructors' among the withdrawing
rebels – former U.S. officers, who were providing the rebels with continued
military education. But that was not enough: The Macedonian security forces
claim that 70 percent of the equipment taken away by the guerrillas had been
U.S. made – to include even the most modern third-generation night vision
devices," as reported by the German newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt on June 28.
Other sources say the "17 'instructors'"
were members of a high-ticket Rent-a-Soldier outfit called MPRI - Military
Professional Resources Incorporated – that operates in the shadow of the
Pentagon and has been hired by the CIA and our State Department for ops in
ex-Yugoslavia. The company, headed up by former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen.
Carl E. Vuono, is filled with former U.S. Army personnel, from generals to
senior sergeants, all of whom draw handsome wages on top of their Army retired
salaries.
This is the same outfit that in the early
1990s trained Croatian soldiers for Operation Storm – which resulted in the
brutal ethnic cleansing of 200,000 unarmed Serb civilians – as well as
bringing Croatian Gen. Agim Ceku up to speed. Ceku, who played a central role
in the slaughter, is alleged to have killed thousands of other Serb civilians
before joining the KLA in 1999, where he again received training and
assistance from CIA and State Department contractors operating overtly and
covertly throughout ex-Yugoslavia and around the globe.
Retired four-stars don't run out of power
until they hear taps. Had Vuono or another of his compares such as Gen.
Crosbie Saint picked up the phone and suggested the 502nd be sent to the
rescue, that suggestion would have been taken as a virtual command.
MPRI even has a website that boasts, "We serve
the needs of the U.S. government, of foreign governments and of the private
sector with the highest standards and cost effective solutions."
While Ollie North's Contra boys and the
mercenaries who botched up the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion might not have been
so businesslike – or so blatant – they did establish an unfortunate tradition
of hired guns sticking our nation into one minefield after another.
Dozens of ex-Army pals are presently working for
the ever-expanding MPRI or other such military contractors in places like
Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, ex-Yugoslavia and Colombia. We're talking booming
business here.
But others have had the moral decency to
say, "Take your high-paying mercenary job and stick it in your ear." One
still-serving, three-war vet told me: "A number of contractors have been
pitching me to work for them after I retire. I said no. There's no principles,
no love of country, no honor – just MONEY. I can't ... sell my soul for a
buck." There are laws on the books that prevent American citizens from serving
foreign governments. It's about time Congress did its duty and enforced them.