Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/17/23 Kit Klarenberg Refutes Myths About the Bosnian War

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Scott is joined by Kit Klarenberg to discuss an article he wrote about the Bosnian War. The article analyzes some declassified cables from Canadian Peacekeepers that give a window into what was actually happening on the ground. Klarenberg tells the story of the war for those who may be unfamiliar with it. Scott and Klarenberg then dissect some of the myths that persist today and observe a lot of parallels to later interventions, including today’s war in Ukraine.  Discussed on the show: “Declassified intelligence files expose inconvenient truths of Bosnian war” (The Grayzone) “The Russian Military Unit That Killed Dozens in Bucha” (New York Times) “Avoiding a Long War” (RAND) “Blinken: Crimea a ‘red line’ for Putin as Ukraine weighs plans to retake it” (Politico) “The West’s hardest task in Ukraine: Convincing Putin he’s losing” (CNN) “Anatomy of a Coup: How CIA Front Laid Foundations for Ukraine War” (Substack) Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton show all right you guys on the line i've got kit clarenberg from the gray zone that's the gray zone dot com and he's got this really important piece with tom secer called declassified

intelligence files expose inconvenient truths of Bosnian War. Welcome to show, Kit. How are you doing? Hey, how's it going, Scott? It's going really good. Listen, you're in my book twice. One of them is where I went through and plagiarized all your work on this great article, but the other one is all about the CIA and George Soros and the NED backing the Ukraine coup of 2014, where you did a really great piece on your stack um detailing all of that you know a lot of times people kind of know that well this sure looks like an ed type of situation but they need all the details nailed down and you sure did a hell of a great job doing that so um thank you very much i mean i wasn't actually aware of that and i'm almost reminded of oscar wilds quote that you know to lose one parent is what can be regarded

as misfortune uh to lose both looks like carelessness so i mean to be quoted by you twice got is That's funny. I like that. Well, he had some good quips that guy. You know what? We might talk about that in a minute, but let's talk about this Bosnia thing. You know, I interviewed Max Blumenthal yesterday about the upcoming anti-war protest and your article was mentioned here, your work here. And we both agree. Both of us were too young to have really been up to date on the Bosnia War as it happened. I don't know about Max. I was good and paying attention on co- Kosovo in 99. But in Bosnia, I've had to go back and learn as much as I could from reading Nabosh Samalik and so forth. And in fact, recently I found a really good one, a series by Edward S. Herman, the co-author of Manufacturing Consent with Nomschomsky. And he had this thing in something called the Monthly Review. There's a three or four part essay where he really takes you through the Bosnia War step by step and shows how, well, as you guys seem to reveal here, it was just as screwed up a war and based on just as much

dishonesty as all the rest of the wars of our era, Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, or the rest. Is that pretty much your take to? Absolutely. And I think that, I mean, one of the reasons these files which were released, they are the, they are intelligence cables that were sent by Canadian peacekeeping troops posted Bosnia in 1992. One of the reasons they are so. revealing and so important is they offer this first-hand view of the reality on the ground, and it becomes very clear that there was a huge gulf between what people were being told at home and indeed, you know, yeah, the reality. But I think is, I mean, you mentioned subsequent conflicts. I'm convinced that the Bosnian war was an intended kind of laboratory experiment,

like a petri dish, where various strategies. were trialed or refined and honed, and then this has kind of set a blueprint, this grinding conflict, horrific, has set a blueprint for subsequent interventions, whether that's Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, they tried multiple times and seemed to have failed. I mean, it's really revealing you see the same kind of strategies, you know, the same propaganda, the same, you know, abusive local proxies. yes, the same kind of lies being told in justification of starting these wars and maintaining them. So yeah, from that perspective, I think even though the article refers to events that are

over, in some cases over 20 years old now, it's never been more important to look at them through a microscope. All right, so if I've got the Christian Amman poor version of this war straight, it's that Yugoslavia after the fall of the Soviet Union and the fall of communism started breaking up. And essentially the Serbs wanted to create a bigger, greater Serbia at the expense of the Croatians and the Bosniaks and everybody else. And so then everybody else was defending themselves against this Serbian aggression. Is that not right? Well, I mean, yes, that's the, that's the established narrative of what happened then and now. The reality is, of course, completely divorced from that and indeed far more nuanced.

So in the late 1980s, the National Endowment for Democracy, which is a well-established CIA front, began funding opposition groups and opposition media NGOs in the hope that, you know, at the turn of the decade, in line with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact country, where the NED was also very active, that Yugoslavia would implode into little, you know, easily manageable, easily exquisite pieces. At the same time, you had the CIA and MI6 that were funding and training and army, insurrectionary nationalist groups within most of the republics, not Serbia, rather markedly. And it was expected that, yes, that Yugoslavia would collapse into infighting and nationalism come 1990.

This didn't actually happen because in Yugoslavia, there was a very high standard of living. It was a truly unique system in world terms. I mean, we're talking about somewhere where a paid vacation, housing, health care and education were all considered human rights. Yes, so people actually rather quite like the system. It was also very well integrated from an ethnic and kind of religious perspective. It was very common for, you know, there to be thoroughly mixed communities of people. Catholics, alongside Orthodox Christians, alongside Muslims, alongside Jews, all getting along. And Bosnia, Bosnia was the kind of Naples ultra of this. It was very, very, very diverse in every

way. And everyone kind of got along, you know, intermarrying was encouraged and actually when Yugoslavia did start breaking up, which we'll get into in a second, a variety of people from all over Yugoslavia, the various constituent republics started moving to Bosnia en masse because they felt that there was no chance there could be, you know, ethnic tension and warring there between the different factions. I mean, you know, sadly, how wrong they were. But anyway, so in 1990, then President Bush pushed for the passing of a law called the appropriate the foreign appropriations act this cut off Yugoslavia from all aid um and uh it precluded um Yugoslavia from trading with with credits which um you know effectively destroyed um uh

uh Yugoslavia's exports and imports but also um it made resumption of aid contingent on each uh republic holding uh a referendum um on independence and shifting in a quote unquote democratic uh direction. And yes, all these kind of nationalist groups, which the CIA and M.I.6 have been sponsoring, suddenly came to the four as these crusading freedom fighters. In some cases, they were possessed of, you know, really quite horrific and bizarre views. You know, for instance, in Croatia, Tuchman, who was a nationalist thug, who venerated the Nazis and the Astasia, which was a Croatian puppet state,

which was created by Hitler when they invaded Yugoslavia in the 40s. And the Astash had typified themselves by engaging in brutality that shocked even the Axis powers. I mean, you know, we're talking about skewering infants on bayonets and all sorts of other, you know, just horrific acts. And so they were engaging the same kind of rhetoric and indeed venerating these people in the modern day, which made Croatia's Serbian population, which was ran to 100. of thousands of people, extremely worried and, you know, with good reason. Again, in Bosnia, things were a bit different. So while the US had sponsored a, I'm not sure, maybe nationalists is the wrong word, but the Muslim leader is Begovich. He had a history of issuing pamphlets

and statements talking about the need for Bosnia to be religiously and culturally pure and to drive out Christians and Jews and stuff. However, because of its high level of diversity and integration, it was hoped that Bosnia might actually be kept in Yugoslavia. So there was a provisional peace plan that was in, I think it was in 1991, under which Bosnia would remain a sovereign, independent state within the Federation of Yugoslavia, and it would be ceded Muslim-majority Serbian territory. Hezegovic initially supported this, but then backed out, and it's very, it would be unsurprising if this was due to US pressure. So over the next kind of year, year and a half, you have building tensions and, you know, every side is kind of preparing for the Croats, the Serbs and the Bosnian Muslims, they were all getting ready to start, you know, killing their neighbours, as it were. And so at the very last minute, there was a peace plan that was drawn up by the European Commission forerunner of the EU. And again, it was attempting to maintain a balance where every ethnic group's rights and would be protected and everyone could live alongside each other, you know, peacefully.

And this is the Lisbon plan that you're referring to? Yeah, yeah, precisely. And however, this was then torpedoed by Washington, you know, Warren Zimmerman, who was the U.S. ambassador to Bosnia, met with Izbekovich and said, we will give you unconditional support if you torpedo this deal. And he did. And then fighting breaks out within hours. Unbelievable. Yeah, this is my big failure. When I debated Bill Crystal, someone in the audience asked him, well, when was the last successful intervention? And he said Bosnia. and instead of me saying, did you hear that, everybody? He can't stand by Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria,

any of this, the surges, every bit of foreign policy that he's supported for 20 years. He can't stand behind any of it. He's got to go back to 1994. And then I didn't say that. You know what I said? I said, no, uh,

actually what happened was the U.S. Ambassador Zimmerman ruined the peace deal and prolong the war. So I'm right and he's wrong and Bosnia is not an example of successful American intervention in any sense, unless you just like seeing a couple of hundred thousand extra dead people for no reason. But I dropped the ball and I didn't hang him with the rope that he handed me, which was, wow, Bill Crystal cannot stand by any intervention at all. I went for the more particular point. But, I mean, this is huge, right?

I mean, the story there was, this is genocide. This is like the return of the Nazis. They're slaughtering civilians by the hundreds of thousands. They're not just cleansing them, like force marching them. They're just shooting them all. And these Serbs, they must have been possessed by the devil himself. They're turning Europe completely upside down. And, you know, the French and the Germans and the British, why they're too busy standing around with their hands in their pockets,

not doing anything. And so America must intervene to save the poor people. That's the narrative from TV. Yeah, precisely. And it's, I mean, what makes that narrative all the more perverse is that there were large scale and, and indeed routine massacres of Serbs and Croats by, by Muslim forces. But also as well, you know, a lot of the time when they were in the media when they were talking about Serbs, you know, carrying out ethnic cleansing or, you know, kind of imperialist seizure annexation of

of territory. I mean, yes, there was bloodlettersing on the Serbside, of course. Yeah, this is a civil war. You know, these things are not pretty. But a lot of the time, they were simply trying to hang on to territory where they had resolved where Serbs had resided for centuries. They didn't want to

get themselves be, you know, vanquished by force or by threat. So I mean, and yes, I mean, you mentioned the US prolonging this. I think that's the key, you know, something that's really key to consider here. it's very clear from the cables that at numerous points, the Serbs were very, very, very keen to reach a negotiated settlement.

You know, like Yugoslavia more generally had an interest in that because they were subject to absolutely crippling US sanctions while the war was ongoing, which led to, you know, a shortage of basic goods, you know, suicide skyrocketed, death from preventable diseases skyrocketed, drug use skyrocketed, you know, people would queue for hours to get a loaf of bread in a store. And it also galvanized and led to the rise of, you know, major mafia groups, which dominated the country. So, you know, the Yugoslavia wanted out with this as quickly as possible, as did the Bosnian Serbs. But this was reported in the media as, well, the Serbs are intransigent and that they're being unreasonable and unbending in negotiations. Again, the cables make clear that this is

completely untrue. I mean, again, I mean, you talk about Kosovo, that this is exactly what the KLA did. So, Uzbekovich, the Muslim forces, their negotiating position, because they knew they had unconditional support from the US, which would endure, you know, as long as they needed it, refused to engage in constructive talks at all. They would say, well, we want everything that we want, and we don't want you to get anything that you want, and we're not backing down from that. So, of course, the Serbs walk away, as you would, because that's not a negotiation. But then, yes, this gets reported as the Serbs are being unreasonable. And, I mean, again, we have seen this over and over and over again.

In Klo, the KLA were explicitly told by the U.S. side that the more deaths, the more likely it is that we're going to intervene. And so, you know, in the run-up to the war, numerous negotiations between the two sides, the KLA couldn't be less interested in peace. It actually had a bit of massive vested interest in more bloodshed. But again, because this narrative of Serb entranches and Serb, you know, genocidal designs had been minted in Bosnia and throughout the 90s, it was a lot easier for people to be sold on this notion that it was Belgrade

that was holding back peace and on a war path. And again, yes, we've seen this in Afghanistan, in Iraq, Libya, over and over again. Yeah. All right. So let's get a little bit specific on some of the revelations. There's some more of the revelations from these documents. I think one thing that's really important is the presence of the Mujahideen here. I mean, we know now that not only college Sheikh Mohammed, but at least according to the 9-11 commission, the San Diego cell, the Flight 77 hijackers, Hamzmi or Hamzi and Midhar. Hasmi and Midhar. They all three had fought in Bosnia on Bill Clinton's side, on the bin Ladenite side. And that was where they kind of earned their stripes and credibility as al-Qaeda terrorists, who then, you know, blew back and hit America just 10 years later. So, not even. So I guess, is there, first of all, is there anything in the cables, you know, really detailing like, hey, a plane full of guys from

Afghanistan just got here and stuff like that or anything about like all those Iranian arms shipments that Bill Clinton helped arrange for the Mujahideen then? Absolutely. And I mean, there's a very interesting aspect related to 9-11 of the Bosnian War, which again will get into. But yes, I mean, the Mujahideen are never referred to by name, the cables, you know, universally used the phrase the Muslims. But yeah, I mean, so from the latter half of 1992, I'm CIA black.

flights flown into Bosnia would deposit Mujahideen fighters from all over the world, particularly Afghanistan, of course, and also weapons in breach of a UN embargo. So, I mean, this was, you know, completely perverse and illegal on every conceivable level. But yes, I mean, the Mujahideen arrived. They quickly gained a reputation for absolute brutality and, you know, for a total disregard for their own safety, but also is clear from the files.

um if you read between the lines they were carrying out false flag attacks on their own on on bosonians they were killing muslims and claiming that it was the serbs in order to trigger uh u.s intervention uh in order to you know add to this media perception that serbs were the bad guys um and there's all sorts of uh kind of parenthetical or or oblique references to how um the the the the the Muslims quote, but it's the Majidine, have sought to provoke overreactions from the Serbs. So, you know, during ceasefires, they would attack Serb civilians in the hope that the same would happen to Muslim civilians in Bosnia. You know, it's really quite horrific.

And they were clearly, there's an amazing exor where they refer to how David Owen, who was this kind of veteran, British politician, former foreign secretary, who served as the European communities lead negotiator in Yugoslavia. There's a cable that states that he has been condemned to death for being responsible for the deaths of 130,000 Muslims in Bosnia, and this was passed down by an honour court. Yeah, I mean, this is again, a nakedly a reference to the Magidine. And that's never been mentioned in the media before. But, I mean, I dare to say that his life is probably very seriously in danger.

as a result because these people were completely crazy and they were acting with you know total with zero compunction about human life whatsoever and yeah i mean it i mean nowhere near 130 000 people total let alone muslims died in the bosnian war i mean one a cynic might suggest it was because he was very very critical publicly of the u.s role and what the u.s was and how the u.s was sabotaging peace talks you know needly prolonging this at an immeasurable human cost. And so, for instance, and I mean, I talked about the 9-11 parallel. What's really quite eerie is that when a peace deal was finally struck, you know,

the Dayton Accords, which was the U.S. run negotiations, which have left, you know, Bosnia and a complete state politically ever since, pretty much immediately, the Mujahideen's leadership, and this is documented. in the cables, start getting assassinated. And this is actually, this was, this happened in Afghanistan as well, once the Soviets were vanquished, the less hardline elements of the Mujahideen, like Abdullah Hazam, who was saying, well, our work here is done, we should not get involved in running this country, our interests is not in politics, started dying in, in carbon attacks and getting, you know, attacked by unknown,

killed by unknown snipers, which raises the question of whether the CIA was behind this. I mean, it certainly seems the case in Bosnia because there's an account from one, which is not in the cables, but a contemporary account from one Bosnian-Majardine fighter, which is that suddenly they became unwelcome in Bosnia and the CIA effectively put out of burn notice on them. Many of them tried to flee to Albania and Koso to fight alongside the KLA, another CIA-backed militia. but they were stopped in the process and, in many cases, deported back to their home countries. Many of them were executed for terrorism offences. It was this, quote, unquote, betrayal that led bin Laden to publish his fat war in America,

which one way or another leads to 9-11. So, I mean, and in terms of historical parallels, sorry, I mean, the contemporary parallels, I think that's very interesting to consider because in Ukraine, well, Well, long before the war started, in fact, throughout the Cold War, but with greater intensity, once the Berlin Wall fell, the CIA was funding and sponsoring and encouraging nationalist elements within Ukraine because they felt they were the best bullwalk against Soviet power. Of course, after the Mayden coup, the protesters were riddled with nationalist elements,

the Aztelein has become extremely powerful and important. as have many other far-right paramountry elements like right sector. Now, it seems fairly inevitable that the Russia is going to prevail in the conflict due to their sheer size of their military and their vast artillery and weapon advantage. Now, it would be unsurprising if a lot of these Azograts start fleeing a sinking ship at some point and, you know, scattering all over Europe and maybe North America too, that means that there will be a large number of battle-hardened, embittered, rabid neo-Nazis with a pension for brutality walking among us.

And, you know, the likelihood that they will carry out a revenge attack. I mean, my friend Alex Rubenstein recently for the Graze Zone revealed how a Azov linked far-right terror cell in Italy was planning terrorist attacks. got busted by the police. I know, it's already started. It's just like, I remember, in fact, 10 years ago, the first ISIS attack in Europe, they attacked a Jewish museum in Brussels. And it's like, guys, this is, are you sure you don't want to call this off right now?

Give me just a minute here. At the Libertarian Institute, we published books, real good ones. So far, we've got Will Griggs Snow Quarter. Sheldon Richmond's coming to Palestine and what social animals owe to each other. and four of mine, fools Aaron, enough already, the great Ron Paul, and my brand new one, hotter than the sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons. And I'm happy to announce that we've just published our managing editor Keith Knight's first one, the Voluntarius Handbook, an excellent collection of essays by the world's greatest libertarian thinkers and writers, including me. Check them all

out at libertarian institute.org slash books, and for a limited time, signed copies of enough already, and the Sun are available at Scott Horton.org slash books. Hey guys, I had some wasps in my house, so I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved salt reservoir and bar safety. I don't have a deal with them, but the show does earn a kickback every time you get a bug of salt or anything else you buy from Amazon.com by way of the link in the right-hand margin on the front page at Scott Horton.org, so keep that in mind. and don't worry about the mess your wife will clean it up it's funny because if you go back one year ago

i'm writing this book so i have a whole collection of quotes of all these smart guys saying yeah what will do in ukraine is will replicate the 1980s afghan war even though and and they you know they say over and over again it just this is four or five months after america's final humiliating defeat and withdraw from Afghanistan after supposedly fighting the consequences of the last time that they did this. So the question is, like, who's going to be Osama bin Laden? Will it be Yoraj or Beletsky? Who will be, you know, the worst Nazi that our government has to use as an excuse for its next stage of intervention in Europe seven, eight, ten years from now? I mean, he's been growing that beard, you know, I mean, he looks suitably sinister. But,

Yeah, I mean, it's so, I mean, that is something to consider. And, like, you know, I mean, I've traveled extensively around the Balkans. I call it home now, I, in most cities I've been to, I have spoken to people who are, you know, in their late 20s or early 30s, who remember very well, well, you know, until relatively recently, you know, weapons like AK-47s being openly sold on the streets, you know, and as easy to purchase as, you know, a kind of Coke is today. So, I mean, I think that, you know, we know for the fact that there is an enormous amount of fraud and corruption and theft of this vast ground swell of Western weapons, which have been flooding into Kiev, completely unaccountably since before this even started. There are accounts by people who fought the Foreign Legion of mercenaries where they say that, you know, it was highly professionalised whereby a van carrying weapons would arrive. and then another van completely unmarked would arrive and take half of the shipment and drive off and command the officers and the SBU didn't want to know about it. And indeed, you know, there were punishments like being suicidal suicide missions for anyone who made it too big a stink about it.

So, yeah, I mean, that's a very, very key parallel. I mean, I think another thing to bear in mind is the, yes, I mentioned false flag attacks. This is a recurring theme in the files. Now, in February 1994, there was an absolutely horrific attack on a civilian market in Bosnia and it killed 68 people and injured at least 140. And you can find footage of it online and it's just, it's absolutely shocking. But responsibility for the attack and how it was perpetrated is still effectively unprovenable. And it's been a hotly contested ever since.

The UN at the time was unable to make an attribution. There were multiple official investigations, which couldn't reach a definitive conclusion on who or what fired. Sorry, who fired or what was fired. Canadian troops at the time, these peacekeepers were utterly convinced that there was a very, very high chance that it was a false flag. And they talk about how, well, it's quite disturbing that there were, you know, that there were so many Muslim soldiers on the site. at the time and they're directing journalists seen very very very quickly not trying to seize evidence or protect people but they wanted they wanted this to be seen now again it states in the cables we know the Muslims are fired on their own civilians and in the past in order to gain

media attention and have planted high explosives in their own positions and then detonated them while the media watches claiming they're being bombarded by the Serbs now I don't make a judgment on what did or did not happen that day. And in fact, a Serb general was convicted for this by the international criminal tribunal of the former Yugoslavia. And it concluded that it was a deliberate strike by Serb forces against civilians. That ruling was upheld on appeal. But I think that even without reaching any conclusion about what did or didn't happen, you can see that that kind murkiness and is present in the Ukraine war today. So, you know, we have seen, we have seen so many occasions whereby a strike on a ostensibly civilian infrastructure, such as the late March

Maria Pol, maternity hospital bombing, or was it an airstrike? We don't know. This was framed as deliberate Russian strike on civilian infrastructure. And we were told that this was just just, you know, the latest example of how Russia is fighting a totally jetticidal war against all things Ukraine and Ukrainian. However, you know, in that incident alone, it seems fairly clear that parts of that hospital were legally occupied by Azul battalion and Ukrainian armed forces. This is a war crime amnesty called this practice out as one. It's very widespread on the Ukrainian side.

But at least in the International Court of Public Opinion, Russia is thoroughly convicted of having deliberately struck a maternity hospital because it's a maternity hospital. Now, there is a huge push all over the West for a similar body to the International Criminal Tribunal of Yugoslavia to be set up to prosecute Russian officials. This was also tried in Syria. I mean, it failed miserably, not least because Syria didn't lose. But, you know, it is, and yes, it seems likely that Russia will prevail in this conflict. But, I mean, at the very least, there will, it seems, be a legal entity created, which will, you know, hear evidence and prosecute and convict people. And it's very important to bear in mind that, yes, what we're being told is happening on the front line

is you're probably going to inform those findings because the entire exercise will be designed to reinforce, political and media narratives on what it on what's happening in Ukraine and you know people are going to get caught by this you know I mean it's it's there's that saying a lie can travel around the world before the truth has got its shoes on I mean you know and and that's important to bear in mind because while the US isn't you know at least theoretically directly involved in this in future wars between the US and whoever for this will probably China, we're probably going to be told a lot about Chinese atrocities and this would be used as a justification for further escalation, for further intervention,

for more bloodshed. And it's clear, you know, from these files that any event that happens will be weaponized in order to suit an underlying narrative. Yeah, well, I mean, it's already on as far as that goes. You got a whole genocide going on in China with nobody. bodies. They raised the quote on how many kids Uyghurs are allowed to have and still just call a genocide and call it whatever they want. And speaking of which, so this goes from to the Kosovo war is the Rassak massacre, however you pronounce that, which did not happen. And I wonder about, you know, in Bosnia, how many of those were you just have completely fake maskers. And I know that the accusations on both sides of Srebrenica are, you know, extreme. Either the Serbs

slaughtered 8,000 people for fun and profit and land, I guess, or they didn't. And that's a complete hoax. I wonder if these Canadian files shed any insight on that. Well, I may be overstated that. I should say that the other side of the story is that the AP says that there are 8,000. thousand missing, but most of them had fled rather than had been killed, that there may have been some who were killed, but not 8,000 and not 8,000 civilians for sure. So sometimes I get a little carried away. Go ahead. Yeah, no, sure. I mean, I think that there are, there are references to Seraenica. They, you know, they talk of a large-scale massacre in that area. They don't use those kind of numbers. I mean, although I do think that the numbers are almost secondary.

to circumstances of which has happened. It's quite clear. I mean, yes, we have all of these references to provocations from the Serbs, sorry, against the Serbs in order to trigger a, in order to trigger an overreaction. And when you look at your references in these files to separately, in conjunction with British Army Peacekeeper documents, which are public domain,

they're available at the National Archives in London. the British recorded how they felt that there was a deliberate attempt to compel the Serbs to kill civilians in Srebrenica. And they note that the town was abandoned by the military in advance of Serb troops arriving there. Now, again, you know, one needn't run the risk of atrocity. denial to say that quite clearly this was not simply a matter of, yes, Serbs just for the, you know, just for shits and giggles and then the kick of it because they are these, you know, genocidal barbarians slaughtered 8,000 people for fun, you know, there are, there is a context there. Maybe nothing could ever, you know, palliate or relativise a slaughter of such a scale.

But, you know, again, you know, this has been subject of numerous investigative. investigations, the ICTY's ruling that this was a, that this genocide was controversial at the time. The ICTY admits, well, at least one of the judges, there were dissent to, there was dissent within the ICTY's ranks on what actually happened and whether it was a genocide. Even one of the judges who signed off on that conclusion said that we, we effectively played fast and loose with the definition of genocide in order to come up with this conclusion. Now, anyone, at least in the mainstream, making the argument that, well, maybe this wasn't a genocide, maybe it was just, you know, a targeted killing that resulted from provocation in the context of a civil war is branded a genocide denier up there with those who deny that there were gas chambers in concentration, Nazi concentration camps.

You know, and its subs and spin become inseparable. And so, again, this has very obvious relevance to, you know, the confidence. conflict today. I mean, we're told that this is a genocide in it, but that is, this, this persists in the media now, despite the fact that according to UN figures, the civilian death toll is 9,000. Now, I mean, you know, one is too many, you might argue, that that's not a genocide. In fact, actually, you know, compared to the US intervention, that's remarkably low figure. Yeah. Well, and I think, luckily, refugees had somewhere to go. And so for the most, part are out of the way of the worst of the fighting there but you know it's clear that too that

you know they came up with a narrative called a sciop or whatever i guess if you want but it was certainly a major media and government narrative right around march and april last year that it's a genocide and not just that but the whole you know kind of story around that was you can't negotiate with evil right now it's dick cheney and saddam hussein because uh the russians are so bad that how could you say that the ukrainians should negotiate with them make any concession to them when they're proving themselves to be these inhuman barbarian orcs and all of this kind of thing and then that worked it was right then was when negotiations were ongoing and they were making real progress and the british and the americans were trying to stop them and i don't know exactly

what happened in Bucca there, but hundreds of people were killed. That's not genocide. It's nothing like you would think of the Gestapo comes to town and rounds up all the Jews in the town square, machine guns them to death. There's some kind of thing. It was nothing like that. But they just framed it that way and then it worked. And here we are, you know, 10 months later talking about the same damn war still. Indeed, indeed. And I mean, Bucca is a, it, it, What's really interesting as well is I wrote an article in April, not making any concrete conclusions, but pointing out numerous anomalies around Bucca. So, for instance, the fact that there was no massacre reported until an Azov cleanup squad, who was meant to root out saboteurs and collaborators, was deployed to the city when the Russians were long gone and, you know, officials like the mayor had returned. but they didn't say anything about what body's lying in the street.

And, you know, that's clearly an anomaly, which got rather ignored in the mainstream media. But what's really striking is that as the war has gone on, and particularly after Ukraine's successful counter, where they kind of carved through effectively abandoned and unguarded territory that had been captured by the Russians. And this was, you know, hailed as, you know, the courageous, lion like Ukraine and blah blah blah blah

in the Western media following those successful incursions there were widespread reports in media about and this was being praised as well of Ukrainian soldiers rounding up collaborators hunting them down and brutally punishing them

there are videos of these people being shot and thrown into pits which is very very grisly I don't recommend anyone watches them but you know so it My article on Booker was disposed as, yes, a kind of genocide denying, you know, conspiracy theory, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then, you know, now Main Street media has embraced and endorsed the idea that actually it's a good thing that massacres of collaborators happen. That's what I was suggesting, you know, back in March and April, and I was slammed for it.

And then now it seems to just be accepted that Ukraine does this. Well, if they did this in Kersen or, you know, is that provided that? Why did they not do it in Bucca? And there's another interesting wrinkle in this, is that Seth Hart, who's a bit of a dissident mainstream journalist, you know, he gave an interview to my friend Aaron Mate, where he talked about how, well, you know, when he went to Ukraine wanting nothing more than to expose Russian war crimes,

and then he conducted numerous interviews with locals who said that, oh, actually the Russians left, alone or gave us food, like, you know, they didn't, they weren't interested in coming after us. And, you know, every, you know, every time a patrol went past, they'd like wave and everything, were very professional and friendly. But then, you know, Seth Harp also believes that Buka was a massacre by the Russians, except you just can't think of any reason why they would do it and admits that this is completely out of character for them. So I just think that even on the distant side of the media, you know, people who are seeing with their own eyes

that this stuff isn't true. One way or another, they've drunk that Kool-Aid. And they're so far ensconced in the propaganda matrix that even though they can't justify this narrative based on personal experience, they're still tied to it, which is an interesting phenomenon. Yeah. Hey, guys, check out my new sponsor.

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well you know i got to plead ignorance on this one just because i have not done a deep dive on it yet but i know that there's a new new new york times or relatively new york times documentary that supposedly shows it was the russians but i also know a guy i won't say who because he's still working on it but i know a guy who sure writes some really good stuff sometimes who has done his own investigation on what happened there and uh seems to think that it was the Ukrainians and not the Russians that did it. Although, well, I shouldn't say more about his narrative from just what I heard so far. But I think it is, you know, certainly debatable, but what certainly not is that it was almost like they coined a new phrase

to use like a color-coded thing. Not that it's a new term, but they just used genocide as their, you know, brand that they were pushing for that, you know, two, three, four week period there in March and April to make sure to essentially characterize negotiations with Russia as immoral appeasement of Hitler instead of the proper and prudent thing to do to try to save as many lives as possible. Since at the end of the day, as Millie has implied the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Ukraine's losing the Donbass. You know, maybe or maybe not about whether they can negotiate over Kersan and Suprosia, but they're losing Donetsk and Lahansk, you know, at the end of this thing, you know, regardless.

So why drag the thing out? And, of course, we know, because that's the strategy. But just like with Bosnia we're talking about, there are these great quotes. I'm not sure. I don't think this is from your reporting, but I'm sure you're familiar with it. The difference between the Lisbon deal and Dayton was two years and, 200,000 bodies that all the Americans did was delay the pretty much same system from being implemented. And we're going to end up pretty just like we left 20 years of war in Afghanistan with

the Taliban back in power. We all pretty much know where this war's going to end up if we don't all die in a thermonuclear holocaust. It's going to end up with the Russians absorbing the far east of Ukraine. Shrug. Yeah, I mean, I think that the, you know, whatever kind of of, you know, whatever the result of this war is, it will be a lot less favourable to Kiev than the March and April Accords, you know, the proposals were, which would have seen Russia withdraw from all of the country in Luansk and Donetsk be independent republics and the Minsk Accords upheld. But, I mean, I think as well that it, what's interesting is that the, I mean, the war propaganda has been very, very, very effective. And if you look at

there was a recently published poll, which showed that overwhelmingly, I think it was overall about 68% of Europeans, it might be even higher, thought that there was no chance that Russia could win this. And, you know, I mean, that they have been fed a steady diet since day one of Ukrainian heroism, success and Russian embarrassment and failure. I think that a lot of people are going to be in for a shock when this does come to an end, which could actually be quite soon because the Ukrainians have run out of weapons and ammunition and the West either does want to send or has none to send in response. So, you know, it actually, I mean, admittedly it's a bunch of idiots on the internet, but I mean, the New York Times recently published an article,

which I drew attention to on Twitter, which painted an absolutely desperate, great picture of what was happening on the front line in eastern Ukraine. You know, we're talking about a fields full of Ukrainian bodies, you know, overflowing hospitals with corpses and injured people, with the absolutely gruesome injuries are people missing, limbs, eyes, you know, the parts of their bodies have been blown. Oh, it's an artillery war, man. I mean, it's just, yeah, people being blown to bits.

It's just a horrific, horrific. And it, you know, just is so disturbing. And, you know, in the comments section, when they, New York Times published it on Twitter, it was all people saying, this is fake news. Russia is losing, how can this be true? Like, you know, has Putin infiltrated the NYT editorial report? And it's like you're already, acts are starting to appear. The media is changing tack. Now, on top of the fact that, yes, that Ukraine's situation seems completely desperate

and hopeless, there is the fact that there is an increasing push within the US power structure to get the hell out of dodge in respect to Ukraine. So there was a report by Rand, published recently, and Rand is, of course, a Pentagon-funded think tank, which reflects elite thinking and policy. And it effectively said, yes, that, well, the benefits from the war in Ukraine are actually very small. There's no way Ukraine can win. The longer this goes on, the more defenseless European armies will be. The longer this goes on, the more economically destroyed Ukraine will be. I mean, it's already dependent on, entirely dependent on Western aid to keep its lights on, and it can't even do that because of Russian bombing of,

you know, electricity generators. So, you know, it actually makes a lot sense to get out of this and start laying the foundations for that happening. Now, so on the one hand, you have a potentially rapid Russian advance in the offering. You also have the US Empire preparing to throw these poor people under a bus, as they were always going to do. And it's why I always, from the start of this, I leaded for a negotiated settlement and, you know, was against sending vast amounts of weaponry to Kiev. You know, I think that people might be shocked at how quickly Western leaders,

particularly the US, turn their backs on Ukraine. I think they'll be wondering, why is there not in the news anymore? Why, you know, why are we not hearing these kind of daily, self-righteous condemnations? So yes, the kind of... And I'm sorry to say, Kit, but I mean, yeah, this is the best case scenario, right? The worst case scenario is like Mearsheimer says, that they just double down, that they refuse to admit that they've been lying this whole time, that this hasn't been working, and then they start sending in troops. Yeah, yeah, I mean, funnily enough, like, that that was one of the reasons that Rand said, you know, get the hell out of it. Because, again, as people like myself and my colleague at the Grey Zone have been warning, this could very, very easily spill into a direct U.S.

slash NATO war with Russia, which would just be, you know, apocalyptic in scale. It could very easily lead to nuclear exchanges. You know, I mean, and this is this is why, as much as I am very certain that the throwing under the bus will commence in due course and sooner than we may think, you know, when the US says that they are not opposed to the idea of Crimea being demilitarized, but, you know, whether optionally or by force, I mean, options, optionally is never going to happen, or yet by force, you know, giving the Ukrainians weaponry to target the island. I mean, sorry, the peninsula, you know, I mean, this is crazy talk because Russia has said it will not use nuclear weapons unless there is a direct strike on Russian territory and our

interests are threatened. Now, striking Crimea, which is, you know, historically, culturally, linguistically Russian as can be and has been for centuries I mean and it's viewed very much as a fundamental part of Russia I mean yes that's going to that would trigger a nuclear assault

which by the way I mean Anthony Blinken for all of his faults has at least conceded that political reported he was on a conference call the other day and he goes well I don't know about Crimea you got to understand that's a red line for Russia yeah well These are the same people who say, look, we have to send home dead Russian bodies, corpses, coffins, body bags.

That's the only way to get through to these people, sink their flagship, kill their generals. And then they go, well, you don't want to take Crimea, though. Well, maybe killing their generals is the red line, too. You ever think of that? You imagine if the Russians had been pouring billions of dollars into back al-Qaeda in Iraq and that they were targeting American officers at the highest levels and getting them

and what the Americans would have done George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, they had a nukeed Moscow. Yes, precisely. I saw an article, I think it was published today. I at least saw it today. It was on CIA NN and it was about how the West's hardest task in Ukraine is convincing Putin he's losing.

I mean, my immediate reaction was, I mean, you know, it's convincing him he's dying and he's, you know, we hear that that every week as well, that he's got some, you know, form of cancer or other, you know, fatal disease, you know, based on anonymous intelligence officials, of course. But yeah, I mean, it just, it just strikes me that I think that everyone involved in this is actually thinking more about media impact

and it's thinking, you know, about, in every way. And, you know, therefore, Yeah, you know, something like the Ukrainians killing a Russian general is something that they can, you know, use to sell ongoing armed ship, it's ongoing financial support. Because, hey, look at how far, look at how well they're doing. You know, it just, it brings to mind this image of, you know, like, you know, Russian troops in, in bombed out, flattened Paris, saying it's a pity we lost the information war. you know i mean i think that that that notion there's a physical component now to information warfare rather than just manipulating people um is it is very very real and you know we saw this with daria dougan we saw this with kirch bridge and you know what was the response to kirch bridge oh a saturation

bombing campaign which hasn't stopped since then you know we're into the fifth month of this with every region of the ukraine getting hit on an almost daily basis and you know untold numbers of civilian suffering horribly as a result. All right, now let's go back to the early to mid-90s here. I want to make sure that we hit every major point on Bosnia that we need to know here, and especially new revelations. I mean, I think it's important, as we talked about before, that, you know, the Americans were the ones screwing up the peace.

And here you have the Canadian peacekeepers. themselves saying that that's true in these secret papers, that, you know, America's getting in the way of the peace deal, right? Yeah, yeah, precisely. And it's, I mean, I think that, you know, again, it's a similar kind of mentality to now. They just wanted Yugoslavia destroyed because it was too successful and independent, alternative cyst in a world, which was, you know, this was meant to be the new American century, right? This was meant to be dominated by the success of freedom globally.

And we've seen how that turned out. But, you know, yeah. Well, by the way, for younger people who aren't aware, you know, it was a communist country, but it was not occupied by Russian troops. And it was not part of the Soviet Union. It was just sort of like loosely aligned with the Eastern Bloc kind of thing. Yeah. And I mean, you know, it was part of the non-aligned movement,

which was a collection of countries that said, you know, neither Moscow nor Washington. Yes, it was a troublesome, it had a troublesome tendency towards autonomy. It had its own, it created most of its own goods. It had its own vehicle industry, pharmaceuticals, pretty much everything they made within their own borders. And this was, you know, the sanctions destroyed this. And, you know, I mean, I live in Belgrade now.

And, you know, you walk around and you see, there are still bombing ruins and there are, you know, often homeless people, you know, very, you know, life-changing industry, injuries from that conflict. It's really quite disturbing. In a lot of the places

that were bombed heavily, in place of, you know, the debris and the wreckage, which remained kind of untouched for a decade after the bombing in 2000, have, you know, like shopping malls and expensive luxury apartment blocks

have been erected. This was about imposing neo-deuts, neoliberal capitalism at the, you know, at the end of the gun, and boy did it, well, at least temporarily work, you know, I mean, something tells me, or maybe it's just my hope that it won't be successful long term. Yes, I mean, the US was consistently interfering and intervening to keep this going as long as possible and to ensure it was grinding as long as possible. And I think that actually, it's a, again, a modern parallel, I think it was expected that Russia would go the way of Yugoslavia, but there would be cues of people, there would be people

who couldn't access, you know, basic medicine, dying, dropping dead in the street, and that there would be, you know, that Russia would break into a million pieces. Again, more manageable, more easy to exploit, and this would be the end of Putin, and that's backfired. I mean, the Bosnian files, if nothing else, show our snapshot of a time when the US was, you know, almost omnipotent. You know, it could do anything it wanted. And, you know, another, another wrinkle in this to consider is, I mean, currently Alex Saab, I mean, who's a Venezuelan diplomat who helps Caracas import food in breach of these crippling sanctions, which have been imposed on Venezuela for many years, have killed, you know, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. you know he's he's in jail now and facing trial for help you know for sanctions busting um like i mean i don't it seems that people who are and in in sorry in the ucuslav war

well the ukula war was ongoing um the chess champion bobby fisher played a match in Yugoslavia and the u.s attempted to deport him from japan and he spent the best part of a year in a windowless cell as a result, you know, for playing a chess match in a sanctioned country. I think that, you know, we're not seeing similar action being taken against, you know, many countries which are directly or indirectly skirting the sanctions on Russia. I think this is the, you know, Bosnia was a, a, the Bosnian conflict was a palpable demonstration of power of Pax Americana. I think the war in Ukraine could be a demonstration of its ultimate decline.

Yeah. Well, there's a lot of that going around. All right, now listen, we only got about four minutes before I got to run to my next interview here. But you've got this important piece that you wrote it on your substack. And if I was wise enough to page down a little bit, I could read my own footnote. And, nope, it must be on the next page. I'm not going to find it. Anyway, it's at your substack. And it's all about the NED and George Soros and USAID and, of course, the International Republican Institute. and the National Democratic Institute

and the Omidjar, of course, network. Yes. And how these guys had all bankrolled and pushed the Maidan Revolution of 2014. So there are a lot of aspects to that coup. But we're short on time, so I'm going to be quiet, but talk about this most important part, the foreign intervention on the side of the so-called revolution here.

Sure. I mean, it's difficult. I mean, when you say intervention, this was a long time coming. The NED was behind the 2004 Orange Revolution. This was where a pretty much straight-up CIA coup, except not delivered by the CIA. They bust in protesters. They taught people in violent demonstration tactics. That overthrew the government. And it led to the election of a Western back candidate who was so unpopular. due to his pro-NATO, pro-privatization policies that he was roundly defeated in an absolute landslide by Viktor Yankovic in 2010, I believe. And then, yes, such was the anger of the NED at this, that they started pumping in many, many, many more millions and, you know, ramping up their efforts considerably. Just six months before Maydan, Karl Gershman, the longtime head of NED, wrote an op. for the Washington Post, in which he talked about how his organization was helping overthrow pro-Russian governments in the former Soviet Union, and he preferred to Ukraine as, quote-unquote,

the grand prize. And then, yes, six months later, the Medan, which was led by individuals and organizations in direct receipt of funding from the NED, is successful. There's a fantastic interview between Lukashenko, the Belarusian leader and the BBC reporter, and he said, we will destroy all your NGOs. And yes, that would have been wise. I think that any country in the world that wants to avoid going the way of Ukraine over the past two decades would be wise to ban any and all US-funded NGOs from their territory. Yeah, for real. And anyway, people should look at this. I'm sorry, we're so short on time here. But it's amazing that they do that. I mean, You listen to the American media or British media like Reuters, they'll say, it's just an outrage that Putin is registering, not just even kicking everyone out of the country, but he's going to make them register as foreign agents before they do any lobbying and participation in Russian civil society.

What an outrage. But we have a law just like that. And all of us regular people wish that they would enforce it when instead all Washington, D.C. are essentially foreign agents, completely suburb. born and bribed and paid out in the open. But, yeah, as Putin has said, yeah, pretty hard to be a sovereign nation when you got foreign governments throwing that much weight around in your electoral process. It's kind of just a fraud even on the face of it. But the footnote there is anatomy of a coup, how CIA Front laid foundations for Ukraine

war, and that's at Kit's newsletter at Kit Claremberg.substack.com. A real good one, a great addition to my collection. And also, this one's in the book, too. Oh, well, actually, this is too. Before, I forgot about it before, but it is. Before Ukraine blew up the Kerch Bridge, British spies plotted it. That was another good one that we don't have time to talk about. And then declassified intelligence files expose inconvenient truths of the Bosnian War.

This is a really important contribution to the... history of that American intervention and, you know, allied intervention there. So I really appreciate it. Really appreciate your time on the show here, Kit. My pleasure, Scott. Thanks for having me on, my friend. Take care. Speak again. All right you guys. That's Kate Clarenberg. Check them out at the gray zone. The gray zone.com. The scott horton show, anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA. APSRadio.com. Antiwar.com.com. Scott Horton and libertarian institute.org.