Details of a mass slaughter of Serbs in the Krajina region of Croatia are slowly making their way into the U.S. media. But the news reports remain strangely subdued. There are no calls for air strikes against the Croatian capital of Zagreb, as there are regular calls for bombs against the Serbs. There are no editorials calling for trying the Croatian leaders for war crimes.

According to investigators for the United Nations, "Croatian army and police units allegedly burned 60 percent of the houses" in the Krajina region, reported the Sept. 30 Washington Post. They also "executed elderly Serbs who remained in the region." Unlike almost every other report of genocide in the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, the Post noted that these reports were "unusual in their first-hand detail."

An open letter from the Belgrade-based Serbian-Jewish Friendship Society to the American Jewish Committee says that "anti-Serbian propaganda" is "a twin sister of anti-Semitism." The letter states that today in Croatia a policy of eliminating the Serbs is being carried out. This policy is so thorough that "in Croatia there are [now] no more Serbs than there are Jews in Germany or Poland." The letter is signed by the chief rabbi of Yugoslavia as well as many other prominent Jews of Yugoslavia. But this letter has not been referred to in the U.S. media.

What's not widely known in this country is that the Croatian and Bosnian armies are armed and directed by the Pentagon. The Croatian offensive against the Krajina was planned after 15 top U.S. military officers--including the former head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency--were put in place as "advisers" to the Croatian military.

The Bosnian Army is being "helped" by U.S. military advisers, including Gen. John Sewall and Gen. John Galvin, a former NATO supreme commander. Television viewers may have noticed that the entire Bosnian Army wears U.S. military uniforms--provided by U.S. military contractors. In the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, Gen. Charles Boyd, the deputy commander in chief of the U.S. European Command from November 1992 to July 1995, writes that the much-publicized arms embargo is widely known to be almost nonexistent. The U.S. discreetly insures a regular flow of arms to the Bosnian Army.

U.S. media reports are regularly filled with anti-Serb propaganda. Most refer to the Krajina as a region "conquered" by the Serbs, implying that the Croatian Army is simply retaking something that had been taken away.

But the truth is exactly the opposite. The following exchange shows the propaganda view of the "liberal" media
and gives a response.

On the Aug. 11 broadcast of "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio, news reader Noah Adams interviewed author Misha Glenny:

"Adams: Why did Serbia take the Krajina four years ago, if it is indefensible?

"Glenny: We've got to set one or two things straight here, Noah, about Serbia taking the Krajina. The Krajina came into being at the same time as the Croatian republic became independent when Yugoslavia was collapsing. The Croats wanted to leave Yugoslavia and the Serbs who lived in the Krajina wanted to stay in Yugoslavia. So we simply can't use terms like `Serbia occupying the Krajina' or something like
that. These people had been, until five days ago, living and farming this territory for over 300 years."

What is happening in Bosnia is nothing like what's being reported by the big business-controlled media.

It's like the Gulf War against Iraq. Many of the media stories at that time turned out to be complete fabrications
to support the Pentagon's propaganda needs.

For example, according to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, "most U.S. news outlets uncritically accepted the story that 300 premature babies died when Iraqi soldiers removed them from incubators." But after the war was over, the New York Times (Feb. 28, 1991) put a two-sentence retraction deep inside an article saying: "Some of the atrocities that had been reported, such as the killing of infants in the main hospitals shortly after the invasion, are untrue or have been exaggerated, Kuwaitis said. Hospital officials, for instance, said that stories circulated about the killing of 300 children were incorrect."