-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Kosovo/Vietnam Kosovo: The Spectre of Vietnam Worse than Monica PRESIDENT CLINTON has created a "humanitarian Bay of Pigs" in the Balkans, according to Patrick Buchanan, the firebrand presidential candidate. Clinton likes being compared with his hero, John F Kennedy, but equating his Balkan policy with the abortive invasion of Cuba 40 years ago is not what he has in mind. The CIA-planned invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro went wrong, partly because it was predicated on American air support which Kennedy withdrew after the attack was under way. In a mirror image of that disaster, military planners, including Gen Wesley Clark, Nato's Supreme Commander, told Clinton that his air war could not stop Serb atrocities in Kosovo without ground troops. Yet Clinton went ahead, insisting that he would not send in the infantry. John Bolton, a former State Department official and now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, acknowledging the comparison with the Bay of Pigs, said: "We have an objective to achieve, but, for various reasons, we are not willing to apply the level of military force necessary to achieve it. If it is worth doing, you should not do it inadequately." Clinton has laboured throughout his presidency with mistrust because of his anti-war activism during Vietnam. Fearing to be thought weak, he has launched more military adventures abroad since his election in 1992 than either of his hawkish Republican predecessors, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Critics say that Clinton is rashly gung-ho because he wants to compensate for his perceived wariness of being in a fight. President Eisenhower, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, whose military credentials were beyond question, was in the Oval Office when the Bay of Pigs was planned. JFK went ahead, despite reservations, because he did not want to appear weak where Ike was tough. Clinton's entanglement in Kosovo is also being compared with Vietnam, which destroyed another Democrat, Lyndon Johnson. Like LBJ, Clinton is a Southern state wheeler-dealer who loves the nitty gritty of domestic politics but who has found himself absorbed by an intractable foreign conflict and has apparently placed undue faith in air power. The legacy of Vietnam haunts every president. It is the ghost which rears up every time Washington has to decide whether to commit ground troops to battle overseas. Vietnam is shaping the campaign in Yugoslavia. Americans do not want Clinton to send infantry to Kosovo to achieve the two main goals he set himself last week - bolstering Nato credibility and protecting Kosovars - despite the fact that 53 per cent do not believe that air power alone can succeed. Support for the air war has inched up three points, also to 53 per cent, since last week but is still well below the 74 per cent approval for air attacks on Iraq in December and the 66 per cent for strikes against suspected terrorist targets in August. Opposition to using ground troops has fallen from 65 per cent to 57 per cent but approval for Clinton's conduct of foreign policy has dropped 14 per cent. If Nato uses ground forces, most of them will come from the American heartland and, if farm boys start coming home in body bags, the political damage to the Clinton-Gore election machine could be devastating. Foreign policy is fast becoming the single biggest issue of the 2000 election and, despite their own splits, Republicans hope that they have a stick with which to beat the Democrats. The unconvincing air war is a blow to Vice-President Gore, who has lashed himself to the mast of Clinton's foreign policy in rhetorical flights about the need to take on Belgrade's "junior league Hitler". His credibility is ineluctably tied to that of his Oval Office boss. Ed Rollins, one of Reagan's former campaign aides, said: "He can escape Monica Lewinsky, but he can't escape a foreign policy disaster." The London Telegraph, April 3, 1999 Information Warfare Nato Web Site Crippled by Computer Virus Melissa shuts down all Marine base-to-base email PAPA, Melissa and Mad Cow, the e-mail viruses which brought company computer systems to a standstill earlier this week, yesterday crippled Allied communications in the Balkan conflict. Nato's web site, an important source of information on the war in Yugoslavia, was hit by a "cyber attack" with all the hallmarks of Papa, Melissa's more pernicious viral cousin. Nato announced separately that it had also been attacked by Melissa. The announcement by a Nato spokesman was followed by a statement from the US Defence department that all base-to-base e-mail between US Marine units worldwide had been silenced by Melissa. Additionally, a spokesman for the Defence Department's Joint Task Force for Computer Network Defence said the US Army and Air Force had to take their e-mail servers across the world out of action over the weekend to disinfect them from the Melissa virus. Another report disclosed that Melissa has made its way to e-mail accounts on the USS Blue Ridge, the command ship of the 7th Fleet, operating 20 miles off the coast of Guam in the western Pacific Ocean, from where it could have spread to US Navy ships operating off the coast of Yugoslavia. Nato claimed that the attack on its web site was an "information warfare" assault by computer experts in Belgrade, but could provide no evidence to back up its claim. A spokesman said: "A Belgrade computer has been sending more than 2,000 e-mails a day, freezing our e-mail capacities. Macro-viruses are also disrupting Nato computers. "We do not have the technicalities, but it has been traced properly back to the 28th [when Melissa first reached Europe]." Information warfare, where one country uses electronic expertise to cripple its enemy's computer and communications infrastructure, has become the latest buzzword among the military. However, many independent military security specialists claim that Western forces are well protected against "infowar" attacks and that the military is using the threat of infowar as a means of generating increased funding. A source at the Hacker News Network said the attack on Nato's web site did not appear to be information warfare; it bore all the characteristics of an attack by the Papa, or one of its variants. Another hacker source added that the method of attack claimed by Nato was the least likely tactic any infowar expert would use. According to Jamie Shea, a Nato spokesman, the web site had come under a "ping" bombardment, whereby a computer sends thousands of empty data packages to another computer over the Internet, effectively blocking its access to other users. One of Papa's most destructive features is that it pings external web sites. According to Sal Viveros, group marketing manager for total virus defence at Network Associates, this is its most disruptive aspect. He said: "The practice of pinging is not unusual, but Papa pings so many times it brings the network down." Last night, virus experts had determined that Papa pings two sites belonging to Fred Cohen, an anti-virus specialist. They said that the possibility exists that new variants of Papa could have been programmed to attack Nato's web site, or any web site at random. Already, two new variants of Melissa and Papa, called Mad Cow and Papa B, have appeared. * An American Senate panel says that the mission planning systems for the F-117A Stealth and F-15E fighters, both in use in the Balkans, have missed their deadline to fix the Millennium bug. Robert Bennett, a Republican Senator, said the American Missile Early Warning System command and control networks would also not meet the deadline, although they should be operational later this year. He added that only 72 per cent of Pentagon computers and chips had been purged of the Millennium bug. The London Telegraph, April 1, 1999 Russian Follies Chief Prosecutor Sacked for Paying $1000 a Week to Prostitutes Never mind those billions in Swiss accounts PRESIDENT YELTSIN began a fresh offensive against his enemies yesterday, sacking a troublesome chief prosecutor and then sanctioning the release of highly compromising details about his private life. It was Mr Yeltsin's second attempt this year to get rid of Yuri Skuratov, the head of Russia's most powerful judicial body. The last time he survived the embarrassment of state television broadcasting a videotape apparently showing him in bed with two naked blondes. This time, one of them has claimed that she and her partner were paid $500 (�300) each for weekly sex sessions with Mr Skuratov, allegedly paid for by a businessman facing criminal charges. Mr Skuratov is now the subject of a criminal investigation for allegedly abusing his official position, senior law enforcement officials said. Technically, Mr Yeltsin's decree temporarily relieved Mr Skuratov of his post pending the results of the inquiry. But few observers in Moscow doubted that it was an attempt to destroy the prosecutor once and for all. "This whole case against me has been manufactured, this is as clear as daylight," Mr Skuratov complained. Russia's communist and nationalist opposition immediately sprang to Mr Skuratov's defence, protesting that the real reason for his dismissal was his success in unearthing corruption in the Kremlin. According to Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist Party leader, on Thursday Mr Skuratov sent the president the names of 20 leading Russian politicians holding a total of �25 billion in Swiss bank accounts. Some of those involved were from the president's closest entourage, he added, calling Mr Skuratov's latest sacking "Yeltsin's last convulsion". The dismissal implied a new air of confidence in the Kremlin ahead of a crucial vote in parliament on the formal opening of impeachment proceedings against Mr Yeltsin in 10 days. It was also a direct challenge to regional leaders. Two weeks ago, they voted overwhelmingly in the upper house of parliament to reject Mr Skuratov's resignation. That defeat for Mr Yeltsin was another blow to his dwindling authority, already damaged by months of debilitating illness and Russia's financial crisis. Yesterday's dismissal was not without its moments of farce. Mr Skuratov left his office to protest his innocence at the Interior Ministry only to find himself forbidden entry to the building on his return. In the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, Boris Berezovsky, the influential businessman, was stranded at the airport after his plane was refused permission to enter Russian airspace to fly to Moscow. He was dismissed as secretary-general of the Commonwealth of Independent States yesterday, but was unable to attend the Moscow summit giving the job to someone else. The London Telegraph, April 3, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. 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