COZYING UP TO TERRORISTS

I find it more than slightly amusing that so many pundits are shocked at a
U.S. administration cozying with terrorists and/or drug-dealers. We only
have to look back to the Ollie North days and more recently to the Kosovo
fiasco.

In 1998, the CIA called the Albanian terrorist organization, the KLA, the
best armed group in the world (thank you USA). It also happened that 90
percent of Europe's heroin passes through their hands as well.

Of course, you didn't show any disgust when Gen. Wesley Clark and Madeleine
Albright were having croissant's and cafe au lait during the infamous
Rainbouillet 'nego-tiations' (read ultimatum) with drug dealer-terrorists
who were wanted by Interpol, who we trained, cajoled and started a war of
independence for.

(If we treated the Middle East negotia-tions the same way as Rambouillet,
some-one would have been bombed long ago. Not that we solved anything but
it would be nice to see most conflicts 'negotiated' with the same
impartiality.)

I haven't seen many statistics about the Kosovo-drug relationship recently
but if we have problems stopping terrorists from hid-ing heavy weaponry and
then launching attacks inside Yugoslavia and Macedonia from Kosovo (which
is probably smaller than many New York boroughs) while our forces are there
to monitor such activities, I truly doubt that we are doing anything more
than we've done over the past few years: close our eyes and hope no one
notices our hypocrisy.

By the way, our good friend Bin Laden was present in Kosovo in 1999 and his
peo-ple were very active in Bosnia, while our forces were there in both cases.

Terrorists and drug dealers (and Taliban fanatics) are not a problem when
they serve our needs. The fact that you are outraged shows that you either
have a very weak grasp of realpolitik or live in the same state of denial
of our countries involvement with the criminals of this world. Then again,
since the embarrassing and sheepish performance of our media since the Gulf
War presentation, you are not alone, but please spare us your outrage.

Too little, too late.

Zeke Bratkowski (Now living in Sherbrooke, Canada)