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	GORIN

The Farce of our Kosovo Mission
by Julia Gorin [pundit/comedian] 8/9/07

After my article exposing the farce of our Kosovo mission ran in American Legion Magazine last month, I heard from a soldier in Kosovo who was incredulous that someone was actually and finally talking about the region. I proceeded to publish two letters from him at my blog, about his experiences and observations there, some of which confirm the free run that jihadists have in Kosovo, the fact that Albanians are being radicalized, and the notion that we should not have intervened in Kosovo as we did. Only there since November, the National Guard soldier stopped short of confirming the ethnic cleansing and slow genocide of Kosovo’s Christians that I’ve described in my articles.

Unfortunately for the deniers, the facts are also now chronicled in a book by a member of the international mission in Kosovo, entitled Hiding Genocide in Kosovo—a Crime Against God and Humanity.

But a National Guard soldier named Nicki Fellenzer, who runs a blog and also read the Legion article, found the piece to be at odds with her experiences in Kosovo. She (along with fellow military blogger Brad Staggs), wrote that my commentary was “filled with wild accusations, inaccuracies, distortions and downright lies that serve only to hurt our peacekeeping mission in Kosovo and shed a negative light on the Soldiers who are carrying out said mission…We're disappointed in [Julia Gorin]...for holding [her] agenda as more important than the troops who are sworn to protect [her] freedom to promote it.”

In her attempted deconstruction of my argument and unnamed agenda, Fellenzer made the fantastical claim that the KLA no longer exists (something that causes Albanians to erupt in laughter when they hear it) while dutifully recording some standard written quotes from military bureaucrats about the goodness of the U.S. mission in Kosovo. She also cited in-house intelligence analysts at Camp Bondsteel where she’s based as saying that the destruction of 150 churches and monasteries since 1999 is vandalism and not ethnically motivated.

Anyone who has even the first clue about Kosovo knows the diminishment that the administrative and military internationals in Kosovo have been practicing since 1999, to make things look not nearly as disastrous as they are, so that we can move toward Kosovo independence and wash our hands of the ethnically pure, narcoterrorist mafia-state we’ve helped create.

Upon seeing the press release of a blog post, the National Guard soldier whose letters I published explained that “the person who wrote that response [to your article] barely goes outside the wire [of Camp Bondsteel]…I'd like to know how many times she's pulled an 8 to 16 hour patrol, a 36 hour LRP/LRS (long-range patrol or long range surveillance).”

Someone posted two articles on Fellenzer’s blog in response to her press release, along with my extensively documented American Thinker article. One would expect that the mountain of evidence contained in that body of work might have inspired Ms. Fellenzer to give some measured consideration to the possibility that the truth is at least somewhere in between her and my assessments. Instead, I soon learned that the identity of my troop (whose published letter was one of the three articles that had been posted), had been found out and he was in “some deep s--t”, as he wrote me in our final communication.

He was promptly labeled a “stressed” soldier, diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and his perceptions were deemed to be clouded by past abuse and a recent death in the family (both of which he had shared with me and are irrelevant to the realities he observed on the ground). Fellenzer’s update was as follows:

The Battalion Commander of the Soldier in question had a conversation with the troop upon seeing this letter. According to the conversation account, the Soldier is currently in combat stress counseling--not because of anything he has encountered here, but because of problems back home. "I believe he's a good troop," writes the Battalion Commander, "but was manipulated by Gorin while he is under tremendous amount of stress due to personal tragedy at home"...

And third, he's quite obviously angry and embittered. According to the Soldier's conversation with his Battalion Commander, his grandfather, who raised him, has recently passed, his father is in jail, and he grew up in a pretty "screwed up environment."The Soldier has held these feelings of anger and frustration inside, and had not shared them with anyone who could help, choosing instead to confide in a stranger on the other end of the internet--a stranger with a strong political agenda and lack of caring for the Soldiers who defend her right to spew propaganda at their expense. "At the end of our conversation," reports the Battalion Commander, "I encouraged him to see a counselor and share his feelings with his chain-of-command and not hold it to himself. He agrees, and is under counseling at this time."

So the whistleblower is crazy, and the journalist is predatory. Sound familiar?

According to Fellenzer’s update, our soldier was full of “admissions”:

The Soldier also admitted he knew of no U.S. Soldiers killed in Kosovo on our rotation. He further conceded that he knew of no Serbs who were hurt in our area of operations, nor any that have been denied freedom of movement....

I don’t know of anyone making the claim that U.S. soldiers have been killed in Kosovo, much less on Fellenzer’s rotation; I certainly didn’t. I wrote that KFOR soldiers were shot at by Albanian fighters (specifically, UK soldiers were). No Serbs were hurt in Fellenzer’s area of operations? And none are denied freedom of movement there? Either Ms.Fellenzer’s area of operations is an oasis-like exception to the Kosovo rule (and with Bondsteel there, this is a distinct possibility), or she is yet again talking about just her rotation. Or she doesn’t have a clue.

Regardless, I don’t write articles about Fellenzer’s area of operations. I write articles about Kosovo. And so, occasionally, does retired New York cop Bob Leifels, who served with the International Police Task Force in Bosnia and who paid a visit to Kosovo last August, where, in his words:

the state of affairs stood out as when I worked for the UN, [and] the right of FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT was enforced and guaranteed to all (except Serbs).

In Bosnia we had a rather large operation with SFOR (NATO Stabilization Force) etc escorting buses from Muslim Federation to the RS [Serb Republic] in order for them to visit their old homes and such. Several Serbs approached me and asked if I could organize such an excursion for them into the Federation. The official response from UNHCR was “we don’ t do that.” Nice.

It gets even nicer; from Fellenzer: “[I]n most of the province, Kosovo Serbians are free to leave their enclaves, drive to their destinations, take vacations and walks,” wrote Fellenzer, who cited an Orthodox military chaplain as “concurring” that in her area of operations, there are “no concentration camp-like conditions”. She added, “He does see some areas of Kosovo where Serbian Orthodox priests and nuns could not travel alone, and in those cases, KFOR troops do provide escort and protection.”

In May I met Father Jovan Culibrk, a monk from Kosovo who described how he has to call the KFOR base every time he wants to go from one parish to another, and Italian NATO troops arrive in two armored vehicles to escort him. “If I didn’t have them,” he said, “ I’d last as long as a rabbi in Gaza.” (Culibrk’s fellow monk Father Hariton was beheaded in June, 1999, the month of our “victory,” and Father Puljic was abducted that July and is presumed dead.)

Not that we need Father Jovan’s confirmation. For, unlike Fellenzer’s rosy days inside Camp Bondsteel—whose confines she didn’t leave even to “debunk” me--anyone who forces himself to watch the DVD Days Made of Fear will see what Fellenzer casually refers to as “some areas of Kosovo where…KFOR troops do provide escort and protection”: The KFOR guard escorting one nun is poised to shoot, looking around 360 degrees for snipers whose presence is assumed. She moves in short sprints, and his body has hers covered at every step.

At the same time, monks in the documentary show drawings done for them by the Albanian children whom their monasteries sheltered during the 1999 assault by NATO, and we see the Christian Orthodox Albanian man who visits the Kosovo churches from Albania to be with his “Serbian brothers” during high holidays.

Such are the exceptional, heartwarming relationships in the province, which will be of no political consequence as the last of the Serbs are cleansed during the impending, internationally sanctioned final solution for the Serb-Orthodox heartland. As Father Sava Janjic, whose Decani Monastery and two nearby churches repeatedly came under mortar attack in 2002--said:

In this monastery we sheltered 200 Albanians during the [NATO] bombing period and organised humanitarian aid, which is something which even Albanians now recognise, though they are not ready to do anything for us now, when they are in a position to help.

But Fellenzer’s denial knows no bounds:

Members of the Joint Implementation Commission in Kosovo…[travel] throughout the Multi National Task Force (East)’s area of operations, and they…have been guests at the homes of both Serbian and Albanian citizens of Kosovo. Not one member of the JIC team has ever seen Serbian enclaves surrounded by barbed-wire, NATO-guarded perimeters.

Tell that to Sherrie Gossett, managing editor of The New Individualist--though again, we don’t know if her February article applies to Fellenzer’s area of operations, since nothing else seems to:

In many areas, only those incapable of fleeing--the elderly, the poor, or the handicapped--remain, living in ghettoes circled by barbed wire and manned by NATO KFOR checkpoints. Many eke out an existence on the edge of survival, like those who now live in shipping containers donated by Russia. Moderate Albanians have been targeted as well, including those who had been content with Serbia’s rule or who enjoy socializing with Serbs. Political rivals have been assassinated and, in at least one case, dismembered. Many Serbs cannot move about without armed escorts.

But Fellenzer wants Americans to believe that:

It is also patently false that due to NATO’s (and the National Guard’s) avoidance of incendiary situations “Serbian nuns continue to be killed and how Serbian property continues to be seized by Albanian squatters, how churches and monasteries continue to be destroyed, as Saudi-financed mosques take their place.

Again, from Gossett:

Today, the property rights of minorities have disappeared as ethnic Albanians help themselves to what’s left of the former owners’ cars, homes, furnishings, and businesses. According to UNMIK’s Housing and Property Department, over 700,000 housing units in Kosovo have been illegally occupied, along with an unknown number of businesses.

Like two other soldiers who wrote me in response to the Legion article, Fellenzer also objected to my saying that KFOR troops are directed to flee when fired upon rather than return fire, which would call attention to the region as unstable. There’s an important difference between her objections and those of the two other Kosovo soldiers, however. For those two soldiers, it was the only objection to my depiction of Kosovo. The first wrote:

In Julia Gorin's article…there is one glaring mistake. We do not run when fired upon. EVER. In fact, we haven't been fired upon at all. But if it does happen, the last thing we would do is not return fire. Just wanted to clear that up.

The second wrote:

I am a soldier that is currently serving in Kosovo as one of the 1500 guardsmen that you mention about in your article "The 'Successful War' We Lost In Kosovo". I enjoyed reading your article. There is just one error that I would like to correct in your article. I have been serving in the military now for over 15 years. Never in all of my extensive training did any of my instructors teach me how to flee from anything. We are spending more time policing our municipalities than we should be, due to the local law enforcement sitting on their hands and turning a blind eye. I am a firm believer that at some point you need to stop looking for someone to do the work for you and decide to do it yourself.

I responded to both soldiers--as I do now to Fellenzer--with the following:

So far, and thankfully, American KFOR soldiers have not been fired upon. But UK soldiers in Kosovo indeed have been--as early as 2001. These are just some links which, in addition to other types of incidents, demonstrate that NATO and Albanians have exchanged gunfire. Additionally, in early 2001, before America decided to stake her future on a Greater Albania rather than engage armed Albanians, we had headlines like this: U.S. troops in Kosovo border clash:

U.S. troops have shot and wounded two rebel fighters in Kosovo, near the increasingly tense border with Macedonia…Nato troops could be sucked into combating the ethnic Albanian insurgency in Macedonia…Fighters from the rebel National Army have told the BBC that if any of those arrested were to be extradited to Macedonia, the organization would consider American K-For troops to be legitimate targets.

Kosovo Attacks Stir U.S. Concern (The Washington Post, March 2000):

A senior Pentagon official warned yesterday that U.S. troops in Kosovo this spring may have to fight their former allies, ethnic Albanian guerrillas who are rearming themselves and threatening cross-border attacks against Serbia.

"This has got to cease and desist, and if not, ultimately it is going to lead to confrontation between the Albanians and KFOR," said the official…

But today if an Albanian dies from a rubber bullet at a protest gone bad, the UN police chief in Kosovo gets fired. As this article hints, the goal is to have zero flare-ups--to avoid firefights at all cost:

Regrouping of Armed Groups Intensified near Drenica, Pec and Djakovica--International representatives have observed intensification of regrouping of armed groups in black uniforms with the insignia of the Kosovo Liberation Army in the past few days in the areas of Drenica, Pec and Djakovica, writes Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti…

Novosti writes that UNMIK and KFOR forces have received strict orders “not to get involved in conflicts or disagreements with the armed groups and, when they observe them, to abandon their mission and return to their base”.

Fellenzer herself confirms the existence of such policies: “In 2004, during the riots that took place in Kosovo, some NATO troops were instructed not to return fire if fired upon. This, however, is not the case today, as Ms. Gorin claims.” Here she has said no less than what I have, but somehow, coming from me it’s a lie, and I’m impugning American troops.

If Fellenzer weren’t suggesting an altogether different reality from the reality in Kosovo, I might admit one error: a mildly clearer wording of hyperbole. It would have been better to word “hardly an exaggeration” as “not the biggest exaggeration” in reference to saying that a Serb a day is killed--though this apt hyperbole gets no objection from anyone who has been in Kosovo or followed its evolution for more than the length of Ms. Fellenzer’s rotation. Or I could have written “attacked” instead of “killed.” The facts are closer to this hyperbole than Fellenzer's. Especially since “over 200,000 Serbs have fled Kosovo since it was put under UN control and some 3,000 have been killed or listed as missing, according to the International Red Cross. It believes about 1,500 have been murdered.”

THROW MOMMA SUPERIOR FROM THE TRAIN

Meanwhile, Fellenzer’s objection to my saying that “nuns continue to be killed” in Kosovo is based on the fact that the only recent case of a nun-killing happened on a train while it was in Serbia proper, and that the three Albanian men from the nun’s compartment are merely suspected, as no one has been apprehended for the crime.

Indeed, the killed nun--unlike the raped nuns--wasn’t in Kosovo when she was killed. No, she was in Presevo Valley, the next target of Albanian usurpation, where the least of the recent excitement was Kosovo Albanians shooting at a former Serb mayor, and attacking a police checkpoint at a base where some KFOR troops stay. Further, the “inaccuracy” is based on a technicality, given that the KLA calls Presevo Valley "Kosova Lindore" ("East Kosova") and it is considered part of "Ethnic Albania". So in the minds of Albanians, the nun was killed in Kosovo. Further, if it’s unfair to assume Albanian culpability in a case where a nun wasn’t even mugged but simply murdered, then perhaps Ms. Fellenzer could point me toward another ethnic group in the region that has a history of killing monks and attacking/raping nuns.

As for the fact that “no one has been apprehended for the crime” -- now Ms. Fellenzer is starting to get the picture and might understand why one of the articles I’ve been working on is entitled, “Shoot a Serb; it’s Legal.”

In trying to debunk the nun-killing, Fellenzer gets the details of the crime from a website run by a woman named Svetlana Novko. Here is what Novko emailed me in response to Fellenzer’s blog post:

…[T]he fact is that [Fellenzer] and a few of her buddies are not the only sources "on the ground" that the world has to rely on. And thank God. For Ms. Fellenzer is either irreparably blinded by her good wishes, or she rarely leaves the safety of Camp Bondsteel to see what's actually going on around her.

In addition to international diplomats, including the UN Security Council ambassadors who recently visited the Serbian province and reported that the UNMIK chief's rose-colored Kosovo reports barely relate to the desperate situations on the ground (quite in line with Ms. Fellenzer's ode to the "multiethnic" paradise that Kosovo became under her Veteran Soldier's gaze), the Swedish contingent serving under KFOR reports in detail about the confusion that ensued when a bloodthirsty Albanian mob surged throughout Kosovo province in March 2004, when “in the presence of 17,000 NATO troops and 4,000 UN police Albanian hooligans fell upon their minorities. 900 people were wounded, 19 died, some thirty churches [35 to be exact] were destroyed, 700 houses burnt down, 4,500 put to flight... When NATO and independent institutes analyzed the debacle on the 17th of March it became clear that the most responsible action an officer could undertake was to break the rules. But that only Swedes and Italians did so.

“All over Kosovo military officers discovered that they were not heading an army but something more resembling of a sanatorium on picnic. Each group of patients had its own pack of guidelines. Americans were not allowed to fight against civilians. Slovaks were not allowed to use truncheons. Germans were forbidden to cross the street, because that was the limit of their section. And so on...
…
“When two hundred Albanian extremists, armed with Molotov cocktails reached the 16th century monastery they sent out a negotiator with a white flag. He informed the German KFOR soldiers that not a hair would be touched on their helmets if only they moved aside and let them burn in peace. If they remained in place they would face death. So, the Germans rolled away their armoured vehicles and then watched the monastery burning from afar.”

I remember the way we all felt when Father Sava (Janjic) of Decani Monastery was sending us panic-stricken emails saying: Please write to your senators, congressmen, to everyone you know with influence to tell American troops to GET OUT OF CAMP BONDSTEEL AND END THE CARNAGE, or there will be no Serbs left…God only knows what their orders are in case the same thing happens again.

Regarding all that "law and order" being kept by Soldier Nicki and Bondsteel intelligence analyst Sgt. Tara Vayda, who claims that the worst ethnically motivated violence “during our stay in Kosovo has been Kosovo-Albanian teens throwing rocks at Kosovo-Serbian-associated busses or a Serbian elderly couple,” writer Chris Deliso explained from Kosovo in November 2006:

[A]s one disenchanted UNMIK official put it, “These high UN staffers don't want to endanger their next international posting by taking on the criminals and terrorists, and above all they can't admit that the mission has been a huge failure and created a new base for Islamic terrorists. The outside world is not told of what they are bringing on here.”
…
[I]f you ask any top official in or involved with Kosovo to speak on the record about security issues, the answers are inevitably the same. They can be boiled down to the following: despite some isolated incidents, the security situation in Kosovo is stable, and it is heading toward a happy future as a thriving, multi-ethnic country.

This is precisely the tone of Fellenzer’s blog post. As for Fellenzer’s claim that no churches or monasteries have been attacked since 2004, Deliso wrote:

On Oct. 7 [2006] in Pristina, "children found a hand grenade in the premises of an Orthodox church." Luckily authorities were able to dispose of it safely. In three separate attacks on churches on Oct. 30 in Stimlje, Kacanik, and Djakovica, "unknown persons" tried to set one church on fire, broke into another, and stole the protective fence from the third.

Such is the “vandalism” that Fellenzer dismisses with the following sentence: “The last incident of vandalism of a church in our area [again--her area] involved a broken window from a projectile being thrown four months ago.”

The following incident may or may not be the “vandalism” she’s referring to, though in this case the damage was a bit more than a broken window--Rocket propelled anti-tank grenade fired at monastery:

Foreign diplomats condemned a rocket attack against one of the most revered Serb Orthodox monasteries in Kosovo, while NATO peacekeepers increased security around the World Heritage site.

Peacekeepers and police found a grenade launcher on the hillside overlooking the Decane monastery, and a rocket engine was discovered lodged in the outer wall of the building…

The anti-tank weapon damaged a part of the roof of the wall around the monastery in western Kosovo, NATO said…The Decane monastery compound has been attacked in the past, but it was spared the worst outbreak of violence in the aftermath of the 1998-99 war when ethnic Albanian mobs targeted the Serb minority and damaged or destroyed some 30 churches.

Hints that there will be more non-ethnically-motivated “vandalism”: Serbian Church Condemns Calls for Destruction of Churches . Back to Deliso:

The question of whether Albanian militants, whose acronym and political demands were prolifically sprayed around Kosovo in October, could mount a serious threat to stability was revealed on Oct. 1 when police discovered, in the central Kosovo mountains of Malisevo, "68 anti-tank and 97 anti-personnel mines, as well as 20 hand grenades and 1,500 rounds of small arms ammunition…400 kg of explosives were found in the same area." This is hardly the only contraband arms depot in Kosovo. According to one of my police sources, whole warehouses of rockets can be found in southwestern Kosovo, for example…

What the outside world does not realize is that the rule of these favored UN bureaucrats is creating a Kosovo in which not even they, let alone the rest of us, will be allowed free passage in a future of corrupt police, xenophobic nationalist villages, and Islamist-dominated "no-go areas."

Explains Novko:

No one is attacking or blaming The Soldiers (especially not the real ones), but the politicians behind the veritable CONSPIRACY of silence and cover-up who have created the mess and are now doing their best to shove it under the rug and make it permanently forgotten by severing Kosovo from Serbia and letting it float further down the Stix.

“No one can disarm Albanians. That’s just NATO propaganda.” — Florin Krasniqi, arms smuggler for the KLA, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, 2005

Fellenzer also believes the KLA is dead. She would have you believe the next source she quotes:

“[The] KLA is not alive and well. It no longer exists as a military organization,” says Multi-National Task Force (East) Chief of Staff, Col. Damon Igou. “However, there are legitimate government institutions that employ some of the former members of the KLA. The KPS (Kosovo Police Service), and an organization similar to our National Guard, the KPC (Kosovo Protection Corps). These organizations are multi-ethnic, professional and legitimate and employ many former members of the KLA that meet their rigorous standards.”

Tell that to Gossett:

Eventually, KLA members were absorbed into the “Kosovo Protection Corps” (KPC), put on the UN payroll, and tasked with providing emergency response and rebuilding. “We believe the Kosovo Protection Corps will make a useful contribution to the restoration of peace and security for all the communities of Kosovo and its progress toward democracy,” declared Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, all brightly.

However, the UN later reported that KPC members had acted as de facto police officers, torturing or killing local citizens, illegally detaining others, extorting “liberation taxes” from businesses, and threatening UN police who attempted to intervene.

Meanwhile, other KLA “veterans” are threatening daily to take up arms and “act as soldiers” if there are further delays on independence:

KLA war veterans running out of patience, urge prompt Kosovo status solution

(Text of report by Radio-Television Kosovo TV on 20 June)

[Announcer] The Kosova Liberation Army War Veterans held a meeting in Decan [Decani] and announced there would be a general mobilization if Kosova's status continues to be postponed…

[Reporter] The war veterans from all Albanian ethnic territories warned that the procrastination of Kosova's status definition may have serious consequences for the country and may lead to a new war in Kosova. They called for a prompt status definition, otherwise--as they said--their patience is running out. This was said at the meeting of war veterans from Dukagjini, Albania, Preshevo Valley, Macedonia and Montenegro that was held in Decan…

[Reporter] According to the veterans, this ultimatum is addressed to all those who do not support independence of Kosova and intend to separate the Albanian territories…

[Mushkolaj] In Kosova, we will oppose the poor UNMIK [United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosova] policies which, over the last eight years, have led to the present situation.

And their brothers in Macedonia, where three of the Ft. Dix plotters originated, are on standby:

Macedonian Albanian veterans prepared to fight for Kosovo (Text of report by Macedonian newspaper Dnevnik on 10 July)

I am prepared to lead 10,000 former ONA (National Liberation Army, NLA) members from Macedonia to demonstrate solidarity by joining their brothers of the UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army) and, if necessary, using arms to gain Kosovo's independence, Fazli Veliu has told Dnevnik. He is the chairman of the ONA Veterans' Association and a DUI (Democratic Union for Integration - BDI in Albanian) deputy in the Macedonian Assembly.

Veliu's message follows the UCK veterans' demand that the negotiating team should not accept any postponement of the Kosovo status resolution, or else they would act as UCK soldiers…

According to him, he could organize some 10,000 former ONA members, which is as many as those who fought in Macedonia in 2001.

If the KLA “no longer exists as a military organization," Fellenzer needs to inform the KLA about its non-existence. As Novko writes,

Officially, the KLA/UCK was ‘disbanded’, but in reality it is ruling the province, starting from its provisional "prime minister", KLA-born war criminal Agim Ceku, and other KLA terrorists-turned-politicians like Ramush Haradinaj, the previous provisional “prime minister” who is currently on trial for war crimes. Also, there is the KLA’s Hashim Thaci, now an "MP.”

As an MP, Thaci probably wouldn’t threaten his American friends, but he did give them this warning last month: "Enough is enough. The time was yesterday. Today is already too late. Tomorrow is dangerous." Still, Fellenzer insists that I’m making all this up because of my “predatory” pundit’s “obvious political agenda.”

THE GORIN AGENDA

Ah yes, my agenda. My nefarious agenda that we should be fighting the terrorists instead of helping them. That we shouldn’t be staking our future on a Greater Albania, whose “nominal” Muslim loyalties face toward Mecca, as Jesse Petrilla--founder of the United American Committee--wrote in his recent article, “My Trip to Bosnia and Kosovo.” Is it a devious agenda to convince Americans to discontinue helping Muslims cleanse Christians from Kosovo, and to quit sacrificing a small Christian community in the hopes of winning jihadist good will?

My “agenda” has gotten me banned from major newspapers, and has my more famous colleagues telling me, “Cut this out. You’re not doing yourself any favors.” Yes, it’s all about me. Which is why, according to Fellenzer, I endangered American troops:

[Gorin] quite obviously gave no thought to the possible consequences of publishing sensitive information...In her zeal to impugn our mission in Kosovo, Gorin used an angry, stressed, frustrated Soldier's words to prop her agenda…Gorin took the words of a frustrated, angry Soldier and used them to support her political stance....

Before printing the soldier’s email, I sent him the following questions:

Let me ask you: what you told me in the previous letter about preparedness, would that be detrimental to print--like, would it be advertising to the KLA that you guys are not in fighting mode--or isn’t that stuff that they know anyway?

His response:

Please, please mention the armor issue. When someone says they will start shooting, I won't want to wait until the shooting starts to be prepared.

This soldier believed publishing this information would be better for the troops, not worse. Furthermore, if the letters were more detrimental to the soldiers than beneficial, I would have been promptly besieged with emails from patriots, veterans and other military-savvy folks upon the first letter’s publication weeks ago, and again upon the second letter’s publication.

As for our soldier, today he is keeping his mouth shut, and the rest who were going to come forward will be doing the same. In her update, Fellenzer reported more about the commander’s conversation with the troop, in which our soldier makes further “admissions”:

Further, he writes, "During my discussion with him, I told him that since he feels so threaten[ed] and unsafe in Kosovo that I am going to reassign him to a safer job inside the wire for his own safety concern."

The Soldier's reply was a resounding, NO! "Please do not do that sir," he replied, "I do want to go out and patrol with my squad, I know this sounds contradicting [sic.] from my conversation with Ms Gorin," he further admitted.

This "contradicts" nothing; it confirms his own bravery. The first thing I learned about this soldier is that he absolutely must feel useful at all times and thrives on being in the thick of the action and making a difference. And he wants to know what’s going on. If he wanted to be shielded from reality, he’d be inside Bondsteel like Ms. Fellenzer. That’s why, if you ask Ms. Fellenzer, she’ll tell you:

While there's evidence that there were a lot of Serbs killed pre-2005, this is untrue today… [W]e have kept the situation stable and secure in Kosovo on our watch. To claim otherwise…to twist the facts, publish outright lies and accuse our brave troops of turning their backs on genocide that is allegedly going on right under our noses is unforgivable and unacceptable, as well as outrageous and disrespectful to those who serve.

Following are some truly twisted facts, which according to Fellenzer aren’t happening:

Grenade Explodes in Serb Classroom in Kosovo (November, 2006)

Go to Page 2

First appeared at Front Page Magazine

copyright 2007 Julia Gorin

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