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The Freezer Truck Hoax
How NATO framed the Serbs

Historical and Investigative Research - 2 Dec 2005;
by Francisco Gil-White

http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer4.htm

1  |  2  |  3  |  4  5  |  6  |  7  |  8  9
 

ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ
4   Every little detail in this allegation
  is an absurdity

__________________________________________________________

In this section I discuss the narrative of the freezer-truck story. The point of this is not to show that the allegations had to be false. I already showed that in Parts 2 and 3 of this series (and will show it again). The point of this exercise is to demonstrate how little respect the Western mass media has for its readers.

On our way here, in Parts 2 and 3 we saw that, without blushing, and without context or documentation, and even though they had to know the allegation was false, the mainstream Western press told us that, according to what they called ‘witnesses’ (in fact, people who had been shown to make other fraudulent accusations against the Serbs), “hundreds and maybe thousands” of ethnic Albanians were murdered and then hauled out of Kosovo in freezer trucks.

And how? As maintained by The New York Times:

“At least 10, but maybe dozens, of truckloads of bodies were shipped from Kosovo to Serbia proper and dumped underwater or in mass graves. ‘This whole operation was a crazy thing to do, a crime and for us incomprehensible,’ Captain Karleusa said. ‘The goal was to hide something.’”[1]

It does sound crazy and incomprehensible. What could be the reason to attempt such an operation? Karleusa explains it: “The goal was to hide something.”

For once I will concede the point: the only conceivable motive for a cover-up is, certainly, “to hide something.”

But here is the problem: precisely because the goal of a cover-up is to avoid discovery, what the official story alleges would have been “a crazy thing to do…and for us incomprehensible…”

For starters, consider that with these many bodies, we are talking about a very large-scale operation. Those planning to carry it out must naturally ask themselves: How easy will it be? Given that the media alleges this supposed operation was carried out “As the Nato bombs rained down” (see below), it presents some rather daunting difficulties.

Imagine yourself as one of the drivers. You are going to find parts of roads bombed out and more than one bridge destroyed. What are the chances that you can go cross-country through forests, deep canyons, and rivers -- even with an empty trailer? But you don't have an empty trailer -- one of them is alleged to have contained 86 bodies![2] But even should you be such a miracle driver, you are a ripe ambush target for the KLA.

And yet these are the good problems, because if you get to face them, then you were lucky to escape NATO’s bombs. And this is lucky indeed because NATO was dropping bombs mostly on civilian targets, and when it comes to vehicles NATO was hitting everything. For example, NATO even hit open tractors full of Albanian refugees which it claimed could not be distinguished from military vehicles, for which it had to apologize publicly.[3] If open tractors full of Albanian refugees (the same refugees that NATO was supposedly defending) became targets, how would a large trailer fare?

And what happens if you are hit? At best, the masterminds of this cover-up operation will have a new mess to clean up; at worst they will have handed a priceless propaganda victory to the enemy.

Finally, consider that you are just one of several dozen, or many dozen, drivers, all of whom must succeed in emerging unscathed from Kosovo if this alleged genocide is to escape discovery.

As pointed out before, we could be talking here about the script to Woody Allen's version of NATO's war on Yugoslavia, but not the actual war. This alleged operation seems designed to guarantee discovery -- and yet avoiding discovery is supposed to be the very point of attempting it.

Crazy and incomprehensible, yes. Even humorous, if only it could be confined to a movie script. The Serbs were not only called murderers, they were called imbeciles: the accusations against them require that they be unable to think far enough to tie their shoes. And in this regard, as you will see, the freezer-truck story is consistent throughout.

For example, recall what The Independent claimed:

“. . .As the Nato bombs rained down, body-snatchers roamed Kosovo. Mete Krasniqi saw them in action, after Serb forces machine-gunned the inhabitants of his village, including his son. The villagers buried them. A month later, hiding in the woods, they saw men in orange overalls dig up the bodies and load them into two trucks.”[4]

These genocidal masterminds, we are told, left the bodies for surviving Albanian villagers to bury even though they were supposedly very worried about discovery. And while they later unearthed the bodies to take them away in freezer trucks they were wearing -- get this -- orange overalls. I suppose this is because orange overalls are good camouflage?

And other times, we are also told, these murderers supposedly took the trouble to bury the bodies in, of all things, individual graves (and in cemeteries!), only then to unearth them, put them in trucks, and haul them away.[5] This answers to the obvious principle: why make your genocide cheap when you can make it expensive?

But that was not expensive enough. The Serbs honored the principle zealously, claims the media, by driving deep into Serbia and then dumping entire trucks (with their massacred cargo) into rivers and lakes. And not just any trucks: they were dumping Mercedes Benz.[6]

And they dumped them in rivers and lakes because...why? Weren’t they trying to prevent discovery? Only a child would be unfamiliar with the fact that dead bodies float. And yet The New York Times alleges without blushing that floating bodies is what led to the discovery of one of the trucks.[7] 

What are you being asked to believe? That the truck drivers who made it out of Kosovo unscathed, though they were driving heavy and sluggish trailers cross-country or on bombed-out roads, under a hail of bombs, and in constant danger from the KLA, once out, concluded that they were…lucky? Is this why they dumped whole trucks in rivers and lakes? Because they were having fun testing their silly luck to the limit?

Please don’t laugh. The joke is on you. And it gets worse.

The Western media told us that at least some trucks had been dumped in the Danube -- a navigable river and a very important trade artery.[8] In other words, the trucks were dumped where they would obviously be hit sooner or later. Because this was a cover up, you see.

And Newsweek went so far as to claim that at least one of these trucks floated away -- in other words, not the bodies, but the entire truck:

“Fortunately for investigators, the Serbs were as sloppy in their cleanup as they were in their killing…nobody had thought to shoot holes in the truck or its tires, and it floated away.”[9]

Why did people accept this incoherent nonsense?

Because the mainstream Western media appears superficially to be free and independent, and many people for this reason assume that's what it is. In a free and competitive press environment, one news service will be trying to expose inaccuracies in others. If something is a spectacular lie, therefore, we expect that somebody will point it out. So when every news service agrees, we tend to reason the claims must be true. So it is good to have a smoking gun, the better to overcome such biases.

Up next, in the following sections, the smoking gun.

ğğ Continue to part 5:
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer5.htm
__________________________________________________________

Footnotes and Further Reading
__________________________________________________________

[1] The New York Times, July 31, 2001, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk, 1347 words, Serbia Finds Where Bodies Are Buried, and Investigates, By CARLOTTA GALL, BELGRADE, Serbia, July 25

[2] “The Yugoslav Army (VJ) on Monday rejected allegations that its leadership was involved in hiding war crimes in Kosovo, including the case of a refrigerator truck found in Serbia with the corpses of 86 ethnic Albanians.”

SOURCE: Deutsche Presse-Agentur,  June 4, 2001, Monday,  International News,  437 words,  Yugoslav Army denies war crimes charges,  Belgrade

[3] "Real Civilian Casualties vs. The Freezer Truck Hoax"; Historical and Investigative Research; 23 September 2002; by Francisco J. Gil-White and Jared Israel.
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer_app.htm

 

[4] The Independent (London),  June 29, 2001, Friday,  NEWS; Pg. 3,  615 words,  MILOSEVIC FACES JUDGEMENT: THE MISSING BODIES OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN THAT CAME BACK TO HAUNT HIM,  Justin Huggler In Skopje

 

[5] Here is an example:

“Shefqet Gashi saw his father shot dead. He saw them preparing the body for burial at the local cemetery. But when he returned at the end of the war and searched for the body, it was not there.”

SOURCE: The Independent (London),  June 1, 2001, Friday,  FEATURES; Pg. 1,7,  2279 words,  'I NEVER FOUND THEIR BODIES',  Justin Huggler In Suhareka

 

[6] "Zivojin Djordjevic, a professional diver, says the police had called him to the scene of what initially 'looked like any normal traffic accident.' When he reached the bottom of the riverbed, Djordjevic says he saw a green Mercedes refrigerator truck. A huge stone was fixed to the gas pedal. The body of the driver was missing."

 

SOURCE: Inter Press Service,  May 14, 2001, Monday,  737 words,  RIGHTS-YUGOSLAVIA: SILENCE SHATTERED ON KOSOVO KILLINGS,  By Vesna Peric Zimonjic,  BELGRADE, May 14

 

[7] “An account in the Belgrade newspaper Danas by an army reservist who saw a truck being dumped into a lake said the bodies had floated to the surface and then had been pulled out by the police and buried nearby.”

 

SOURCE: The New York Times, July 31, 2001, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Page 3; Column 1; Foreign Desk, 1347 words, Serbia Finds Where Bodies Are Buried, and Investigates, By CARLOTTA GALL, BELGRADE, Serbia, July 25

[8] The original allegation was reported first in the Associated Press, saying the allegation came from

“a report in a local magazine in the eastern Serbian Negotin region, describing how on the night of April 6, 1999, a refrigerated trailer truck was lifted out of the Danube near Kladovo, at the border with Romania.”

SOURCE: Rights activist says Yugoslav army, police destroyed evidence of Kosovo atrocities, Associated Press Worldstream, April 30, 2001; Monday, International news, 551 words, KATARINA KRATOVAC , BELGRADE, Yugoslavia

[9] Newsweek, July 23, 2001, U.S. Edition, INTERNATIONAL; Pg. 34, 2031 words, Body of Evidence, By Roy Gutman and Rod Nordland; With Christopher Dickey at The Hague and Jeffrey Bartholet in New York.


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