6 ms·

I very strongly suspect that these were not American planes at all, but rather those of certain other NATO countries. Indeed, Zoltan, as quoted, seems to contin

by miked 17y ago

I very strongly suspect that these were not American planes at all, but rather those of certain other NATO countries. Indeed, Zoltan, as quoted, seems to continually conflate the terms "NATO" and "American". There was a lot of grumbling among the USAF back then about certain countries not encrypting their communications. Greece was one of these, although I don't think they participated in the war (they were big fans of Milosevic and welcomed him and his wife with huge gatherings at the Thessaloniki airport). Since Zoltan was not a native speaker of English, I doubt he could distinguish the accents of pilots from differnet countries, particularly as educated people in many NATO countries speak excellent English. What sticks out in my mind most is how happy Zoltan and his buddies are to celebrate defending the mass murders and rapes of Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party. And with a cake in the shape of a plane. I wonder what flavor of frosting they use.

TriinT 17y ago
Your analysis makes a lot of sense. But do NATO air forces other than the USAF have AWACS aircraft? I am not taking sides here, but do note that a soldier does what he is told. As far as I know, Zoltan did not murder any civilians. He was simply defending his country against an act of aggression. Given the atrocities committed by the Serbs, the aggression initiated by NATO may or may not have been justified. I will abstain from moral issues here. Last but not least: do note that Zoltan is of Hungarian (not Serbian) ethnicity, and Hungarians are not Slavs. I doubt he was ideologically aligned with Milosevic.
- miked 17y ago
  But do NATO air forces other than the USAF have AWACS aircraft? Yes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_Early_Warning_and_Control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_Early_Warning_and_Cont... ...do note that a soldier does what he is told. As far as I know, Zoltan did not murder any civilians. US military personnel needn't obey all orders, only lawful orders. Zoltan wasn't just obeying orders, he was working overtime to support human slaughter. He was simply defending his country against an act of aggression. I really don't know what to say to that. If someone breaks into your home and begins killing and raping your family, and you fight back, is the attacker "defending himself against an act of aggression?"
  - plinkplonk 17y ago
    " If someone breaks into your home and begins killing and raping your family, and you fight back, is the attacker "defending himself against an act of aggression?"" Your analogy is confusing. The Serbs didn't break into American homes and rape/kill anyone. So how exactly was the US "fighting back"? From the Serbian viewpoint, the USA could be seen as the party "breaking in" and killing civilians from the air (sure "collateral damage", but when it is your family beneath the rubble, I am sure it is a fine distinction) and the Serbs as the ones "fighting back". " he was working overtime to support human slaughter." A lot of non Americans believe this is precisely what US soldiers did (Vietnam) and do (Iraq / Afghanistan). I am not taking positions on who is "right", but this is why politics should be avoided on HN if possible - arguments on politics and religion can circle endlessly with no useful conclusion.
  - TriinT 17y ago
    Following that line of thought, any grad student whose research is funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) is working overtime to support human slaughter, too. Or is kosher to kill civilians just as long as it's the USAF doing it? Do you want me to go search how many Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. military personnel who were merely following "lawful orders"? What is a "lawful order to kill"? One that is according to the ROE? Justified or not, NATO's attack was an act of aggression, by definition of aggression. No need to play semantics here. Go tell the civilians in Novi Sad (which is ethnically Hungarian) that destroying their city was justified because of what ethnical Serbs were doing in Kosovo. Go read a bit about the rich and convoluted history of the Balkans, because your black & white view of the world is a bit fuzzy.
    - rdtsc 17y ago
      > Or is kosher to kill civilians just as long as it's the USAF doing it? Sadly, that describes the NATO position very well. There are "worthy victims" and "unworthy victims." Victims of our allies are "unworthy": if Isreal, Turkey, or some banana owned by the CIA is killing, then we never hear about it who died, we don't know their names, we don't see interviews on CNN with grieving relatives. If it is our enemies' killing anyone, then the victims become automatically "martirs" and we hear their personal stories, we know their names and watch the grieving families on TV. > No need to play semantics here. Propaganda is all about redefinition of words and skewing of semantics. Clinton administration did a remarcable job with propagnda during the war in Bosnia. All the little pseudo-intellectual lapdogs at the time were writing in their little foreign policy journals how we entered into a new era, where US is a beacon of freedom and hope, and from now on we'll only have wars with pure humanitarian reasons.
akamaka 17y ago
Although the article doesn't give any information about Zoltan's ideology, I imagine him as a black hat hacker type, motivated more by the sheer challenge of it than anything else. Considering how little his actions mattered in the overall outcome, I can't help but think that he and his team simply relished the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to match their wits against the world's most advanced air force.
- skalpelis 17y ago
  Only if by team you mean unit and by relished you mean awash in sheer terror, day and night, of getting killed by a missile they never saw coming.
  - rdtsc 17y ago
    Yet, not one unit was lost. So they can certainly "relish" now, while they eat their F-117 cake.
code_scrapping 17y ago
Really, if I shot down a world-feared plane with a 40 year old equipment, I would be celebrating as well. Don't see any connection to the political regime there. As TriinT said - I don't think anyone else actually had a F117 to bring to the fight. Also, stories about Milosevic's regime are wildly over-shot by the western propaganda. Greetings from Serbia
- rdtsc 17y ago
  > Also, stories about Milosevic's regime are wildly over-shot by the western propaganda. I am American and I did a bit of research on the war with Serbia and have to say that you are correct. We have been fed some very good propaganda. The most interesting point was how CIA was arming Albanians and encouraging them to provoke the Serbs. Also most Americans are un-ware (again very good propanda efforts were made), that Serbian atrocities started after the bombings. Those attrocities are still atrocities and are in no way justified, but their portail in the Western media is terribly skewed. It was very interesting to find out that at the same time as we were supposed to "prevent atrocities" in Serbia we dramatically increased Turkey's arms shiptment quota so they can bomb Kurdish villages. It was a quid-pro-quo kind of deal. Turkey said if you "bomb and use our airspace, then we want to bomb too." And bomb they did, big time. About 3000 Kurdish villages were destroyed.
  - code_scrapping 17y ago
    It's also true that the whole story still isn't over (10 years after the official end of conflicts), but I doubt that American public hears about it anymore. It's not prime-time material anymore. Still, nice to hear that someone is interested in more then flashy headlines. In light of my comment bellow, I will not pursue the subject further, HN is not the place for it.
  - iuguy 17y ago
    The Turkish bombing of Kurdish targets at the same time is more of a complicate issue than you think, spanning 3 countries (Turkey, Iraq, Iran) with all of the regimes and local Kurds playing each other's strengths and weaknesses off against each other. I'm not saying what the Turks (or any other nation involved) did was right or wrong, just thought I'd add some context so people know that it wasn't just a straight Turks vs. Kurds (as a single unified entity) issue.
varjag 17y ago
> What sticks out in my mind most is how happy Zoltan and his buddies are to celebrate defending the mass murders and rapes of Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party. And with a cake in the shape of a plane. Zoltan did not commit any war crimes or ordered to do so. By that twisted logic, were Vietnam war USAF pilots in a pub after successful sortie celebrating My Lai massacre?
- philwelch 17y ago
  What about Luftwaffe pilots celebrating when they shot down a B-17? Not committing war crimes themselves, but protecting a criminal regime.
  - plinkplonk 17y ago
    "Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason." replace treason with "war crimes" and it would be as valid. What constitutes "war crimes" is defined, in practice, by the winners of the war. I wonder if you notice that the winning side in a war never commits "war crimes" and if they do are never punished severely. If the Nazis had won, Roosevelt and Eisenhower would be the "war criminals" (please note the quotes). Stalin is not a "war criminal" in spite of being responsible for the deaths of more people than the Nazis ever killed. The British were the first to use concentration camps to imprison the Boer women and children where they died like flies. How many British commanders w were prosecuted and punished, do you think? Even when Americans lose wars, they are never prosecuted for war crimes. This is because American loss of a war does not (yet) involve the enemy invading the United States mainland and conducting prosecutions there. Btw how many American soldiers were shot for My Lai? From Wikipedia My Lai "was the mass murder conducted by a unit of the U.S. Army on March 16, 1968 of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, all of whom were civilians and a majority of whom were women, children, and elderly people. Many of the victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, and some of the bodies were found mutilated." Certainly sounds like a "war crime" to me. "After a four-month-long trial, in which he claimed that he was following orders from his commanding officer, Captain Medina, William Calley was convicted, on March 29, 1971, of premeditated murder for ordering the shootings. He was initially sentenced to life in prison. Two days later, however, President Nixon made the controversial decision to have Calley released from prison, pending appeal of his sentence. Calley's sentence was later adjusted, so that he would eventually serve four and one-half months in a military prison at Fort Benning." "Most of the enlisted men who were involved in the events at My Lai had already left military service, and were thus legally exempt from prosecution. In the end, of the 26 men initially charged, Calley's was the only conviction." So much for "war crimes" and "criminal regimes". Many non Americans believe the Bush/Cheney administration was a criminal regime waging unjustified "aggressive wars of conquest" (one of the main charges against the Japanese after world war 2, btw) Does that make them criminals? Many Afghans believe that Predator drone attacks that kill civilians are "war crimes". Does that make the American army "criminal"? Imo not really. "International Law" is much flimsier than the term would have us believe. Without a commonly understood idea of what a "crime" is, it is hard to have a law relating to that crime. Are you claiming Americans never commit war crimes? Or that they are punished severely when they do? How is an American soldier fighting for his country in Iraq during Gulf War 2 any less "supporting a criminal regime" than this Serb commander downing planes that bomb his country? Please note that I am not saying only Americans are war criminals or that the Nazis were not. All sides in a war conduct "war crimes" (as seen by the victims). Who wins and what form the victory takes decides who is a "war criminal" (in terms of getting punished) and who is not.
rdtsc 17y ago
> What sticks out in my mind most is how happy Zoltan and his buddies are to celebrate defending the mass murders and rapes of Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party. And with a cake in the shape of a plane. Just like von Braun was "happy" to bomb London with his rockets and killing many more concentration camp workers who were building his rockets. Somehow, Americans didn't mind making him their space age hero. Not to even mentions Japanese "scientists" that were directly involved in horrendous bio-"experiments" on Chinese, but were never brought to trial, and instead went to become heads of big pharma companies in Japan. So if we want to talk about some kind of guilt-by-association, we should first examine our own track record.

by miked 17y ago

TriinT 17y ago

Your analysis makes a lot of sense. But do NATO air forces other than the USAF have AWACS aircraft? I am not taking sides here, but do note that a soldier does what he is told. As far as I know, Zoltan did not murder any civilians. He was simply defending his country against an act of aggression. Given the atrocities committed by the Serbs, the aggression initiated by NATO may or may not have been justified. I will abstain from moral issues here. Last but not least: do note that Zoltan is of Hungarian (not Serbian) ethnicity, and Hungarians are not Slavs. I doubt he was ideologically aligned with Milosevic.

miked 17y ago
But do NATO air forces other than the USAF have AWACS aircraft? Yes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_Early_Warning_and_Control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_Early_Warning_and_Cont... ...do note that a soldier does what he is told. As far as I know, Zoltan did not murder any civilians. US military personnel needn't obey all orders, only lawful orders. Zoltan wasn't just obeying orders, he was working overtime to support human slaughter. He was simply defending his country against an act of aggression. I really don't know what to say to that. If someone breaks into your home and begins killing and raping your family, and you fight back, is the attacker "defending himself against an act of aggression?"
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  " If someone breaks into your home and begins killing and raping your family, and you fight back, is the attacker "defending himself against an act of aggression?"" Your analogy is confusing. The Serbs didn't break into American homes and rape/kill anyone. So how exactly was the US "fighting back"? From the Serbian viewpoint, the USA could be seen as the party "breaking in" and killing civilians from the air (sure "collateral damage", but when it is your family beneath the rubble, I am sure it is a fine distinction) and the Serbs as the ones "fighting back". " he was working overtime to support human slaughter." A lot of non Americans believe this is precisely what US soldiers did (Vietnam) and do (Iraq / Afghanistan). I am not taking positions on who is "right", but this is why politics should be avoided on HN if possible - arguments on politics and religion can circle endlessly with no useful conclusion.
- TriinT 17y ago
  Following that line of thought, any grad student whose research is funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) is working overtime to support human slaughter, too. Or is kosher to kill civilians just as long as it's the USAF doing it? Do you want me to go search how many Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. military personnel who were merely following "lawful orders"? What is a "lawful order to kill"? One that is according to the ROE? Justified or not, NATO's attack was an act of aggression, by definition of aggression. No need to play semantics here. Go tell the civilians in Novi Sad (which is ethnically Hungarian) that destroying their city was justified because of what ethnical Serbs were doing in Kosovo. Go read a bit about the rich and convoluted history of the Balkans, because your black & white view of the world is a bit fuzzy.
  - rdtsc 17y ago
    > Or is kosher to kill civilians just as long as it's the USAF doing it? Sadly, that describes the NATO position very well. There are "worthy victims" and "unworthy victims." Victims of our allies are "unworthy": if Isreal, Turkey, or some banana owned by the CIA is killing, then we never hear about it who died, we don't know their names, we don't see interviews on CNN with grieving relatives. If it is our enemies' killing anyone, then the victims become automatically "martirs" and we hear their personal stories, we know their names and watch the grieving families on TV. > No need to play semantics here. Propaganda is all about redefinition of words and skewing of semantics. Clinton administration did a remarcable job with propagnda during the war in Bosnia. All the little pseudo-intellectual lapdogs at the time were writing in their little foreign policy journals how we entered into a new era, where US is a beacon of freedom and hope, and from now on we'll only have wars with pure humanitarian reasons.

akamaka 17y ago

Although the article doesn't give any information about Zoltan's ideology, I imagine him as a black hat hacker type, motivated more by the sheer challenge of it than anything else. Considering how little his actions mattered in the overall outcome, I can't help but think that he and his team simply relished the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to match their wits against the world's most advanced air force.

skalpelis 17y ago
Only if by team you mean unit and by relished you mean awash in sheer terror, day and night, of getting killed by a missile they never saw coming.
- rdtsc 17y ago
  Yet, not one unit was lost. So they can certainly "relish" now, while they eat their F-117 cake.

code_scrapping 17y ago

Really, if I shot down a world-feared plane with a 40 year old equipment, I would be celebrating as well. Don't see any connection to the political regime there. As TriinT said - I don't think anyone else actually had a F117 to bring to the fight. Also, stories about Milosevic's regime are wildly over-shot by the western propaganda. Greetings from Serbia

rdtsc 17y ago
> Also, stories about Milosevic's regime are wildly over-shot by the western propaganda. I am American and I did a bit of research on the war with Serbia and have to say that you are correct. We have been fed some very good propaganda. The most interesting point was how CIA was arming Albanians and encouraging them to provoke the Serbs. Also most Americans are un-ware (again very good propanda efforts were made), that Serbian atrocities started after the bombings. Those attrocities are still atrocities and are in no way justified, but their portail in the Western media is terribly skewed. It was very interesting to find out that at the same time as we were supposed to "prevent atrocities" in Serbia we dramatically increased Turkey's arms shiptment quota so they can bomb Kurdish villages. It was a quid-pro-quo kind of deal. Turkey said if you "bomb and use our airspace, then we want to bomb too." And bomb they did, big time. About 3000 Kurdish villages were destroyed.
- code_scrapping 17y ago
  It's also true that the whole story still isn't over (10 years after the official end of conflicts), but I doubt that American public hears about it anymore. It's not prime-time material anymore. Still, nice to hear that someone is interested in more then flashy headlines. In light of my comment bellow, I will not pursue the subject further, HN is not the place for it.
- iuguy 17y ago
  The Turkish bombing of Kurdish targets at the same time is more of a complicate issue than you think, spanning 3 countries (Turkey, Iraq, Iran) with all of the regimes and local Kurds playing each other's strengths and weaknesses off against each other. I'm not saying what the Turks (or any other nation involved) did was right or wrong, just thought I'd add some context so people know that it wasn't just a straight Turks vs. Kurds (as a single unified entity) issue.

varjag 17y ago

> What sticks out in my mind most is how happy Zoltan and his buddies are to celebrate defending the mass murders and rapes of Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party. And with a cake in the shape of a plane. Zoltan did not commit any war crimes or ordered to do so. By that twisted logic, were Vietnam war USAF pilots in a pub after successful sortie celebrating My Lai massacre?

philwelch 17y ago
What about Luftwaffe pilots celebrating when they shot down a B-17? Not committing war crimes themselves, but protecting a criminal regime.
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  "Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason." replace treason with "war crimes" and it would be as valid. What constitutes "war crimes" is defined, in practice, by the winners of the war. I wonder if you notice that the winning side in a war never commits "war crimes" and if they do are never punished severely. If the Nazis had won, Roosevelt and Eisenhower would be the "war criminals" (please note the quotes). Stalin is not a "war criminal" in spite of being responsible for the deaths of more people than the Nazis ever killed. The British were the first to use concentration camps to imprison the Boer women and children where they died like flies. How many British commanders w were prosecuted and punished, do you think? Even when Americans lose wars, they are never prosecuted for war crimes. This is because American loss of a war does not (yet) involve the enemy invading the United States mainland and conducting prosecutions there. Btw how many American soldiers were shot for My Lai? From Wikipedia My Lai "was the mass murder conducted by a unit of the U.S. Army on March 16, 1968 of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens in South Vietnam, all of whom were civilians and a majority of whom were women, children, and elderly people. Many of the victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, and some of the bodies were found mutilated." Certainly sounds like a "war crime" to me. "After a four-month-long trial, in which he claimed that he was following orders from his commanding officer, Captain Medina, William Calley was convicted, on March 29, 1971, of premeditated murder for ordering the shootings. He was initially sentenced to life in prison. Two days later, however, President Nixon made the controversial decision to have Calley released from prison, pending appeal of his sentence. Calley's sentence was later adjusted, so that he would eventually serve four and one-half months in a military prison at Fort Benning." "Most of the enlisted men who were involved in the events at My Lai had already left military service, and were thus legally exempt from prosecution. In the end, of the 26 men initially charged, Calley's was the only conviction." So much for "war crimes" and "criminal regimes". Many non Americans believe the Bush/Cheney administration was a criminal regime waging unjustified "aggressive wars of conquest" (one of the main charges against the Japanese after world war 2, btw) Does that make them criminals? Many Afghans believe that Predator drone attacks that kill civilians are "war crimes". Does that make the American army "criminal"? Imo not really. "International Law" is much flimsier than the term would have us believe. Without a commonly understood idea of what a "crime" is, it is hard to have a law relating to that crime. Are you claiming Americans never commit war crimes? Or that they are punished severely when they do? How is an American soldier fighting for his country in Iraq during Gulf War 2 any less "supporting a criminal regime" than this Serb commander downing planes that bomb his country? Please note that I am not saying only Americans are war criminals or that the Nazis were not. All sides in a war conduct "war crimes" (as seen by the victims). Who wins and what form the victory takes decides who is a "war criminal" (in terms of getting punished) and who is not.

rdtsc 17y ago

> What sticks out in my mind most is how happy Zoltan and his buddies are to celebrate defending the mass murders and rapes of Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party. And with a cake in the shape of a plane. Just like von Braun was "happy" to bomb London with his rockets and killing many more concentration camp workers who were building his rockets. Somehow, Americans didn't mind making him their space age hero. Not to even mentions Japanese "scientists" that were directly involved in horrendous bio-"experiments" on Chinese, but were never brought to trial, and instead went to become heads of big pharma companies in Japan. So if we want to talk about some kind of guilt-by-association, we should first examine our own track record.