With such people in mind George Orwell once wrote:
Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage—torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians—which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. … The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
Now let me introduce you to David Farrar, a New Zealand National Party member and a popular blogger among right-wingers in New Zealand.
In the comments section of a recent post stirring up Islamophobia, David responded to one of his readers:
Oh dear every apologist is out today. David Blake says there is no difference between accidential civilian casualties in a war and deliberate targetting of civilians.
What David Blake actually said was this:
Whether civilians are being killed by suicide bombers … or by the latest and greatest military tools … makes no difference to me. It’s still killing innocent people … to further an agenda.
As you can see David Farrar took the liberty of adding “accidental.” You see it’s “accidental” because the killers are on his side. It doesn’t matter what the facts might be, it is an unquestioning presumption. And a presumption that doesn’t fit the facts.
While there are many horrific instances throughout recent history that could be used as an example, such as the bombing of Iraq, Vietnam, Cambodia, or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, here’s a well documented one I came across while reading William Blum’s now infamous book:
The most common argument made in NATO’s defense, and against war-crime charges [with regard to the bombing of Yugoslavia], has been that the death and devastation inflicted upon the civilian sector was “accidental”. This claim, however, must be questioned in light of certain reports. For example, the commander of NATO’s air war, Lt. Gen. Michael Short, declared at one point:
“If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, “Hey, Slobo, what’s this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?”" [1]
General Short, said the New York Times, “hopes that the distress of the Yugoslav public will undermine support for the authorities in Belgrade.” [2]
At another point, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea added: “If President Milosevic really wants all of his population to have water and electricity all he has to do is accept NATO’s five conditions and we will stop this campaign.” [3]
After the April NATO bombing of a Belgrade office building—which housed political parties, TV and radio stations, 100 private companies and more—the Washington Post reported:
“Over the past few days, U.S. officials have been quoted as expressing the hope that members of Serbia’s economic elite will begin to turn against Milosevic once they understand how much they are likely to lose by continuing to resist NATO demands.” [4]
Before Missiles were fired into this building, NATO planners spelled out the risks: “Casualty Estimate 50-100 Government employees. Unintended Civ Casualty Est: 250—Apts in expected blast radius.” [5] The planners were saying that about 250 civilians living in nearby apartment buildings might be killed in the bombing.
What do we have here? We have grown men telling each other: We’ll do A, and we think that B may well be the result. But even if B does in fact result, we’re saying beforehand—as we’ll insist afterward—that it was unintended.
In short, it’s a great big pile of stinking shit to believe that these people, who are trying to rule the world, are in any way interested in the welfare of those who can’t supply them with more wealth or power.
David Farrar, like so many other right-wingers these days, is blinded by his ideology, which itself thrives on a fearful and confused population. In accusing others of being an apologist, he is proving to be precisely that himself.
Note: 51, 52 and 54 of the Geneva Conventions (Protocol 1) are the relevant articles if you’re interested.
Didn’t happen to catch Boston Legal last night did you?
Brilliant speech about the use of torture by the US and how it’s ok as long as its “us” doing it and not “them”.
That is a nice photo by the way
Yeah I’ve heard of that show. Sounds good, but I don’t have TV.
Yeah I thought it was a nice photo too. Of course I’m happy to censor it at request.
Yes, thankfully left-wingers are not caught up in their own ideology. Ideology is a right wing concept. Of course, hypocrisy the left-wingers have all to themselves.
G’day,
First thing. Us lefties have ideologies too, and many do and say stupid things in defence of them. All ideology is bad, not just the right wing stuff.
Secondly, I guess the only difference is one of intent. An 11 month old baby killed by a cruise missile is just as dead as one killed by a car bomb, but the missile was not fired specifically to kill that baby. The car bomb was (likely) detonated with that intention. This may sound like splitting hairs to you, but in a war people are killed, and many times they’re not the ones actively taking part. I agree that innocent death is reprehensible, but in many cases I can’t see the alternative. OK, the US should not be in Iraq, which means a lot of innocent people would still be alive. But there are times when you have to fight, and in doing so you will kill the innocent.
I’m fortunate to have done a recent (small) study of the Kosovo campaign. NATO tried bombing the Serb units commiting atrocities against the Kosovars, but with limited results. As they had already deployed into theatre, the Serb military and police units dispersed into 20-100 man groups, often on foot or in light vehicles. They had sufficient combat power to defeat the lightly armed KLA, and more than enough to terrorise the Albanian civilians into leaving. Short of sending in a projected 200,000+ ground troops (which massively raises casualty rates, on both sides and in civilians) the only option NATO had was to strike strategic targets. Power plants, sewerage works, factories. This is a shitty thing to do, but without it the Serbs would have evicted 1.8 million Albanians into Macedonia and Albania. What would have stopped them? Internal pressure on Milosevic together with diplomatic pressure from the Russians and neighbours resolved that conflict. Tactical bombing of soldiers in Kosovo did not, and could not.
War is terrible, but there are worse things than war, like genocide and slavery. If you make war to prevent those things, then you will kill innocent people. That is why a civilised nation never makes war lightly, and if it does, makes sure it is as short and sharp as possible. But no matter how well you do it, there is still going to be some 11 month old baby dead at the end of it.
Christiaan,
I follow your Orwell link on nationalists and what do I find? I find that you fall squarely into one of the categories of nationalists yourself. Quoting:
“Transferred Nationalism
…
(v) Pacifism. The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. It is not claimed, again, that the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British. Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. After the fall of France, the French pacifists, faced by a real choice which their English colleagues have not had to make, mostly went over to the Nazis, and in England there appears to have been some small overlap of membership between the Peace Pledge Union and the Blackshirts. Pacifist writers have written in praise of Carlyle, one of the intellectual fathers of Fascism. All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty. The mistake was made of pinning this emotion to Hitler, but it could easily be retransfered.”
I’m not a pacifist kid, sorry. I believe absolutely in the right to defend with violence. Nor do I have any admiration for any nation-state. I think they should be abolished.
If you look you’ll also notice that none of my writing criticises violence used in defence of western countries. It criticises violence used in aggression.
As per usual, you dispensed with the substance of the debate. I find that you exhibit some kind of guilt for being a flip flopper.
Tane, Mark, you’re right, I may be wrong to single out right-wingers. There are many left-wingers who are only too willing to fall into the same trap, and there are many right-wingers who don’t. However it’s no surprise that most of those I’ve come across are right-wingers (at least of the follower variety). Their masters are, after all, the ones trying to rule the world.
Tane, with regard to your argument about intent, my point was that there is in fact intent; that “accident” is simply a propaganda term, or even a conscience-soothing device. As my example indicates, the “masters of the universe” are very much happy with killing civilians and collectively punishing populations.
G’day Christiaan,
The killing of the innocent is never a good thing, and is very hard to justify in my opinion. That means of course that I do believe that it can be justified, but only in the most extreme of circumstances. For instance, the Allies killed approximately 70,000 French civilians in the lead up to D-Day, through their bombing campaign to isolate Normandy and deceive the Germans (taken from John Ellis, Brute Force). This is more than the Germans killed during the Blitz against the British. 70,000 is a lot of innocent life to take, but I don’t think any of us would argue that the Allies should not have done it, leading as it did to the liberation of Western Europe. Even the French, never ones to let something go, do not dwell on this; it was simply the (terrible) price of their liberty.
That is why I used the Kosovo example to prove my point that it is acceptable in some circumstances to kill the innocent. The Serbs were killing far more innocent people than NATO, and would have continued to do so directly (murder) and indirectly (starvation, exposure) if left alone. Tactical bombing was ineffective, the Serb counter-measures (decoys, dispersion, camoflague) proving more than a match for even NATO’s much vaunted technology. The only other real option available to NATO was to strike strategic targets and collectively punish the Serb people (who were not entirely innocent; even Milosevic opponents backed the Kosovo campaign). The resulting pressure, with external diplomatic pressure, was what toppled Milosevic. The question that needs to be asked is; is 1 Serb baby worth 5-10 Albanian ones, because that’s the ratio of killing that was going on. I think NATO did the right thing under the circumstances. I do not believe that they were comfortable with killing innocent kids, cleaners and nurses, but that is what war usually involves. Commanders have to make hard decisions about other people’s lives.
What detracts from the West’s performance is that while they were doing the right thing for the right reasons in Kosovo, at the same time they were doing the same thing for the wrong reasons in Iraq. The sanctions and periodic bombings of Iraq turned out to be nothing more than a siege, one responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents. Right-wingers point out that this is all Saddam’s fault, if only he’d relented. They have a point, but not a complete one. There is no reason why the Iraqis could not have been allowed to rebuild their sewage works, their power plants, their infrastructure. Right wingers have to ask themselves, was it worth the deaths of all those people just to keep Iraq as pathetically weak as it was? Could we have loosened the sanctions enough to lower the death toll, and still have kept WMDs out of Saddam’s hands? I believe that yes, this could have been done, but it wasn’t because it was always the intention of the US and UK to go back in one day.
The situation and your intent are everything. In Kosovo I believe it made the killing of the innocent acceptable. In Iraq I believe it made the killing of the innocent a crime against humanity.
The problem is Tane, you obviously believe that intent is largely what they say it is. For that I just can’t take this discussion seriously.
I’m not sure where you’re coming from Christiaan. I believe that the elites running this world will do anything to keep their grip on power; this is a common feature of all elites, in all places, all throughout history. Lieing about their intentions is a normal device used by them.
But elites do more than just keep themselves in power and enrich themselves. They can and do do other things. The elites of Victorian and Edwardian Britain did some pretty horrendous things, but at the same time they developed clean water and sewerage systems, banned child labour, increased the voting franchise and began the public health and education systems. This was not all founded in self interest.
For the same reason the elites who run our civilisation can do ‘the right thing’, as I believe they did in Kosovo even when the potential gain is relatively small; ultimately, who cares if the people’s of the Balkans kill each other? Will it spoil the coffee in Paris, the beer in England, the doughnuts in Washington? There bound to be some ulterior motives in there, but as far as I can see that campaign was fought for good reason. This of course had a lot to do with pressure in the West, brought to bear by humanist NGOs and parties. Regardless of this, the elites decided to act. Kosovo is still a shit-fight, but at least it’s not a graveyard, not this time at least.
I don’t take statements by Clinton, Bush, Blair etc at face value; they all need to be analysed very closely. But at times the bullshit matches the reality; Kosovo was one of them.
convincing argument tane. there is always a reason the west will use force. for the greater good.
for someone so vehement christiaan you do a pretty lame attempted rebuttal. at least have the courtesy to address Tane’s points seriously rather than your limp dismissal of intent
christian,
enjoying the attention? at least you’ve attracted the more reasonable of the right.
when anyone from Sir Humpties gets here, just build a bunker.
in the commenters defence, i think they see ‘The West’ as being a little like the United Federation of Planets. they may be the good guys, but they fck things up occasionally.
i see this position as being altrusically naive. the civilising mission was a classic.
I’d make a couple of points:
1. There are obvious occasions when force is justified. WW2 was clearly one – Hitler had invaded most of Europe with massive force. Kosovo was probably one also – it’s was pretty clear that the Kosovans *wanted* an intervention. Both also had the backing of international law, WW2 was collective self-defence and Kosovo was authorised by the UN.
The invasion of Iraq is both illegal and has as its primary purpose the creation of a state friendly to US interests.
2. If a people has significant military power, then it has options. It can choose to minimise civilian casualties, or indeed to negotiate rather than fight. If a people has no military power, then their options are limited – they basically have no choice but to make their presence felt and try and make the occupier give up and find someone less awkward to opress. This is referred to as “terrorism”.
G’day Sage,
Thanks for the comment. But you’ll notice that I sort of belaboured the point about Kosovo being ‘a good fight’. I didn’t use too many other examples because there aren’t many. A lot of western wars over the last 60 years were ones of domination and/or exploitation. The Kosovos and Somalias (good intentions poorly executed in the case of the latter) are few and far between.
The real problem is, rationality is to Christiaan what virginity is to Paris Hilton.
I have attempted discussion on this blog with him before, but the chance of getting a considered reply is zip. Any dissenting opinion simply results in him putting his fingers in his ears, giving you a reply to the effect of “you disagree with me therefore you must be wrong, now read this Chomskyite literature, pray to Pilger, and then and only then will you gain salvation”. Failing that he repeatedly calls you fascist or similar.
But why think for yourself when you can get all the conspiracy theories and simple-minded epigrams you need from the latest Osama’s Book Club picks?
Rich, NATO did not have the backing of the United Nations to use force in Yugoslavia.
RWDB, you couldn’t stick to the substance of a debate if your mother’s cuddles depended on it. In fact no doubt you’ve turned out the way you have because you didn’t get enough cuddles. Please go away, leave adult discussion to the adults.
Tane, you are too genererous. Clean water, sewerage systems, the banning of child labour, increased voting franchise, public health, education. These things were not ‘provided’ by an elite!! They were often largely fought for and gained despite of an elite. For one example have a read of The Vote: how it was won and how it was undermined, by Paul Foot.
But let’s say that the elite do some good things, the fact still remains that they use the nation-state system to gain a monopoly on violence and use it to advance their interests*. This we appear to agree on. Why you then go on to argue that war crimes were justified in Yugoslavia when the evidence shows it was far from the “most extreme of circumstances” (which you consider the basis of justification for killing innocent people) I don’t know.
You seem to be arguing that the point of my original post is valid, but that it doesn’t apply for the example I cite. Well, I say to you that not only was the most ferocious sustained bombing campaign in human history not required but in fact war could have been avoided altogether.
As you are probably aware many of your claims about Kosovo are highly contentious, including your assertion that less died as a result of the bombing, and especially your so-called ratio of killing. An “ethnic cleansing” yes (much like Palestine), but genocide it was not.
As Chomksy points out**, it was NATO’s bombing campaign that gave rise to the bulk of the deaths in Yugoslavia and provoked most of the Serbian atrocities.
Grave violations of humanatarian law were carried out by NATO, including the bombing of electricity and water supplies, television stations, villages, hospitals, schools, apartment buildings; the employment of poisonous weapons such as depleted uranium tipped munitions, and the use of cluster bombs—many direct violations of the Geneva Conventions—and all carried out in violation of the UN Charter.
All military and most non-military interventions carried out by or in partnership with the U.S. since WWII can be boiled down to one basic principle, “they were not doing as they were told.” And the Kosovo war is no exception. It can be easily argued, based on the history of such interventions, that it was carried out not because of the proclaimed protection of Albanian civilians, but “to expand NATO and U.S. presence to Serbia, as a part of larger strategy of expansion to Eastern Europe, to which Milošević was opposed. When this was not accepted, the other, equally important goal, was to demonstrate power and use of force as an example against anyone who opposes U.S. dictate, and thus set a precedent for the emerging New World Order in which the only remaining superpower asserts its interests aggressively and without regards to the previously known rules.” As John Pilger** pointed out:
You asked what could have stopped the Serbs (other than the most ferocious sustained bombing in human history). Chomsky discussed this, and as he pointed out we’ll never know for sure because NATO refused to entertain such possibilities.
What it boils down to is that it is not clear at all that Kosovo was the “most extreme of circumstances,” for which you consider the basis of justification for killing innocent people. You may believe the bombing of Yugoslavia was the first war in history fought “in the name of principles and values,” the first bold step towards a “new era” in which the “enlightened states” will protect the human rights of all under the guiding hand of an “idealistic New World bent on ending inhumanity”. I do not.
*In fact I believe the nation-state system is largely responsible for war and chaos.
** Chomsky and Pilger quotes added primarily for the benefit of in-house dunce and flip flopper, “Right Wing Death Beast” (a.k.a. RWDB)
Che wrote:
Well, except that Tane considers himself a lefty.
Christiaan,
Firstly, your interesting comment: ‘Well, except that Tane considers himself a lefty.’
We don’t live in a monchrome world, and there are many different shades of left-wing liberal. You are not the living exemplar of all that it is to be a lefty. If I disagree with you on some points (and we are disagreeing on points, not on a broad issue) then that does not make me a wannabe liberal or a right-wingnut. Please don’t get all Judean People’s Front/People’s Front of Judea on me.
I read through Chomsky’s piece, and it was very interesting. He makes a very good point, that NATO failed to reach a diplomatic accord and did not exhaust all options before bombing. He then spoils this by stating that the atrocities started after the bombing, thus perpetuating that particular piece of Serb propaganda. Look at the following two links, admittedly one of them is British Ministry of Defence, but it quotes UNHCR and Human Rights Watch. These make it clear that the atrocities started before the negotiations at Rambouillet;
http://www.hrw.org/wr2k/Eca.htm#TopOfPage
http://www.kosovo.mod.uk/atrocities.htm
NATO stopped negotiating because the Serbs were already killing people. I did not say at any point that the Serbs were committing genocide; this was not their aim. Their aim was to use terror to force the Albanian population out of Kosovo, thus allowing them to become the majority population in land they considered theirs. That 90% of the population was Albanian was irrelevant to them. The Serbs conducted what became known as Operation Horseshoe, establishing a cordon along the northern borders and moving in. They were careful to leave roads open, to allow the Kosovars to flee.
The Human Rights Watch article also makes a very good point; that the West could have averted the crisis much earlier (as well as the Bosnia disaster) with diplomacy up to 10 years previously. Agreed, the West screwed up big time. But having stuffed it continuously, it appears that we should have kept on stuffing up by trying to deal with Milosevic while his troops were cleansing the province. That’s what Chomsky seems to say. I respect and admire the man and his work, but in this case I believe he is wrong.
The Serbs had already deployed 40,000 troops and police into Kosovo prior to the negotiations. They then dispersed and hid, making themselves largely invulnerable to air attack. Before and during the negotiations they began Operation Horseshoe; have a look at Micheal Ignatieff’s ‘Virtual War’, it goes over this quite well. The West had two options at this point. Keep talking, use sanctions and threats, giving the Serbs the time they needed to cleanse Kosovo and present a fait accompli. Or use military action. Having failed to address the issue prior to this, and now having painted themselves into a corner through their own neglect, the West did the only realistic thing, and that was to bomb.
I don’t know why you think it was such a ferocious bombing campaign. Cambodia, Laos and Korea all suffered much worse; 10,500 strike sorties were flown, by up to 900 aircraft. This sounds impressive, but it’s not, averaging out to 1 mission every 3 nights per strike aircraft (about half the total). As NATO found out, the Serb army units were impervious to the air strikes. They lost soldiers, vehicles, equipment, but never enough to render them ineffective. At no stage in the 78 day bombing campaign did the Serb Army stop fighting. Air power is not the perfect tool it’s adherents make it out to be. Weather, mountains, dispersal, camoflague, decoys, radio silence and even the 1960s era Serb air defence systems were more than enough to defeat NATO bombs. With only this to face, the Serbs would have achieved their aims, and then eventually come back to the table having cleansed Kosovo. For your information, the Serb Army came out of Kosovo in excellent condition, and the methods they used to preserve their forces against NATO strikes are studied to this day.
Striking strategic targets, in this case power plants, factories, refineries and bridges, is always morally hard. Faced with the certainty of more Albanian dead, this was something that had to be done. It sucks, but that’s life. I don’t like it either, but I cannot see any other option available at the time, not when time was of the essence. It was these strikes that forced the Serbs to the negotiations table and brought this to an end.
So, where do we stand? I agree that the West failed to solve this before bombing became necessary. All disputes should be dealt with by negotiations in the first instance. And the second and third as well. Having failed to do this, sometimes military action is all that’s available. From what I’ve read of Milosevic, ethnic cleansing of Kosovo was always on the cards, especially after the West’s abortionate handling of Bosnia encouraged him. There are times when you can’t negotiate, and by March 1999 this was one of them.
As for the shitfight that is Kosovo right now, well that’s because, as John Ralston Saul puts it ‘we seem to have lost our ability to redraw borders’. Kosovo is a limbo land, unable to become independant, but never again going to be a part of Serbia. Given the prohibition on borders by the UN, I don’t see this being resolved any time soon. But the fact that the peace is substandard does not mean that the war was not worthwhile. At least 1.8 million Albanians are still where they should be. The biggest fly in the ointment is their treatment of the remaining Serbs; understandable but still criminal.
An interesting point you make is “All military and most non-military interventions carried out by or in partnership with the U.S. since WWII can be boiled down to one basic principle, “they were not doing as they were told.”
How does the Korean War fit in with this? Shoule the US and the West have let the North conquer the South. Or how about Somalia in 1991? In fact, is there any circumstance in which you believe it is acceptable for the West to use it’s military strength?
One last point. You say that “In fact I believe the nation-state system is largely responsible for war and chaos.” War, slavery and genocide were around long before the nation state. Given that globalisation is a dead duck, they will be around for a lot longer. How we organise ourselves has nothing to do with the fact that we fight. It is simply a part of the human condition. Get used to it; when Peak Oil hits we’re in for a wave of wars like nothing our species has ever seen before.
I’d leave London and come back home if I was you….
Cheers,
Tane.
Che,
You said;
I guess I wasn’t being clear enough in my writing. I do not consider the West to be the good guys, I’m well aware of the failings of it’s elites over the last 50 years. At the same time I do not believe that it is inherently evil and like Sauron only capable of doing ill. Even a self-centred, power hungry pack of bastards can do the right thing on occasion.
This may not fit in with your trendy-lefty view of the world, but I don’t see it as being “altrusically naive”. Naivety might be better described as an uninformed and monochrome view of the world.
I hope I’m a bit clearer on where I stand now. Well left of centre, but not falling off the edge.
Tane wrote:
I really didn’t mean it that way at all. I meant to point out that I wasn’t “attracting the more reasonable of the right” but a lefty. You can’t judge someone’s political outlook by one conversation, hence the use of “considers himself” (as you do judging by your statement “Us lefties …”).
Sorry, my mistake. I must be getting sensitive in my old age.
I withdraw my comment and offer my apologies.
about Operation Horsehoe:
I would have to read the ICTY transcripts to have more details. Michael Ignatieff is a member of the caviar and champagne courtesan crowd of the Council of Foreign Relations, not exactly a serious authority a student of history can trust.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-373es.html
quote:
Moreover, there is increasing reason to question the credibility of the Operation Horseshoe account. The existence of the operation was originally publicized by Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, on April 6, 1999, almost two weeks after NATO started bombing Serbia and at a time when German public opinion about the Luftwaffes participation in the air strikes was divided. Horseshoe-or Potkova, as the German authorities said it was known in Belgrade-thereafter became a staple of NATO briefings and was presented as proof that Milosevic had planned to expel Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians all along.State Department spokesman James Rubin cited Operation Horseshoe as recently as March 2000 to justify NATO’s bombardment. However, Heinz Loquai, a retired brigadier general in the German army who now works for the OSCE, claims that the Horseshoe “plan” was fabricated from run-of-the-mill Bulgarian intelligence reports.48 Loquai has accused Rudolf Scharping, the German defense minister, of obscuring the questionable origins of Operation Horseshoe, and he claims that the German Defense Ministry turned a Bulgarian intelligence agency analysis of Serbian wartime behavior into a “plan.” and even coined the name “Horseshoe.” Loquai points to a fundamental flaw in the German account: it named the operation Potkova, which is the Croatian word for horseshoe. The Serbian word for horseshoe is Potkovica. “A state prosecutor would never think of going to trial with the amount of evidence available to the German defense ministry,” says Loquai. “The facts to support its existence are at best terribly meager,” he contends. “I have come to the conclusion that no such operation ever existed.”49