The June 18 New York Times acknowledged, incidentally, that a U.S. general, Michael C. Short, was the chief orchestrator of the bombing. They interviewed him by phone at the NATO “air operations center in Vicenza, Italy.” They even have a photo of this top-level perpetrator of “what are legally defined as war crimes.” Gen. Short, they report, is returning to his “peacetime” duties as commander of the U.S. 16th Air Force, in Aviano, Italy, and of Allied Air Forces, Southern Europe, in Naples. In the interview, Short suggested that you can’t “bring down an enemy without inflicting civilian casualties.”

The pilots of Spanish planes who participated in bombing raids against Yugoslavia do not feel like “supermen” nor masters of aerospace. Quite the contrary, they say that our forces play to the tune of music played by the North Americans, and accuse NATO of having honored with medals the bombing of civilian targets, what they otherwise name “collateral damage.”

Captain Adolfo Luis Martín de la Hoz, who returned to Spain at the end of May after having participated in the bombings from the beginning, an “authentic expert for the dreadful F-18,” the war plane most often used in the “scorched earth” war strategy in the Balkans, is very categorical:

First of all, I want to make it clear that the majority, I say the majority, of my colleagues, even if not all, are against the war in general and against this war of barbarity in particular.

Martín de la Hoz says that he and his colleagues “are burnt out.”

A few days ago, there appeared in the papers certain statements of Commander Maches Michavilla, who is now in the air base at Aviano with the pilots who replaced us, in which he said that our main helper in the air was mental and physical health. But I tell you that our worst enemies are our own authorities, the defense minister and all his team, the members of the government, who know nothing about war and go along with it without informing themselves about anything and, what is gravest, who are guilty of lying to the Spanish people through the papers, radio and television, foreign correspondents, and press agencies.

The suspicions that NATO’s repeated bombings of civilian victims and nonmilitary targets are not the result of war “errors” are confirmed by Captain Martín de la Hoz: “Several times our colonel protested to NATO chiefs as to why they select targets which are not military targets. They threw him out with curses, saying that we should know that the North Americans would lodge a complaint to the Spanish Army, once through Brussels and again to the Defense Ministry. But there is more, and I want to tell it to the whole world: once there was a coded order from the North American military that we should drop anti-personnel bombs over the localities of Prishtine (Pristina) and Nish (Nis). The colonel refused it altogether and, a couple of days later, the transfer order came. But what I say now is nothing compared to what I shall have to say when the time comes.”

These Spanish military men denounce the fact that members of the Spanish government not only do not try to inform themselves, but that they also accept the false reports that are edited for them in Aviano, where there is a sort of military press cabinet in the hands of North American generals and functionaries.”

Captain de la Hoz goes on: “Ever since we arrived in Italy — there has been no end to humiliations and insults. The only order-givers are the North American generals, and no one else. We are zeroes, just as our replacements are going to be.

“But there is still more besides that. Here, they say that several operations were directed by Spanish commanders and pilots. Lies on top of lies. All the missions that we flew, every single one, were planned by high U.S. military authorities. Even more, they were all planned in detail, including attacking planes, targets, and type of ammunition that we had to drop. We never directed anything, and our missions were limited to flying over the borders of Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and Slovakia [Slovenia?].”

Government Lies

None of the pilots presently stationed at Aviano, who replaced those who went to the Italian base shortly before the start of war, last March 23, were there with a clear conscience, says the Spanish military.

It is being written to the point of saturation that the disciplined and patriotic Spanish pilots — according to Minister Eduardo Serra — are concentrating on the complexity of their war missions.

But we have read so many discrepancies, so many lies, that we agreed not to read a single newspaper until we came home. Our anger is enormous. The prime minister, the minister of foreign affairs, and the defense minister are lying brazenly each time they talk about the war. Some of us are of another opinion and believe that they do not inform themselves, because the North Americans — the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, the Embassy or military information service, whoever — do not inform them about anything. How should they inform themselves if our own Javier Solana [the titular head of NATO] has not informed himself since the war broke out?

Solana is a puppet who has been put there by the Yanquís to do what they tell him he must do. And so he does, standing straight before General Clark when he talks to him, or better said, when he issues him the orders that he has to implement without delay.

On the subject of manipulation of war information, Captain de la Hoz says that “no one has said anything about the incidents that took place in Aviano, about the disastrous maintenance of Spanish machines, about everything, and about the constant humiliations to which we were subjected from the beginning.

“Not just that we are cannon fodder. No. We are nothing. [Nothing has been said] about the fatal accidents, the losses suffered without connection to combat, the contempt and the sanctions, not a word. From no one!”

These Spanish military men are more and more certain that there is no alibi for the wrong selection of [civilian] targets.

We know perfectly well that we are intervening in a conflict,” says Martín de la Hoz, “which is rejected by the majority of the Spanish people and this is most important for us. But what they do not say in any information, commentary, or speech, is that the Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese...we are all there to cover for the North American generals who are wheeling and dealing in the war.

“There is no journalist who has the slightest idea what is happening in Yugoslavia. They are destroying the country, bombing it with new weapons, toxic nerve gases, surface mines dropped by parachute, bombs containing uranium, napalm, sterilization chemicals, sprayings to poison the crops, and other weapons of which even we still do not know anything.

“The North Americans are committing there one of the biggest barbarities that can be committed against humanity. Many very bad things will be told in the future about what was happening there because, by the way, judging by what we talked about with the British and German officers, it was designed in order to divide the Europeans and keep us subjected for many decades.”

Therefore, Captain Martín de la Hoz is enraged when there is talk about the costs of the war. There should be no doubts, he confirms, that the military men assigned to Aviano are receiving bonuses which “multiply our salaries by five, not counting daily expense allowances and other perquisites. We could say that we should be satisfied with what this war means economically for each one of us, but it is not true, what they give us is chocolate for the parrots.

“This war is going to cost the Spanish people more than all the money allocated for culture in the last five years. And, even if now no one says anything because of the elections, it will come in a few months and will be felt in our pockets. Because this brutal Yanquí-only war, no one’s but the Yanquís, is going to be paid for by all of us. Be certain that what I say is not to exculpate myself and to intone mea culpa for having participated in it, because I will never be able to forget that what was being committed there was one the biggest savageries of history.”