Gay Dutch soldiers responsible for Srebrenica massacre says US general

by Our Foreign Staff 931AM GMT nineteen March 2010

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The Dutch supervision cursed the comments by Gen John Sheehan, a former Nato commander in chief in arch and comparison sea officer, as outrageous.

Gen Sheehan done the remarks at a Senate conference where he argued opposite plans by President Barack Obama to finish a anathema on permitting gays to offer plainly in the US military.

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Gen Sheehan pronounced that after the finish of the Cold War, European militaries altered and resolved "there was no longer a need for an active fight capability."

He pronounced this routine enclosed "open homosexuality" that resulted in "a concentration on peacekeeping operations given they did not hold the Germans were going to conflict again or the Soviets were entrance back."

"The box in point that I"m referring to is when the Dutch were compulsory to urge Srebrenica opposite the Serbs," he said, referring to the UN peacekeeping force deployed to strengthen Bosnian Muslim civilians.

"The corps was understrength, feeble led, and the Serbs came in to town, handcuffed the soldiers to the write poles, marched the Muslims off and executed them."

Carl Levin, the authority of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pulpy him to explain his comments.

"Did the Dutch leaders discuss it you it (the tumble of Srebrenica) was given there were happy soldiers there?" asked an dubious Levin.

"Yes," Sheehan pronounced and combined "They enclosed that as piece of the problem."

Gen Sheehan, who late from the infantry in 1997, pronounced he had been told that by the former arch of staff of the Dutch army.

Mr Levin vehemently deserted Sheehan"s allegation, observant that sketch a tie in in between the electrocute at Srebrenica and gays in the Dutch infantry was "totally off-target".

The disaster of the Dutch UN infantry to deflect off an conflict by Bosnian Serb forces had "nothing to do with passionate orientation" but was associated to "their precision and the manners of engagement," Mr Levin said.

The Dutch supervision in a huff deserted the claim.

"It is startling that a man of his status can finish such finish nonsense," pronounced Roger outpost de Wetering, the Dutch counterclaim method spokesman. "I have never listened of a singular matter by a Dutch domestic or infantry personality that drew a couple in in between the tumble of the enclave and the actuality that there were Dutch homosexual soldiers."

Nearly 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed after Serb forces prisoner the eastern locale on Jul eleven 1995, in the misfortune electrocute in Europe given World War II.

Thursday"s conference enclosed sworn statement from both sides of the discuss over the law well known as "Don"t Ask, Don"t Tell," that requires happy use members to keep still about their passionate course or face exclusion from the military.

Two former US officers who were liberated underneath the 1993 law appealed to lawmakers to dissolution the ban, observant it was preventing competent Americans from portion the country.

Former air force infantry infantry officer Michael Almy pronounced he had kept his homosexuality tip for years but was forced out after a commander in chief in arch systematic a poke of his emails created to friends and family.

""Don"t ask, don"t tell" unsuccessful me, notwithstanding the actuality that I inspected my finish of this law by never disclosing my in isolation life," Almy said.

He pronounced he believed a younger era in the infantry was ready to accept plainly happy members in the armed forces.

After his dismissal, when he asked former infantry to write letters of anxiety for him, "it was a finish non-issue for my troops," Almy said.

"The immature men and women that are entrance in to the infantry today, uninformed out of high propagandize or college, have grown up with happy and lesbian characters on TV ... know gays and lesbians in their schools, in their communities, on their sports teams and majority confidently in their military."