-- begin forwarded message: -- June 7 1999 The Modern Emperor's New Clothes... Green or Gray? by Otto Miller, Bavaria, Germany About a month or so ago when NATO was first publicly accused of bombing a Kosovar refugee column in Kosovo, the Pentagon and their stooges in the press were quick to deny it. I remember specifically a CNN news person repeating the Pentagon line that "eye witnesses reported that the planes were green, and NATO only uses gray planes"; this followed by a picture of a green camo Serb jet and a gray NATO plane. At the time I was struck with my usual sense of dumbfoundedness at the childlike simplicity of these lies. This one really stuck in my head though for some reason and I've been thinking about it on and off ever since. First of all, of course, as has been shown in numerous police studies, eye witnesses after a crime often contradict each other, one saying the perpetrator was white, one saying he/she was black, 6' tall, 4' tall, etc. In the stress of the crime things get blurred. So right off the bat we might be skeptical of eye witness accounts of the colour of a sleek warplane flying far overhead at the speed of sound reported by people who are more immediately concerned not with colours of planes but the bombs falling on their heads. Then we factor in that NATO, as it often reminds us, has achieved air superiority ages ago and not a single Serb jet has flown anywhere since the first few days of the attack. But the colour again. Are NATO planes all gray? Not really. At least some German Luftwaffa Tornado's are camo green, as shown on the front pages of German newspapers and magazines right at the beginning of the conflict. And British Tornado's based in Germany are gray with green stripes - as recently shown on a CNN in a report of these planes being moved to a new air base on Corsica (course CNN didn't bother to notice the colour of the planes). All of this comes to mind because last Wednesday, a clear sunny day, I was at the nearby lake Chiemsee showing some friends around when about a half dozen Tornado's flew overhead with external fuel tanks and empty bomb racks, fresh from the attack on Yugoslavia. As a little test I turned to one of my friends, a German engineer with a good eye, and I asked him what colour he thought the plane was. He thought about it for a minute and said, "I don't know, green? gray?" Then I told him why I asked him. We turned to my Indian friend who had just joined us as another plane flew overhead and I asked him the same question. "Greenish gray" was his response. Obviously, according to eyewitness accounts, the Serbs have invaded Bavaria: someone go tell CNN. -- end forwarded message --