It can't be so, McG, if only because there WAS regime change, as a direct result of the elections in 2000. Certainly Milosevic then tried to cling to power, but I would put that crime little higher than Heath's in February 1974 or Bush's in 2000-01. Until then he had always been elected to the offices he held.

Anyway, in 2000 the army would not support him, and he handed over power with (a show of) good grace, shaking hands with his successor Kostunica and wishing him well. Whatever the sincerity of that, it was clear he was not going to be raging from the sidelines like an embittered pretender, and the tone of such handovers is not insignificant in terms of the bearing they have on future stability.

Remember that the line you are defending, or explaining, is that Milosevic was on a par with Hitler when it came to conquering his own people from within. In fact he only ever sought to deliver what his own people wanted - what many of them still do want, incidentally. The Socialist Party of Serbia, of which he is still the nominal leader, still polls strongly, to the great annoyance of Washington and its allies.