I didn't imply that you did say it, McG. I was reminding you what it was in that article at the top of the thread to which I took exception and which you defended.

The suggestion that "Dictators only stay in power while they can somehow manage to deliver what people want" is one you might prefer to have deleted when you did your preview routine. And why do you call the coup "relatively" bloodless? Why do you say "coup" at all? I'd have thought the stuff about socialism was wholly irrelevant.

Not sure what point Shambles is making, but he may recall that Franjo Tudjman in Croatia and Milosevic both attempted to rid Bosnia of muslims when the intention was to carve up the territory between them. Tudjman, who reinstated the insignia of the fascist Ustasha - the regime that murdered Serbs in their hundreds of thousands in WW2 -was supported by Washington. Milosevic was not. Maybe because of that word "socialist" attached to the name of the party he led.

By the way, it's only lately that "ethnic cleansing" has become unfashionable. The world hardly batted an eyelid when the Brits did it a generation or two earlier. Even now it may have a role in resolving some of the world's more intractable problems. But it depends how it's done of course.