One thing I do agree with in that diatribe, ard mhacha: the UN should be made to account for its role in the atrocity. But this will just tell us what we already know: the UN is only as effective as its member nations will allow it to be.

That is why there was no attempt to disarm the "safe haven." That is why the deployment amounted to a few hundred hopelessly inexperienced and hopelessly outnumbered troops, equipped with little more than side arms. That is why the UN was unable to prevent weapons pouring into the haven in food parcels.

The article you've pasted is pie in the sky. Give the muslims their weapons back, Dyer says, as though they weren't already armed. (How else had they been killing each other in internal feuding before Serbs entered the enclave?) Let the Dutch commit heroic mass suicide in a cause on which even Gwynne Dyer virtually admits they could have made no impact. Oh, and of course the Dutch should have seen it coming, even though there had been nothing remotely like it in the previous three years of bloodshed.

The suggestion that Mladic would baulk at taking on a few hundred UN troops is more wishful thinking. The guy was committed to his nationalist cause almost to the point of insanity and completely reckless about his own safety (you should be familiar with such folk, ard). He had used UN personnel as human shields, releasing them only in the face of intense pressure from Milosević, and he had openly defied Karadzić's order, issued in the face of international pressure, to withdraw his artillery from the seige of Sarajevo. If soldiers - whether UN or any others - got in his way, he knew only one response.

It's easy to find scapegoats, especially if you're sitting in an armchair 1800 miles away. But stop relying on fairytales, ard.