Hi Troll:
As to Kosovo, that was a much more complex situation than it appeared in the press. We tend to get in trouble as a pease keeping force by making a black and white issue about things. We were defending a facist terrorist state, while at the same time not providing an end game, by limiting that support, possibly, for the reason that if we empowered Albanian naitonalist victory, there would have been a greater blood bath then there had been. You see, Milosavich was a complete barbarian in his tactics, however, in the Serbian political plan, they were attempting to stop the genocide leveled at both Serbians and Roma (Gypsies) by the Albanians who wanted a purely Albanian nation, devoid of "aliens". In the way we conducted our peacekeeping we did very little, in fact nothing, to defend the Roma who were getting it from both Serbians and Albanians, though to a lesser degree from Serbians. No countries other than Macidonia were taking Roma into the refugee camps, and the rational thing for us to do, would have been to give first prority to Roma refugees in the refugee camp in NJ. In fact, I have not been able to get any evidence that any Roma came to the US as refugees, even after a young boy was attacked and nearly pulled appart by Albanians in a Macidonian refugee camp. Peace keeping at the end of a gun is a hugely difficult thing to do, especially when a nation does not do the homework needed to fit the complexities of history. I had the terrible sleepless job of trying to find a remidy for Roma in Serbian cities, who because of prejudice lived in bad sections of towns, for example, by the airbases, who where having bombs droped on them by the US - and other NATO airforces. The typical "colateral damage" were people who were the most discriminated against in the region. We may never know how many Roma died at the hands of all three parties. In the end, there was nothing we could do. We could not even get people to answer the phone to deel with the issue. Roma blood is cheeper than that of animals. (In fact, here in the US, more agressive aid is given to stray dogs than the one million Roma in this nation let alone Kosovo)...
Oh well, I'm at a loss to comment further.
Merry Christmas all,
Larry