Forum Lurker,

"I'd hardly call the outcome "ideal," Oldguy. True, the killing was eventually stopped, but many Kosovars lost their lives before NATO took any action,"

NATO took action because the UN wouldn't, or couldn't - Russia and possibly France would have used their veto. Because it was going to be a military action on the part of NATO, both France and Russia were cut out of the loop. When they were included after the start it was a French Air Force officer who was caught passing details of missions and mission profiles to the Serbs, after the Serbian Army had withdrawn from Kosovo and sanctions were imposed on Serbia, it was Russian troops who made enforcement of those sanctions a joke.

"... and many more when NATO committed itself to a strictly air campaign, using no land troops, or even helicopters. A strategy of minimal military casualties increased the civilian death toll."

I take it you would have used your air-mobile troops again Forum. There were a number of reasons for deciding on the air campaign:

1. It was quicker to impliment and the situation, having been tossed about the UN for months, was getting drastically worse by the hour. The Serb Army in Kosovo and it's supporting elements in Serbia had to be distracted, disrupted and, when opportunity presented itself, destroyed. It wasn't NATO killing Kosovars it was the Serb Army - that was stopped.

2. How would you have got your land forces in to Kosovo? How long would it have taken? Don't say by parachute - they would have been shredded (No supporting armour or artillery, vulnerable lines of supply, little or no local knowledge of the terrain), it would have been a disaster.

3. The UN already had troops in other parts of the former Yugoslavia, intervention in Kosovo with land forces would have put those troops seriously at risk with the potential of setting the entire region in flames again.

As I have mentioned in another thread, your understanding of military operations is woefully poor and very ill informed.

Had the peace protesters in Europe been listened to the killing would only have stopped after Milosevic had succeeded in driving the last ethnic Albanian muslem out of Kosovo. He would then have started on somebody else.

One interesting little snippet regarding the NATO air campaign. From the Centre for Strategic and International Studies:

"Iraq has learned a great deal about land-based air defense operations from the Gulf War and more than 10 years of operations against U.S. and British aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones. Iraq provided significant aid to the Serbia in air defense tactics during the fighting in Kosovo and helped Serbia make effective use of decoys, "pop-on" and remotely linked radar activity, various ambush tactics, and the use of deployments in civilian areas to limit NATO's ability to strike at targets because of the possibility of collateral damage or civilian casualties."