>
> Sounds to me like the truth according to LBJ during the Vietnam war.  Makes
> it tough to wave the flag to support a pack of liars.
>
> > The National Post                               Wednesday, April 7, 1999
> >
> > CIA PREDICTED BOMBING WOULD CAUSE MASS EXODUS
> >
> >         |Contradicts Axworthy|
> >
> >         By Peter Goodspeed
> >
> >         Despite the protests of Lloyd Axworthy, the Foreign
> > Minister, and other NATO leaders that they could not foresee the
> > massive ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, U.S. newspaper reports
> > indicate NATO officials were warned weeks ahead of time that
> > military action against Yugoslavia might well unleash a bloodbath.
> >         While the western alliance was still pondering its war plans
> > last October and tentatively studying proposals for both an air and
> > ground war against Yugoslavia, U.S. intelligence officials are said
> > to have predicted the mass human exodus that has now occurred.
> >         Weeks before the NATO air campaign began, George
> > Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, forecast that
> > Serb-led Yugoslav forces might respond by accelerating their
> > campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the Washington Post
> > reported.
> >         Quoting sources within the American administration, the
> > newspaper says CIA officials repeatedly raised the possibility of an
> > expanded Serbian ethnic-cleansing campaign if the West threatened
> > Belgrade militarily.
> >         When Bill Clinton, the U.S. president, was presented with a
> > military report last October that warned him a ground war in
> > Yugoslavia would require as many as 200,000 NATO troops, an
> > accompanying CIA study predicted two possible outcomes -- a
> > stepped-up campaign of ethnic cleansing against Kosovo's ethnic
> > Albanians, or a quick yielding by Yugoslavia once force was
> > applied.
> >         Mr. Tenet apparently repeated the CIA's warnings in
> > congressional hearings in early February.
> >         U.S. military leaders are said to have expressed deep
> > reservations about the Clinton administration's approach to
> > Kosovo, and repeatedly warned the White House that if the Serbs
> > did launch a final all-out assault on Kosovo's Albanians, air power
> > alone would not stop it.
> >         Now, as hundreds of thousands of refugees stream out of
> > Kosovo in a mass exodus that has stunned the world and
> > overwhelmed international relief efforts, the Clinton administration
> > and its NATO allies are being thrown increasingly on the defensive.
> >         In Ottawa this week, Mr. Axworthy said Canada and its
> > NATO allies had no idea air strikes against the Serbs would lead to
> > massive expulsion of ethnic Albanians.
> >         "No one could have possibly imagined the extreme
> > measures that the Milosevic government would go to against its
> > own people," Mr. Axworthy said. "
> >         His statements echoed Robin Cook, Britain's foreign
> > minister, who said western leaders always expected Yugoslavia to
> > attack the Kosovo Liberation Army, but never anticipated a brutal
> > all-out battle against Kosovo's civilians.
> >         "I don't think that any person who is sane, any decent
> > civilized person could have been expected to see that anybody
> > would behave with the barbarity and brutality he [Milosevic] has,"
> > Mr. Cook said.
> >         That statement drew a furious response yesterday from John
> > Bruton, the former Irish prime minister. "The present refugee crisis
> > was not only foreseeable, it was foreseen," Mr. Bruton declared in a
> > statement issued in Dublin. "It is profoundly dishonest to pretend
> > otherwise.
> >         "The British foreign secretary . . . is simply not making a
> > truthful statement when he said that no one could have foreseen a
> > refugee crisis on the scale of the one now happening in the Balkans,
> > following the decision to bomb Yugoslavia while refusing to
> > commit ground troops under any circumstances. He is wrong.
> >         "After the NATO announcement of bombing, but before the
> > bombing had started, I attended a meeting in Berlin where Carl
> > Bildt, Swedish opposition leader and a former mediator in Bosnia,
> > specifically predicted one million refugees within two weeks of the
> > bombing starting.
> >         "This outcome was guaranteed by the public announcements
> > by President Clinton that ground troops would not be committed."
> >         Mr. Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister, was the UN's
> > special representative for peace negotiations in Bosnia and
> > Herzegovina in the former Yugoslavia in 1995. He delivered his
> > prediction of a million refugees to Javier Solana, NATO's secretary
> > general.
> >         A host of other academic leaders have also been highly
> > critical of NATO's decision to use air strikes against Yugoslavia,
> > while categorically ruling out the use of ground troops.
> >         "This much is clear: The U.S.-led military intervention in
> > Kosovo is failing," says Richard Haass, director of foreign policy
> > studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
> >         "The two million people of the Yugoslav province of
> > Kosovo are increasingly being transformed into refugees, Yugoslav
> > President Slobodan Milosevic appears more entrenched than ever in
> > Belgrade, in part because of the strategic bombing campaign
> > initiated to intimidate him, the United States and NATO are being
> > made to look impotent.
> >         Western miscalculations include: A failure to appreciate Mr.
> > Milosevic's determination to accelerate his brutal ethnic cleansing
> > and his willingness to absorb NATO's air assaults, NATO's
> > reluctance to use ground troops, and the alliance's history of
> > delaying action in the Balkans.
> >         Now, as the public reacts with horror to the flood of
> > refugees pouring out of Kosovo and reports of Serb brutality, there
> > are growing calls for using ground troops to eliminate the Serb
> > gains and to create safe havens for ethnic Albanians.