I was watching NBC Nightly News (with Tom Brokaw) last week and a press conference with Clinton was being aired. A few key phrases caught my attention, so I perked my little ears right up and this diatribe came from two little partial sentences I happened to hear;

So, a certain number of people are expendable now, Mr. President? In war is it inevitable that some civilians will be killed? If so, does the UN or Mr. Clinton feel at all bad about their pilot(s) killing innocent people? In my opnion, no, they know that they made the decision to interfere on behalf of a repressed people - ethnic Albanians - who happen to out number Serbs in Kosovo at a ratio of 9 to 1. They also know that no matter what, they must be able to call this little skirmish a "win" in the end to keep the approval of the military-hungry US public. If we win, it's okay that our leaders kill absolutely innocent people - those same people deemed refugees by the media who we send countless 'care packages' rounded up by our local schools and humanitarian organizations. However, should we lose, the public will quickly adopt the growing voice of protest and call this whole "incident" an atrocity of Americans again sticking their noses where they do not belong. Ah, so finicky and indecisive is the American public. This more than anything else about the Kosovo incident alarms and disturbs me. Have we sunk to the point that just because people are a world away and we happen to have rammed our military nose into their business and problems that we then have a right to treat them inhumanely? By mistake or not, bombing the trucks of refugees is simply another demonstration of the incompetence of our homeland's forces.

Breathe in, breathe out, move on.