March 25, 1999 -- HONG KONG -- Welcome to the war. But start collecting for the wreaths. This isn't 'no-fly' Iraq. This time there is going to be a price. These guys will fight back. And they have friends.

I have just sat watching the NATO press conference on BBC World. No one asked the pertinent question. If you didn't see the live broadcast, watch the next top of the hour news for the highlights.

NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and General Wesley Clark were 'so' confident in their abilities - and their moral position - it was quite astonishing that none of the alleged journalists in attendance asked the pertinent question. If you don't know what the pertinent question is, then you ain't smart enough to be reading this web-site and I have been 'throwing pearls before swine' for the past year and a half. Oh yes, that is arrogant. But I am arrogant with words, not high explosive - and people's lives.

It was PR - a snow job. I just figure how NATO managed to get the media to play along with the charade. The Serbs were demonised (nothing unusual in that) - and the Kosovo Liberation Army were portrayed as the heroic 'rebels' fighting against a terrible regime. The ethnic Albanian civilians were - as usual - victims of Serb barbarians. The Serb civilians who have died at the hands of the KLA were not mentioned. Why should they be? They're just 'serbs' after all. Note the lower case 's'.

I guess everyone who is only exposed to 'mainstream' news is already fairly convinced that the Serbs are murderous thugs - and they deserve what thay get. And NATO is sticking it to them, right?

Wrong.

If you believe just a small portion of what was delivered by Solana and Clark at the NATO press conference, then it is likely that you have already decided that I am a Serb apologist and therefore should be ignored. You are also likely to have an I.Q. less than my shoe size. Arrogant again? Yes, because you are ignoring the facts - the reality. The Serbs are guilty of some nasty shit in Kosovo, and Milosevic isn't the sort of guy you'd usually invite to dinner with your kids. But there is a 'but'.

Both CNN and the BBC have made a great play on how Milosevic revoked Kosovo's autonomous status in 1989. The two broadcasters have both gone to great length to describe how ethnic Albanians were thrown out of government jobs etc., etc., and how the minority Serbs took over. But, just for example, what the news organisations are not making a big deal of is the fact that when Kosovo was an autonomous province of Serbia, the then majority Albanian-Moslem police force were very keen on kicking the crap out of minority Serbs. I guess that was okay, huh?

By now I imagine the average reader is convinced I cannot be trusted to tell the 'conventional' truth. So, before I reveal what should have been the pertinent question at that press conference, I'd like to paraphrase a couple of examples of where the public has been misled by the good-guys: There are no American combat troops in Cambodia. I did not not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinsky. Q.E.D.

The global public has been lied to before, and it is being lied to now.

The pertinent question to the NATO leaders: How can you be so confident of degrading Yugoslavia's military capability in days and (at most) perhaps weeks, when the Washington led allies in the Persian Gulf have - without conclusion - been at it for so long in Iraq?

If NATO isn't going to send in ground troops to finish the job - can we expect a decade of no-fly zones in the middle of Europe? In the year 2009 will journalists be reporting on NATO attacks on Yugoslav air-defense facilities that were supposed to have been destroyed during the 1999 Yugoslav War - and several 'Desert Fox - Balkan Fox' operations ever since? And I seriously doubt that Belgrade will allow the C.I.A. - otherwise known by the acronym UNSCOM - to snoop around for bits of nasty.

Clark says, and I paraphrase: "Unless Milosevic backs down, we are going to destroy his military capability." Yeah, right. Is that before the allies destroy Saddam's military capability - or is that project being put on hold until Milosevic is destroyed? Honest, I am not trying to be a cynic.

Well, that's the end of this column. But for anyone who thinks I am being smart after the event... read sections of these columns that were published in APJ almost a year ago.

Filed in May 1998:

"Serbia tightens its grip over Kosovo," declared the BBC World announcer, "as the country goes to the polls on a referendum on international participation in negotiations to end the crisis." Talk about slanting a story! Whoa, hang on a bit. Kosovo has been a legal and internationally recognised part of Serbia, let's say, for longer than the West Bank, Golan or Southern Lebanon has belonged to Israel; or East Timor to Indonesia. There are no United Nations resolutions demanding that Serbia relinquish Kosovo. I wish the same could be said about Israel and Indonesia and their acquired territories."

"It is not moral to threaten sanctions against a country that denies to give up part of its sovereign territory (Serbia/Kosovo), while at the same time giving aid and selling weapons to another that is guilty of gross human rights abuse and genocide in a territory it invaded (Indonesia/East Timor). You cannot expect to be taken seriously while threatening a nation with military action for having 'suspected' weapons of mass destruction while failing to condemn in the strongest possible terms another that has an illegal stockpile (Iraq/Israel)."

"It was a political decision to continue fighting (by the KLA), and it was by political instigation that hundreds of kids this week marched through the streets of the Kosovo capital, Pristina, holding placards supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army. The way things are going, we could soon see those same healthy kids receiving minimum aid rations in Albanian refugee camps. Then we'll start hating the bloody Serbs all over again.

According to figures released on Tuesday, at the latest count 589 rebels have been killed so far this year with the loss of 20 members of the security forces. More than 39,500 soldiers are involved in the offensive and they have completely ignored national sovereignty and crossed international borders. Since 1984 about 37,000 people have died in the conflict - the vast majority of them were civilians. Sorry, perhaps I should have mentioned this at the top of the paragraph, I am talking about NATO member and Gulf War ally, Turkey and its war on the Kurds - not Yugoslavia."