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Here are a few important and ignored facts on the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, with sources provided in brackets:

Shortly after NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, NPR reported that the CIA used a Belgrade map from 1992. Further CIA targeting incompetence has come to light: on May 20, NATO bombs hit a hospital in Belgrade, and damaged the residences of the Swedish, Spanish, Norwegian, and Swiss ambassadors and the Libyan Embassy. Two days later, NATO bombed a KLA stronghold at Kosare. NATO spokesmen claimed that Kosare had only recently been overrun by the KLA, but the truth is that the KLA had been in control of the area for at least a month. Kosare was a main staging area for the KLA to smuggle weapons and fighters into Kosovo. The KLA had been escorting Western reporters to Kosare since early May and it had also been visited by a Western television crew. NATO has now become more sophisticated about its targeting mistakes and is blaming them on the Serbian military. After bombing a prison in the belief that it was being used as military housing (destroying it with 15 missiles in two separate strikes over three days), NATO discovered that the prison actually contained--surprise!--prisoners and KLA rebels. NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said that if prisoners were in the jail, then that was "the responsibility of the Serbs." [NPR news broadcast, 5/10/99; "NATO Bomb Said to Hit Belgrade Hospital," Washington Post, 5/21/99; "NATO Admits Hitting Albanian Post," AP, 5/22/99; "NATO Hits Key KLA Base In New Intelligence Mistake," Reuters, 5/22/99; and "Prison bombed twice," BBC, 5/22/99.]

The NATO alliance is fracturing. Britain's Tony Blair wants to start a ground war as soon as possible. Bill Clinton has stepped up the air war, but doesn't want a ground war. NATO commanders continue to draw up plans to begin one as early as July. The government of Greece has called for a 48 hour halt to the bombing campaign, even if Milosevic doesn't agree to withdraw troops from Kosovo. The German and Russian governments have supported a short-term ceasefire, too, and the German government has completely rejected any ground war. A French official expressed horror at Tony Blair's statements: "Why are the British doing this? They are alone." Demonstrators in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia burnt Blair in effigy and waved placards saying "Welcome Murderer" as Blair began his tour of the Balkans last week. ["U.K. isolated as NATO split widens," Manchester Guardian Weekly, 5/23/99; "Peace Gesture Proposed: Bombing pause backed," Herald reporter in Berlin, 5/22/99; "Schroder's Blunt 'No' to Ground Troops in Kosovo Reflects Depth of German Sensitivities," New York Times, 5/20/99.]

Italy is joining the call for a ceasefire, as Italian fishermen have been injured pulling unexploded bombs out of the Mediterranean Sea near Venice. The bombs are being jettisoned over the sea by NATO aircraft. Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema is desperately trying to avoid a split in his coalition government, as the Italian Communist Party, the Italian Greens, the separatist Northern League, the moderate People's Party, and some MPs of the main left-wing party, Democratici di Sinistra have all come out against the war. ["War in the Balkans--Anger grows over bombs found in nets," BBC, 5/16/99.]

The U.S. government and press have been quick to accuse Serb forces of using Albanian Kosovars for human shields, especially after NATO's bombing of the town of Korisa killed 87 Albanian refugees. Helen Kinghan, a reporter for The Irish Times, based in Brussels, Belgium, wrote: "NATO is not prepared to accuse the Yugoslav army outright of using ethnic Albanian refugees as human shields. Washington, however, had no such scruples..." Elaine Lafferty, another reporter for the same paper, based in Belgrade, reports: "Many displaced people have been hiding in rough conditions. Unsubstantiated reports say the police rounded up a number of them and told them they had dealt with the KLA in the area and they could come home. It is suggested they were told to stay for the night at Korisa before finding their own homes and were put up in the garrison while the police stayed in the houses." Notice she used the word "police," not "soldiers." Meanwhile, NATO has refused to release any evidence that Korisa was a "legitimate military target." ["UN humanitarian mission arrives in Belgrade," The Irish Times, 5/17/99, and "NATO Won't Release Korisa Evidence," Washington Post, 5/21/99.]

Paul Watson, a reporter for the LA Times, is one of the few reporters who has actually visited Kosovo. On the same day that NATO spokesmen claimed that over 100,000 Albanian men between the ages of 14 and 60 were "unaccounted for" and implied that they had been massacred, Watson gave a different picture of the war. It's worth quoting in some detail:

"Something strange is going on in this Kosovo Albanian village in what was once a hard-line guerrilla stronghold, where NATO accuses Serbs of committing genocide. An estimated 15,000 displaced ethnic Albanians live in and around Svetlje, in northern Kosovo, and hundreds of young men are everywhere, strolling along the dirt roads or lying on the grass on a spring day. So many fighting-age men in a region where the Kosovo Liberation Army fought some of its fiercest battles against Serbian forces are a challenge to the black-and-white versions of what is happening here.

"By their own accounts, the men are not living in a concentration camp, nor being forced to labor for the police or army, nor serving as human shields for Serbs. Instead, they are waiting with their families for permission to follow thousands who have risked going back home to nearby villages because they do not want to give up and leave Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic. 'We wanted to stay here where we were born,' Skender Velia, 39, said through a translator. 'Those who wanted to go through Macedonia and on to Europe have already left. We did not want to follow.'

"...Kosovo Albanians continue to flee Yugoslavia, often with detailed accounts of atrocities by Serbian security forces or paramilitaries. Yet thousands of other ethnic Albanians are coming out of hiding in forests and in the mountains, hungry and frightened, and either going back home or waiting for police permission to do so.

"While Serbian police seize the identity documents of Kosovo Albanians crossing the border into Albania or Macedonia, government officials in Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital, issue new identity cards to ethnic Albanians still here. The Kosovo Democratic Initiative, an ethnic Albanian political party opposed to the KLA's fight for independence, is distributing relief aid, offering membership cards and gathering the names of Serbs accused of committing atrocities. 'As an Albanian, I am convinced that the Serbian government and security forces are not committing any kind of genocide,' Fatmir Seholi, the party's spokesman, said in an interview Sunday. 'But in a war, even innocent people die,' Seholi said. 'In every war, there are those who want to profit. Here there is a minority of people who wanted to steal, but that's not genocide. These are only crimes.'

"As an Albanian, Seholi also knows the risks of questioning claims that Yugoslavia's leaders, police and military are committing crimes against humanity in Kosovo. His father, Malic Seholi, was killed Jan. 9, 1997, apparently for being too cooperative with Serbian authorities. The KLA later claimed responsibility for the slaying in a statement published in Bujku, a local Albanian-language newspaper, his son said...

"...After waves of looting, arson, killings and other attacks turned many of Kosovo's cities into virtual ghost towns, the government took steps to restore order, and ethnic Albanians began to move back, often under police protection. Of an estimated 100,000 people living in Pristina, roughly 80,000 are ethnic Albanians and a quarter of those are displaced people from the Podujevo area living with relatives, friends or in abandoned homes, Seholi said. An additional 32,000 ethnic Albanians are living in and around Podujevo itself, he added. A total of 120,000 ethnic Albanians are waiting to return to their homes in four areas--near Podujevo, Pristina, Stimlje and Prizren--while another 350,000 have proper homes, Seholi estimated." ["In One Village, Albanian Men Are Everywhere," Paul Watson, LA Times, 5/17/99.]

For those of us used to seeing impoverished refugees from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the Kosovar refugees present a different picture. Reporters in Macedonia have described Kosovar refugees as "an unexpected goldmine" for the local inhabitants of impoverished towns in Macedonia, where the refugees regularly windowshop, dine in restaurants, make international phone calls to relatives, and even ride bumper cars. A refugee in Cegrane describes his living conditions as follows: "We feel welcome here. We come and go freely--we only have to ask for a paper from the Red Cross. It's a little bit like home." ["Refugees spell boom times for Macedonia town," Agence France Presse, 5/16/99.]

Veteran refugee worker Lynne Miller was pulled from a refugee camp in Somalia and sent to Macedonia. She was shocked at what she found: "one of her first crises in Macedonia was an urgent request from a medical team. A diabetic refugee had crossed the border. Could she provide a special diet? She couldn't believe what she was hearing, much less that she was able to fulfill the request. 'In Africa, we don't have special food or diets. There are no diabetics in the camps,' she said. 'They just die.'" And the LA Times reports the following: "The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is spending about 11 cents a day per refugee in Africa. In the Balkans, the figure is $1.23, more than 11 times greater. Some refugee camps in Africa have one doctor for every 100,000 refugees. In Macedonia, camps have as many as one doctor per 700 refugees--a ratio far better than that of many communities in Los Angeles ... The camps in Africa hold as many as 500,000 people. Up to 6,000 refugees there die each day from cholera and other public health diseases. In Macedonia, the largest camp holds 33,000 people. So far, there have been no deaths from public health emergencies such as an epidemic or starvation." ["Relief Camps for Africans, Kosovars Worlds Apart," LA Times, 5/21/99.]