Regarding the comments taken from the bbc, I am not surprised by some of the comments made, IMO a sad attempt to justify the war(s).
You see what does my head in these days is when people say the wars in bosnia and kosovo were all about stopping Al-Qaeda/islamic terrorists/fundamentalism. Pull the other one! Al-Qaeda did not even exist back in 92 when the war kicked off in Bosnia and regarding the UCK/KLA during the Kosovo fighting all of a sudden they are supposedly an Al-Qaeda sponsored and trained organisation again at a time when no one knew didly squat about them.
At the time of the Bosnia war, there were foreign fighters fighting for all sides: westerners (i.e. brits, french, germans, dutch etc.) fought with Croats, russians/greeks fought with Serbs [we are not talking about hundreds/thousands but nationals from the above countries were there] and the Bosnians had volunteers from other islamic countries. Now these fighters tended to be referred to as Mujahajdeen (Holy Warriors - usually wore green armbands and bandanas). They have always popped up in wars involving islamic people/countries, i.e. the afghan-russian war. They were without doubt fierce but ruthless fighters who comitted numerous attrocities, just like the other paramilitary units from the other sides.
All sides butchered each other, tried to capture as much land as possible and ethnically cleanse these regions. This happened in 3 of the 4 yugo wars. With Bosnia you had the serbs who wanted to stay with yugo/serbia proper, the croats who wanted to stay with Croatia and the Bosnians who wanted their own independent country within the internationally recognised borders of Bosnia. And to now say it was all about stopping islamic fundamentalism - i don't agree with sorry.
pyro said:
After the bombings UCK was free to do whatever they wanted, I don't see how letting those terrorist run wild is any good, Milosevic was not the best person in existance but he was fighting in his own country, now I don't know how many civilians he killed, and you can't really prove that he ordered the killings of innocent people, but how many civilians died during the bombings?
It's really pathetic to call him a war criminal and let Bush do whatever he wants, at least be frank, but you can't expect anyone to say that. Yes I understand that Bush does not give explicit orders to kill women and children but again you can't really prove that with Milosevic.
I agree with Pyro that the UCK were let free to do what they want, there was no plan of containment by NATO as in what do we after the fighting ends. Well to me at the time it was obvious the UCK were going to take advantage of the situation and some would be hell bent on revenge. A lot of kosovans suffered years of oppression but at the same time it does not justify some of things that have happened since. Kosovo is one of those things you can argue about until the world ends, one side wants to retain control and the other wants total independence - and neither will budge.
Did Milosevic order the killings of civilians? A guy in his position would never do so. He left that up to the military and police units as well as the psycho paramilitary thugs. But he knew what was going down and failed to act on it. To say he didn't would be daft. He oversaw 4 wars - slovenia, croatia, bosnia and kosovo and apart from slovenia people were ethically cleansed, murdered, executed in all of the others. He hid behind the local leaders (Babic, Martic, Karadzic, Plavsic) but he was pulling the strings and knew exactly what he was doing.
And to say people left because they were being bombed by NATO come on. Lets be honest, you don't pack up and leave everything behind just like that.
It was a shameful as well as brutal tactic of ethnic cleansing that occured again and again and again. A case of history repeating itself. It happened too many times.
During the fighting in Croatia, I had friends and family ordered to leave at gun point from their homes to then see their life belongings go up in smoke. The elderly father of a good family friend was butchered. It was nasty and people feared for their lives. And this happened on all sides throughout 3 of the 4 wars.
Milosevic was in the Hague answering the charges made against him for the part he played and make no mistake he was a criminal. He wasn't responsible for everything that happened, at the end of the day the people were the daft ones to follow such ogres.
Yes Bush is a criminal too, double-standards i am afraid, and I hate that too.
I thought Bill Bailey had a strange mind but you take the biscuit matey 
