Yeah, that would have been a fine propaganda issue to be exploited by the U.S. government, a wedge you could drive between the black man-in-the-street in, say, Nigeria, and the Islamic fundamentalists, pointing out the fact that pale-skinned Arab Moslems, for all their blather about pan=African solidarity, evidently had no hesitation at all about wiping out several hundred black Africans, backhanded like you'd swat flies, in the course of delivering a blow against their U.S. enemies.
It would have been a useful wedge, before those nitwits in Washington decided to open hostilities from our side by firing guided missiles into an African city full of civilians.
What the Hell is going on up there in Washington, anyway? Do one hundred percent of our decisions in international politics have to get made by the Pentagon and Langley? Have those morons completely forgotten the concept of "diplomacy"? Don't we have a State Department any more? Even if not, why didn't the White House janitor or somebody like that point out that, gee, you lose points in the public relations game big time when you bomb civilians in cities?
I think this was the stupidest single move in Clinton's entire presidency; as some amoralist said once in a similar context, "not merely a crime but worse, a blunder".
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net