Carl quotes *The Telegraph*:
"Despite the outcome, preliminary inquiries into the war are revealing some uncomfortable truths for soldiers and politicians seeking lessons from the Kosovo operation. Their findings will shape new military and diplomatic approaches as to how the West deals with maverick leaders and rogue states which confront them in future.
The main finding of the Nato inquiry is that despite the thousands of bombing sorties, they failed to damage the Yugoslav field army tactically in Kosovo while the strategic bombing of targets such as bridges and factories was poorly planned and executed."
If they'd been 'seeking lessons', Carl, they'd have looked at *any* account of *any* strategic bombing exercise in history since 1943, when hundreds of thousands of German civilians died, civilian morale stayed firm, factory production went up and innovation boomed. Those bastards learn this stuff at military school (either that, or your taxes are criminally wasted). The only foreseeable development since then is that the much lauded improvements in accuracy are such that factories (which are big, stationary and marked on tourist maps) can now be destroyed with some certainty.
And Michael quotes Stratfor's cutting edge, industrial strength, strategic intelligence assessment at us. Milo's bum will stay in the chair because:
(a) The first is the power of Serbian resentment and sense of martyrdom;
(b) openly acknowledged by the opposition, is that Milosevic is still firmly in control of the military and the police; and
(c) the opposition itself is fractured.
Impressive stuff, eh? The collected works of the order's seers-in-chief discover in late July what this list was almost unanimously mumbling to itself in late March. Either we're all particularly gifted military historians and geo-political strategists, or the bleeding obvious truth has been officially denied for five months. I mean no offence when I opt for the latter.
Cheers, Rob.