Pentagon: Difficult to say we've 'prevented one act of brutality'

[Josh Mason]

>From cnn.com, something for the pro-bombing leftists, who seem to be more Catholic
than the pope when it comes to the efficacy of humanitarian bombing runs. 

Josh

Pentagon: Difficult to say

                  we've 'prevented one act of

                  brutality'

                  NATO: 'New heights' of

                  ethnic cleansing in

                  Kosovo

                  March 30, 1999

                  Web posted at: 5:48 p.m. EST (2248 GMT)

                  BRUSSELS, Belgium (CNN) --

                  NATO said Tuesday that a Serb-led

                  ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo

                  has reached "new heights," forcing

                  118,000 ethnic Albanians to flee their

                  homes within the past week. 

                  NATO spokesman Jamie Shea,

                  addressing a news conference at the

                  alliance's headquarters, said the town

                  of Pec -- Kosovo's second largest

                  city, with a former population of

                  100,000 -- had been "almost totally

                  destroyed." 

                  NATO's military spokesman, Royal

                  Air Force Air Commodore David

                  Wilby, said the ethnic cleansing

                  campaign had clearly reached "new

                  heights." 

                  He said the reported pattern of

                  violence was that Serb tanks were

                  surrounding villages, then

                  "paramilitaries are going in, rounding

                  up civilians at gunpoint, separating

                  young men from women and

                  children." 

                  "The women and children are then

                  expelled from their homes and then

                  sent toward the border. After they

                  have left the villages, the homes are

                  looted and then systematically

                  torched," Shea said. 

                  He added that if those reports were

                  confirmed, "This is something that we haven't seen since the forced

                  evacuation of Phnom Penh in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge during the

                  1970s." 

                  It will take time for NATO to exert enough pressure to stop the reported

                  repression, Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said Tuesday. 

                  "I think right now it is -- it is difficult to say that we have prevented one act

                  of brutality at this stage," said Bacon. 

           [SNIP]