Word: serb
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Even as General Clark insisted he was not engaged in a race with the Serbs, he pressed Western capitals for reinforcements. Washington rushed to comply, and by week's end the Pentagon had dispatched more F-117A Stealths, B-52 bombers, Prowler radar jammers and refueling tankers, as well as B-1 bombers, to give NATO enough aircraft for round-the-clock operations. Top brass weighed the risks of sending in radar-visible Apache helicopter gunships that could lay down a withering blanket of bullets and rockets against small concentrations of Serb tanks and armor. There was also some worry...
...White House aides realized that even stepped-up air assaults might not slow the Serb offensive quickly enough, a few began debating among themselves whether a ground attack should be considered. In public the Administration carefully stops short of categorically ruling it out. But the talk among policymakers has never progressed beyond the instant conclusion that "we don't think the American people would support that." Neither, they reckoned, would Congress. They didn't order up contingency plans for such an operation or even broach the subject with Clinton, who remains opposed to the idea...
...Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were leery of any such mission, especially when its goals seemed vague. Now it is obvious that NATO could not have built up such a force before Milosevic had gobbled up Kosovo. And sending in ground forces in the face of Serb resistance would be bloody. Mountainous Balkan terrain makes for tougher fighting than Iraq's wide open deserts; Serbs would hold the high ground, including passes too narrow for tanks; mines salt the few roads and bridges. Such pitfalls loom large for officers who came of age in Vietnam. "Part...
...over to a proxy army of K.L.A. fighters outfitted by the West with effective Stinger missiles and antitank rockets. But U.S. and NATO officials feared that arming one side would only widen the war and destabilize the entire region. By now it may simply be too late: on Friday Serb officials were crowing that they would finish mopping up the shattered rebel force in a couple of days...
...that leaves the new battle plan looking pretty much like the old one. More sorties from more planes--if the weather improves--will try to rattle Milosevic by hitting him close to home. The classified guidance for this phase calls for attacks sufficient to break the will of the Serb leader. But some Pentagon officers wonder how wrecking Yugoslavia's military headquarters will do anything to curb violence against the Kosovars. "The Serbs in the field are just thugs on a rampage," says a Navy planner. "They don't need guidance on how to knock down doors and kill people...