Bill Clinton: “Well, I don't think we're going to destroy the country. We're doing our very best, and these pilots have risked their…”

“Well, I don't think we're going to destroy the country. We're doing our very best, and these pilots have risked their lives on more than one occasion to avoid doing collateral damage. Very often, for example, the weapons fired at the airplanes are fired from heavily populated urban areas. And in former times, without a second thought, our planes would have fired right in there at those weapons, knowing that they would kill a lot of civilians. They don't do that. They really risk a lot to avoid destroying innocent civilians and to avoid destroying the country. But I do believe that we now have 10 years of evidence--this is not the same thing as Vietnam--we have 10 years of evidence that this man has built a power base on convincing the Serb military that they have the right to kill, rape, destroy, and uproot the history and culture of the Muslim people in Kosovo and in Bosnia, and to a lesser extent, the Catholic people in Bosnia. And we stopped it in Bosnia, but we can reverse it in Kosovo, and the people can go home. I think that--I realize that the average citizen in the street in Belgrade doesn't know what he's done. I don't believe they do. I believe that the truth has been kept from them. But we have to be prepared to pursue this campaign until it is clear that sticking with the strategy he has is more costly to him than meeting the conditions that we have laid down and looking forward to a different future for Serbia. So it's not a conventional thing where there's one side's going to win and one side's going to lose because one faction will control a whole country. It's not Vietnam. It's not a civil war. It's not communism versus noncommunism. It's about one dictator's ability to throw a whole region in turmoil over the principle of ethnic cleansing. And it is a problem around the world. We have the capacity to stop it and reverse it here, and I think we have to do it. It's not just the United States; it's 19 countries. Duration of Kosovo Action Mr. Brokaw. But based on what you heard here today, do you think that this war will have to go all the way through until September?”