Bill Clinton: “Not after the beginning. When we started this, I thought there would be one of three possible scenarios. First of all, I…”

“Not after the beginning. When we started this, I thought there would be one of three possible scenarios. First of all, I absolutely reject the theory that some people have advanced that what he did was worse than he would have done if we hadn't bombed as early as we did. I just simply don't believe that. He had this plan laid out; he was going to carry it into effect last October. He didn't do it because of the threat of bombing. So what I knew was that if he decided to behave as he had in Bosnia, that there would be a day or two of bombing, then we'd make this agreement that we made today, or a couple of days ago, and it would be over; but that there was a strong chance that it would not, because in the mind of Mr. Milosevic there was a big difference between Bosnia and Kosovo. Bosnia was something that he wanted badly that he didn't have. Kosovo was something that he had that he wanted to take absolute control of by running people out of. So once he decided to take the bombing, I was not surprised that he took it for quite a long while, because he kept looking for ways to break the unity of NATO. He kept looking for ways to turn someone against what we were doing. Of course, the third scenario was that the bombing never worked and we had to take even more aggressive measures. But I always thought there was a much better than 50-50 chance that this bombing campaign would work. And I am gratified that it has achieved our objectives. Mr. Lehrer. What was it, or who was it, that convinced you that bombing alone would work?”