Bill Clinton: “Yes--Secretary Albright did. And I just--I've been dealing with Mr. Milosevic now a long time, you know, more than 6…”

“Yes--Secretary Albright did. And I just--I've been dealing with Mr. Milosevic now a long time, you know, more than 6 years, and I think I have some understanding of the politics and the environment in Serbia. And I just felt if we kept pounding away that we could raise the price to a point where it would no longer make any sense for him to go on and where he could no longer maintain his position if he did. And I regret that he required his people to go through what they have gone through, to lower their incomes as much as they've been lowered and to erode their quality of life as much as it's been eroded and even to have the civilian casualties which have been sustained, although they're far, far less than they were in Desert Storm after the bombing, for example. Still, I hate it. But what we did miraculously resulted in no combat air losses to our people--we did lose two fine Army airmen in training--and minimized the losses to their people, to their civilians. But it did a terrible amount of damage. And finally, they couldn't go on; it didn't make any sense. Mr. Lehrer. Mr. President, as I'm sure you're aware, the fact of no casualties by NATO has been used as a criticism of the whole approach here--that yes, ethnic cleansing was bad in Kosovo; yes, we needed to do something; but it wasn't worth risking any American lives to do so.”