Byron Dorgan: “I am one of those who voted to support airstrikes in Kosovo. We voted to give the President the authority to commit U.S.…”

“I am one of those who voted to support airstrikes in Kosovo. We voted to give the President the authority to commit U.S. troops and airplanes to conduct airstrikes only, along with our NATO allies, to respond to the ethnic cleansing and the genocide that has been occurring in Kosovo. I believe it is in our national interest to respond in these circumstances when we see genocide being committed. When we see ethnic cleansing on the scale as has been committed in Kosovo, we have a responsibility as a community of nations to respond to it, to try to help and to save the lives of those poor, innocent people who are being repressed and in a good many cases murdered, and certainly in hundreds of thousands of cases removed from their homeland, by a tyrant, by someone who does not respect international law. Over 630,000 refugees have been forced from their homes in Kosovo, 25,000 of them loaded on trains in scenes that are reminiscent of the late stages in World War II, sending of the folks to the death camps in the Second World War. Reports of mass executions, burned villages, rapes and robberies--all of this is rampant. I supported the airstrikes as part of a NATO response to stop this ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.”