Joe Cunningham: “while I agree with my friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), on the service of our military men and women…”

“while I agree with my friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), on the service of our military men and women, because their efforts are laudatory, I disagree extremely with the laudatory comments about our diplomatic corps and the President in this effort. As a veteran, it is sickening to me, and I will tell my colleagues why. The total number of people killed in Kosovo prior to our bombing was 2,012. We have killed more than five times that amount in our bombing, and yet we are supposed to be saving people. There has been a forced and increased evacuation of Albanians outside of the country. The United States flew 85 percent of all the sorties and provided 90 percent of all of the weapons, and we are only supposed to pay 15 percent of it. If my colleagues will remember, in Desert Storm, George Bush actually made $2 billion. We did not have to spend $100 billion in the war and rebuilding Kosovo. Rambouillet was a joke to start with and, in my opinion, caused us to go there. Jesse Jackson said that we need to understand both sides of an issue. One, what were the fears of the Serbs? One, that the number of Serbs that were killed by the KLA was going to continue if Rambouillet existed. There are 300,000 Albanians that live in Yugoslavia that have not left, where the KLA is not. Secondly, that none of their police forces could stay and protect the Serbs. And we can see what is happening today there.”