Orrin Hatch: “I wish to address the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina--a situation that currently threatens to result in a…”

“I wish to address the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina--a situation that currently threatens to result in a humiliation for the United States at the hands of a third-rate power. If we fail to change course, it will be an indictment of our judgment as a world power and of our moral character as the leader of the democratic world. Gorazde is a glimpse of the future under the administration's policy. Today, 65,000 defenseless Bosnian civilians in Gorazde are at the mercy of Serbian forces who have proven to be world-class genocidal executioners. A more abject failure of policy could not be scripted. It will get worse. The number of defenseless civilians in Gorazde is higher than the population Ogden or Orem, UT. I predict that we will see hundreds or thousands of Bosnians who fought to defend their land and their families summarily executed or shipped off to camps in Serbia. This happened at Vukovar in Croatia, and there is no reason to believe the Serbs at Gorazde will be any less brutal. What the President proposed the other day is totally inadequate. He himself admitted in his press conference that additional airstrikes alone cannot stop further Serbian aggression or silence Serbian guns. The Serbs know what they want--that is, to conquer Bosnia. The Clinton administration has no idea of what it wants to do or how to do it. It has hesitated, vacillated, and equivocated.…”