The Bombing Of Yugoslavia

This Monday just gone marked the fifteenth anniversary of the beginning of the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Against the wishes of the United Nations, NATO air forces bombed Yugoslavia, in what was a war crime, as yet unpunished and never likely to be punished. The excuse for this expansion of NATO power was the old one of human rights and humanitarian intervention. The consequence was the establishment in Kosovo of a narco-mafia state and an enormous United States military base.
Bombs were dropped, sowing the land with depleted uranium. Cluster bombs were dropped causing their victims death if they were lucky, horrific injuries if not.
In reality, the bombing of Yugoslavia was small stuff compared to the later terrorist bombings of Iraq and Libya, but for the terrorists a precedent was set, the bombers got away with their crimes, and a new era of aggressive militarist expansion was set in place, as the Empire of Bases expanded while the West declined, sunk in decadence and debt.
Here is a list taken from a BBC report of 1st June 1999, entitled 'NATO's bombing blunders.'
5th April: homes hit in the mining town of Aleksinac.
12th April: train destroyed near Leskovak.
14th April: refugees bombed in Kosovo.
27th April: civilian homes struck in Surdulica.
28th April: Sofia hit - stray bomb on Bulgarian capital.
1st May: bus bombing at Luzane bridge, Pristina.
6th May: cluster bomb hits Nis - hospital and market bombed.
7th May: Chinese embassy hit in Belgrade.
13th May: Kosovo village bombed, children, homes and tractors mangled and destroyed.
19th May: Belgrade hospital struck.
30th May: civilians die on the bridge at Varvian, Serbia.
31st May: Apartment block struck at Novo Pazar.

Later on relatives of 50 Italian soldiers claimed that they had died as a result of exposure to depleted uranium.

No doubt Madeleine Albright thought it was a price worth paying for the expansion of NATO power.