Any effort to bring the KLA into the peace process must be backed by some heavy handed political tactics and a lot of money for its leaders. Otherwise, why would the KLA members not hold out for the independent state of Kosovo they want? As long as they can continue the war in concert with their air support from NATO, the Kosovo Liberation Army has nothing to gain by a cessation of hostilities until they achieve complete victory over the Serbian Army. The KLA's best course of action is to continue the war, recruit and train new soldiers, build a war chest from their narcotics operations, dig in their cleats and wait for an independent Kosovo instead of the "autonomous region" they were promised. Time is on the side of the KLA in this conflict as long as they can keep it going.
But, a convergence of affairs argues for a resolution soon to the Kosovo crisis. There are chinks beginning to appear in the unity of the NATO allies. One news item recently reported that President Clinton told his good friend Tony Blair of Great Britain to just shut up about using NATO troops to force an entry into Kosovo. President Clinton's personal approval ratings in the United States are in a state of free fall. From an impeachment era high of around 65 per cent, his current job approval rating is now under 50 per cent to the high 40s. The American Congress, on both sides of the aisle, are becoming increasingly restless in the face of an air campaign that seems to be having little adverse effect against Milosevic's "rope-a-dope" tactics. Clinton's fellow traveler in The New World Order, Germany's Gerhard Schroeder, is meeting with the Russians to try and find a diplomatic solution to the Kosovo conflict. We can expect a diplomatic breakthrough of some type within the month with the Russians probably regaining some their former prestige on the world stage as players in the Balkans. Of course, the breakthrough will, of necessity, be of the type that allows all parties in the conflict to claim victory.
Once victory is declared in the Balkans, where will we put the displaced ethnic Albanian refugees who left home to avoid the bombing only to have their houses destroyed in the fighting? Well, if nothing else, America is an equal opportunity warrior. While we have, thus far, been using our mechanical engineers to build weapons, we can now call on our civil engineers to build fresh targets in Kosovo. Press reports recently have placed advance teams from American construction companies such as Brown and Root in Macedonia and Albania. That's not much of a stretch. Although these folks might be in that area to oversee construction of temporary housing for the refugees, chances are that they are laying plans to reconstruct the damage done in Kosovo.
All of the online databases on the web show that sanitation in Kosovo is "primitive." I don't know if that means the destroyed hovels had one or two hole outdoor toilets, but I don't believe those mud huts we've seen burning or destroyed in the news footage from Kosovo measure up to what we consider a snug home in America. As a measuring tool, the CIA World Fact Book states that for 3.33 million residents in Albania, the closest neighbor to Kosovo, Albania has a total of 55 000 telephones. This area of the Balkans is only slightly ahead of sub-Sahara Africa in per capita income. However, you know that the liberals running the American government are not going to send the refugees back to such substandard housing. When the American tax payer gets the bill for rebuilding the huts in Kosovo, we'll all think our bombs have been taking out mansions in Hollywood Hills or Malibu Beach instead of toilet unattached mud huts.
For those of you keeping score, Brown and Root, the American contractor already setting up shop for construction in the Balkans is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation. The Chief Executive Officer of the Halliburton Corporation is Richard B. "Dick" Cheney, the Secretary of Defense under President Bush during the Gulf War. One of the members of Halliburton's Board of Directors is Lawrence S. Eagleburger, President Bush's last Secretary of State. The golden boy "money man" of the Clinton Administration, Robert E. Rubin, Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury, announced his decision to resign and return to investment banking just in time for the largest building project of the decade.
Now what do you think such widely disparate personalities as Madeleine Albright, Samuel Berger, Lawrence Eagleburger, Robert Rubin, Dick Cheney, and William S. Cohen all have in common? They are all members in good standing of the Council on Foreign Relations. There are no Democrats or Republicans in that august body, there are only Globalists and millionaires. If you are still not convinced of the validity of that statement, just wait until you see how much money Halliburton and its subsidiaries are paid to rebuild the mud huts of Kosovo.
Of course, the fitness of Brown and Root to perform the work will have
to be approved by Albright and company with the contracts probably brokered
through or financed by Rubin or one of his surrogates. But, in the end,
Hillary will be able to return to the ethnic Albanian refugees, and any
relatives they may have in New York, and tell them she has been able to
grant their request "To just go home." See, nothing is impossible
to a liberal if there is a checkbook near by. 
The author is a Purple Heart veteran of an 18 month combat tour in Vietnam as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division and a Green Beret with the 5th Special Forces Group. When he returned home, he entered police work and rose through the ranks from uniformed patrol officer with the City of Birmingham to finally serve as a Special Agent with the U.S. Treasury Department. He holds a BS in Accounting, an MA in Military History, and has done extensive post graduate work toward his doctorate at the University of Alabama and The George Washington University in Washington, DC. He now resides on the Alabama Gulf Coast in Foley, AL, and can be reached at lshoultz@gulftel.com. Reprinted with the permission of News-Minute which can be found at http://www.newsminute.com/home.htm.