Thanks. I was bracing myself for the response to this, but the only objections so far have been from an apparently somewhat anti-Serb commenter at dKos, and were answerable.

More things could have been mentioned, such as William Cohen's infamous claims on May 16 of 100,000 murdered Albanians in mass graves, which evaporated like Iraqi WMD. (And Cohen wasn't even keen on intervention. The State Dept. at one point spoke of 500,000).

There are many parallels between the two wars, from the fact that both enemy statesmen agreed to the bulk of the respective ultimata, via the inadequate planning for the aftermath, to the brash dismissal of a need for explicit UNSC mandate. Especially the latter suggests that the Kosovo War became an important political stepping-stone to the Iraq War, an idea not weakened by this period piece from our friends at PNAC: 'Kosovo and the Republican Future' (pdf).

The world's northernmost desert wind.