The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, coverage of the expanding Kosovo bombing with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner and four military analysts; plus a Clarence Page essay about Duke Ellington, the great man of American music. Once again, we'll have the other news of this Wednesday at the end of the program tonight.

FOCUS - OPERATION ALLIED FORCE

JIM LEHRER: NATO's aerial assault on Yugoslavia has expanded today. New targets included some in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade. And the Russians, still opposed to the bombing, said they were sending warships to the Mediterranean to monitor the operation. Tom Bearden narrates our summary report.

TOM BEARDEN: NATO officials say attacks on Serbian ground forces have been hampered by bad weather, but Air Commodore David Wilby said last night's strike results were encouraging nonetheless.

DAVID WILBY: Because of the adverse weather conditions, not all aircraft released their weapons. However, we did manage to hit a full spectrum of targets using both manned aircraft and missile platforms. This is a pre-strike photo of the Novisad heliport and vehicle storage facility 31 miles Northwest of Belgrade. This is the photo taken after some of our attacks. You can see the damage in the highlighted areas. The first target is an army H-Q and ammunition storage facility. The second and third videos show attacks on a fuel storage facility. And the second target is actually a buried facility. You'll see that sometimes we use multiple bombs in our deliveries. Attacks on this sort of installation have caused them to ration and redirect all available fuel reserves to the offensive military effort in Kosovo.

TOM BEARDEN: NATO is being forced to ration, too. US Cruise Missiles are in short supply, having been used extensively against Iraq and elsewhere over the last several years. The million dollar per copy missiles are the weapon of choice in attacking heavily defended targets, because they are highly accurate and don't risk the life of a human pilot. And while NATO says it has degraded Yugoslavia's Soviet-manufactured air defense system, the alliance concedes it's proven to be a tougher nut to crack than anticipated. That's prompted NATO member countries to widen the scope and the pace of the air campaign. But Spokesman Jamie Shea cautioned against describing it as entering a new phase.

JAMIE SHEA: I've seen some reports in the press today that NATO has decided to go to phase 3. This is not the case. Yesterday, simply to clarify what has happened, SACO was authorized by the secretary-general after consultation with allies to extend the range and the tempo of operations in order to maximize the effectiveness of the campaign. But this is not phase 3 as such. In fact, I think to some degree it's misleading to talk of phases, because what we are actually seeing is one campaign, one strategy, one objective, which is simply to make an aggressor pay the price for unacceptable behavior, which cannot be tolerated, cannot be tolerated under any circumstances.

TOM BEARDEN: The behavior Shea referred to is what NATO describes as a massive ethnic cleansing operation being carried out by Serbian forces against the population of Kosovo. NATO says Serbian army and paramilitary police are going literally door to door and telling people to leave the country or face summary execution. NATO accused the Milosevic government of stripping the refugees of all official documentation as part of a plan to prevent them from ever returning to Kosovo.

JAMIE SHEA: The Yugoslav forces, so we are learning, are destroying the archives of the Kosovar people; property deeds, marriage licenses, birth certificates, financial and other records, public records are being systematically destroyed. This is a kind of Orwellian scenario of attemptingto deprive a people and a culture of the sense of past and the sense of community on which it depends. This attempt to rewrite history reminds me of George Orwell's "1984" which I used to believe was fiction but now seems to be actually happening in reality.

TOM BEARDEN: Kosovars continue to flee by the tens of thousands and threaten to overwhelm bordering countries like Albania, whose economy had already been struggling. The Albanian ambassador to NATO issued an urgent plea for help.

ARTUR KUKO, Albanian Ambassador to NATO: Imagine what it means for a small, impoverished nation to handle such a crisis. The government is doing everything it can to address this crisis, the local population is also mobilized, but the crisis is aggravating every hour and is well beyond what we can do. The international community is mobilizing its efforts to come to our assistance, and I would like to emphasize that it is an issue of extreme emergency, it demands concerted and urgent action.

TOM BEARDEN: Relief planes began arriving in Bonino, Albania today. The Clinton administration is vowing to contribute $50 million to refugee relief. Other NATO members are also pledging support. On the diplomatic front, Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov returned home today, his effort to broker a cease-fire yesterday a failure. He accused NATO of already having made up its mind to continue the bombing campaign.

YVGENY PRIMAKOV, Prime Minister, Russia: [speaking through interpreter] The Yugoslav side has given a signal that, if so desired, can be interpreted as a signal to stop the air strikes. When we arrived in Bonn, we became convinced that NATO has an agreed line aimed at continuing military action on Yugoslav territory. This military action can lead to nothing but new complications for the world. They will lead neither to stabilization in Kosovo nor to stabilization in the Balkans. They can only complicate the situation on a global level.

TOM BEARDEN: Later in the day, the Russian government announced its intention to deploy as many as seven warships to the Mediterranean to monitor the situation. The State Department reacted to that this afternoon.

JAMES RUBIN, State Department Spokesman: We are obviously concerned by the signal such a large deployment might send to Belgrade and to other countries in the region. While the Russian foreign ministry has made it quite clear that Russia does not intend to become entangled in the conflict in the Balkans, and President Yeltsin made that very clear yesterday, the deployment of these ships we don't see as a particularly helpful gesture.

TOM BEARDEN: Some members of the Russian parliament are unhappy with the way their government is handling the situation. A fight broke out in the Duma when some members charged that the Primakov initiative was designed only to build domestic political capital for the upcoming December elections. Russian citizens showed their displeasure with NATO and the US in the city of Rostov. Demonstrators destroyed US-imported goods and defaced US flags. In Washington, a group of former US Defense and diplomatic officials called for ground troops to be deployed to ensure Kosovo's security, a recommendation the administration has repeatedly rejected.

FRANK CARLUCCI, Former Secretary of Defense: I would assign to them the mission of obliging Milosevic to withdraw his troops from Kosovo, and ensuring the future security of Kosovo. and that might require some presence on the ground for a long period of time. How long this would take is anybody's guess at this point. The Pentagon has said it would require at least 200,000 troops. I should think it would require at least that, and it would be a sustained conflict. I don't think we ought to underestimate the difficulties of doing this, but once you start threatening the use of force and your bluff is called and you use force, then we have to prevail. There's just no question about it, and the future of NATO as well as the future of the people of Kosovo is very much at stake.

TOM BEARDEN: In front of the White House this afternoon, more than 2,000 Albanian-American demonstrators rallied in support of NATO attacks. The group called for Kosovo's independence and for NATO to send in ground troops to defeat Milosevic.

JIM LEHRER: NATO said its Internet home page and E-mail system were being jammed with computer viruses and E-mail from Yugoslavia. A spokesman said military computers were not affected. For more details on the worsening refugee situation, we have three reports from Independent Television News from Tom Bradby, Colin Baker, and Mark Austin.

TOM BRADBY: Across the border in neighboring Albania, the sheer volume of refugees was creating new tensions, which were spilling over into lawlessness. Some locals were robbing refugees, this man arrested in the square this morning. The police were wearing balaclavas because they did not want to be recognized by friends and neighbors as they tried to ensure it was brought to a halt. Most locals are helping, but they can't cope with the numbers, and the police began to panic today, shouting at the refugees to load up so they could be transported South. This child was put on the wrong truck, and almost left without his mother. Of course, many were crying today, the adults faced with questions no parent wants to answer, and none here can. What is happening? Why is it happening? What will become of us? At the border, the people still came. What becomes more and more striking as each day passes is the sheer scale of this tragedy. Standing here, thousands and thousands continue to stream past. And as they come, the Serbs are taking away their documents and their passports so that they have no proof of their nationality. Bedri and Savdir had abandoned their tractor and come on, on foot. Both their children had chicken pox, and had cried all the way. They were totally exhausted, but local Albanians bundled them into a car and took them to hospital. They explained they had had to take the children from their beds once the Serbs began shelling the village.

WOMAN: [speaking through interpreter] It would have been better to die together with our kids in our home than to suffer like this.

TOM BRADBY: Tonight, the Crizin family have nothing, know nothing of their future, and are left to suffer the despair of the dispossessed.

COLIN BAKER: They are using trains now to cleanse Kosovo, a race of people being killed and expelled, a dark shade of history repeated, and a cry uttered six decades ago is now heard again: "Who will help us?" But not the Macedonians this time. The refugees were kept on the train at the border. Only a few were allowed off. They had been rounded up at gun point by the Serbs, made to board the train. They thought they were going to their deaths. Then they saw the border. But instead of safety, only despair, as they realized they were being sent back, back to the hell they thought they'd escaped 12 hours earlier. But the train did come back this morning. This time, the refugees, 2,000 of them, were allowed to walk across the frontier, their last week's experiences horrifying.

WOMAN: I just wanted to say just if somebody can hear me, just if somebody can help us. Our people -- I don't know what to say. I stay in the basement three days and wait for somebody to kill us.

COLIN BAKER: Her two sisters were killed, but she's concerned now for those still alive in Kosovo.

WOMAN: If they stayed there one day more, today they are going to die, some of them.

COLIN BAKER: Estler Bislamy came on the train with her family. They'd hidden from the Serbs for a week.

ESTLER BISLAMY: We were more than 2,000 people in one train with -- without no tickets, like animals in train.

COLIN BAKER: We walked for a while. It didn't matter where, because it was away from the past.

COLIN BAKER: What did you think was going to happen to you when they put you on the train?

ESTLER BISLAMY: To die. What else? To die.

COLIN BAKER: Their stories are all identical: Of fear, of shootings, of death, of anarchy targeted against the ethnic Albanians, and once again, stories of trains being used in Europe like cattle trucks, to remove the unwanted.

MARK AUSTIN: In the freezing mountains high above Kosovo, the old and the weak are struggling to survive. These are the stragglers in the exodus of fear. Stuck in the snow, a van we found carrying a cargo of human misery. They are the women and the children from one small village in Kosovo. Their husbands and fathers are missing. The driver told us they were taken away by Serb paramilitaries. If it's true, they may never see their men folk again. This woman, who's walked for 36 hours with her daughter, said her husband was a fighter in the Kosovo Liberation Army. He'd been captured with others, and she said they were herded together at Serb military installations, the targets of NATO bombing. They are uncorroborated stories, like all the stories emerging from Kosovo at the moment. But almost everyone fleeing from their homeland is saying the same thing. Heavy overnight snow in the mountains has stemmed the flow of refugees. Those who made it across say thousands of others are stranded, cold and hungry. But the vast majority of the ethnic Albanian population are either out or coming out. These refugees are now safe. They tell us the only people left in their town are those too weak to leave or those still fighting the Serbs. Through a campaign of systematic violence and killing or simply through the threat of it, the Serbs have achieved what they want to achieve. This tiny republic of Yugoslavia is under intense strain, but they are keeping the border open for refugees. Some have relatives here, but most are in desperate need.

WOMAN: Please help us. You see my baby asleep. I don't know where to go. Not just I, but all the people from Kosovo. Please help us.

MARK AUSTIN: Do you think you'll ever go back to your homes?

WOMAN: What?

MARK AUSTIN: Do you think you will ever go back to your homes?

WOMAN: No, no, I'm afraid. No. Never. Never.

MARK AUSTIN: In the panic to leave, families have been split up, children lost.

MAN: I don't know where is my woman, where is my children, where is my sister and family.

MARK AUSTIN: You don't know where they are?

MAN: No, don't know. Maybe today come, I don't know.

MARK AUSTIN: Going back into Kosovo, these two nuns to look for their fellow sisters who have been working inside the province. But otherwise, it is a one-way flow, the other way.

NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: The Senate Armed Services Committee has been receiving regular briefings on the war. We get ours now from the Committee's Chairman, Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia.

Senator, can you add-- those are terribly moving stories.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Indeed they are, Jim, and about six months ago, I was in Kosovo and saw the suffering from the Milosevic butchery campaign last summer. And we had hoped, after the Holbrooke mission, that we'd reached some accord, and then of course Rambouillet, and it fell apart. And whatever we discuss tonight and our panel to follow, I'm sure there's grounds for what if and criticism, but I would urge all at this time to focus on the risks being taken tonight by American fliers, and those of eight other allied NATO nations, as they continue to carry out this military campaign.

JIM LEHRER: Have you heard anything in any of your briefings, Senator, that would lead you not to believe the stories of these refugees as to what is going on and why they are leaving Kosovo?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: No, I think there's a mounting body of evidence to corroborate these tragic stories by individuals.

JIM LEHRER: In a general way, how do you feel about this mission, eight days after it began?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Well, we had, I think, a basis to believe that Milosevic would not have subjected his own people in Belgrade and elsewhere to the type of very serious damage being inflicted by the air campaign. But he has not, for reasons, perhaps some day we will learn more fully. I think all the diplomatic efforts, including perhaps the futile one by Primakov have been made, and he only historically responds to military pressure. And we've got to stay the course. There are no other alternatives. I know that valued colleagues of mine have thought about let's arm the Kosovars. In my judgment, and this is just one person's judgment, I think within two weeks he will pretty well have fulfilled his objectives in Kosovo of ridding the Kosovar army of any ability to combat his takeover of that region.

JIM LEHRER: And so there's literally nothing NATO could do about it now even if they wanted to?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Well, NATO has been doing everything they can. Weather has been a serious obstacle; terrain is like an enemy.

JIM LEHRER: Why is that?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Well, because -- I've walked those hills and seen them, it's very mountainous and pockets of fog hang in; bad weather can come up in a matter of minutes and obscure a target. NATO has done everything it can within the frame work of the use of air power and is continuing. We're moving into -- I don't know, whether it's phase one, two or three, that's irrelevant. What we're doing now is concentrating on those assets that Milosevic personally needs to continue to conduct his campaign in Kosovo, and perhaps pose a greater threat across the borders.

JIM LEHRER: Now, that includes some military targets right in downtown Belgrade, does it not?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Well, I should not -- nor should any of us -- discuss specific targets, but the NATO people -- mind you, this campaign is not just an American campaign, it was planned by 19 nations and presumably the best military staff that can be brought together and reach a consensus. That's why we should stick with it. But we shouldn't discuss targets. But we know we're going to bring it to his command and control and his ability to communicate with his field commanders, and at the same time, to the extent weather and other factors, like shoulder-held weapons, which they have in abundance down there with the tanks in Kosovo, to the extent we can, we're going to bring pressure on those military units, trying to clean out the pockets of the Kosovar resistance.

JIM LEHRER: Now you mention -

SEN. JOHN WARNER: The KLA.

JIM LEHRER: Yes, the KLA. Now, is the K LA effective, is the KLA resisting this?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: This is a legitimate question. And I think we should at some point in time examine the intelligence we once had, which indicated it was substantial and formidable. But I have not as yet seen they have put up the type of fight that I thought they would in trying to resist this ethnic cleansing of tragic proportions.

JIM LEHRER: Well, should we arm them more?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: I think not because, remember, the US -- and that thought only originated in the United States -- the US has been one of a team player of 19 nations. And to inject that here in the closing days of what I believe is Milosevic's ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo, he's created the problem he set out to do, in other words, in the adjoining areas with the refugees; he's pretty well subdued whatever KLA opposition once existed, and now he feels he's going to consolidate those gains and then face the world. But in the meantime, we're going to continue to bring very severe and hopefully unacceptable damage on his command and control and possibly targets in the central region that you mentioned.

JIM LEHRER: But Senator, if I'm understanding what you're saying, Milosevic has already accomplished what he set out to do. We're talking about reversing something, is that right?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: He hasn't fully accomplished that, because, in doing so, he's degraded his military, and within the next 10 days, there will be, I think, much more than we've been able to deal thus far in the way of damage. But the ethnic cleansing part probably, and this is just my judgment, will be completed in a matter of weeks. That's why when people say let's bring to bare ground forces, that requires a very considerable amount of time to transport and put in place elements, tanks, heavy equipment, artillery, helicopters that would be used to support those ground units. That option, practically speaking, is not there.

JIM LEHRER: And a lot of people misunderstand that, don't they, Senator? They think, oh, well, let's put in ground troops, somebody snaps their finger, and suddenly there are 200,000 ground troops. Forget it, right?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: The ones in Macedonia were designed and equipped primarily for quick extraction of the UN forces and the other humanitarian people who were in there.

JIM LEHRER: That's 28,000 altogether?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: General number.

JIM LEHRER: Six thousand of them are American.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: They could probably deal with isolated units of the Serb army, but if you had to go through and attack the central forces of the Serb army, you need heavy armor of greater proportion that they have because, remember, any offensive operation, has to be better equipped than a defense. And they would essentially be put on defense if we were to attack.

JIM LEHRER: Everyone who appears to be in a position of authority within NATO and within the US Government, within the Pentagon, keeps saying that there are not even contingency plans for putting troops in there, with the exception of peacekeeping troops. Does that jibe with you?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: That's correct, and that has been the plan all along. Now, there were studies made, and I reviewed them last September and October, and they were significant numbers of people and heavy equipment, which had to be transported from the Adriatic Sea up through Albania -- is one of the main routes - and that was a logistic operation that would require a number of weeks.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with -- inour film clip we had Former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci saying it would take at least 200,000 troops; is that a figure that makes sense to you?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Well, some of the planning in NATO had very high estimates, but, again, as we talk to those issues, and I respect Secretary Carlucci, Former Secretary of Defense, but someone better look at where our assets, how quickly they could be brought to bare and the likelihood that Milosevic will not have completed what he set out to do by way of ethnic cleansing in the period of time within which you could bring those in.

JIM LEHRER: So then how do we win this thing? If in fact everybody is now saying no matter where they came down at the very beginning on this operation, Senator, most people are now saying that NATO must now win this; can NATO in fact win this without ground troops?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Well, you have to go back and examine very carefully the President's statement, which did he obliquely hint at, all right, Mr. Milosevic , if you do not stop what you're doing, then there may be within the NATO structure some thought independence for this country, and there, Mr. Milosevic , you will have lost your battle, because that's holy ground, the old 1389 battlefield. I actually went and saw it one time. That's holy ground.

JIM LEHRER: That's really holy ground for Serbs.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: That's right, absolutely.

JIM LEHRER: We did a long piece on it the other night on this program.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: The victory in terms of clear winning to me is quite elusive in this situation. But I do not at this point in time think we should be criticizing what has taken place because all these military people have done what they were ordered to do as best they could, considering the weather and the terrain and other factors.

JIM LEHRER: And one of those factors being told at the beginning, you can't use ground troops?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Clearly the political structure, and it's not just within -- although our President made it clear -- it was within the NATO framework of planning by this planning staff that that would not be an option. Otherwise, they could have pre-positioned the heavy tanks and military vehicles and artillery and the like and then had as an option -

JIM LEHRER: Which is what happened in Desert Storm.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: It's clearly what happened. And, now, of course, hindsight may be that you should not have abandoned any option in the beginning, put all options in place, and then determine whether or not to use it. But again, I think at this point in time, we've got to think about the safety of those people flying those missions and not go back and perform a lot of what if and what should have been done. Let's see it through, stick to it.

JIM LEHRER: But see it through with air power only.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: That's correct.

JIM LEHRER: And you believe -- and you know a lot more about this than anybody else -- you believe it can still happen with air power alone?

SEN. JOHN WARNER: To the extent we can with effective in containing Milosevic from going across his borders, destabilizing the other nations, and perhaps further suffering in the Kosovo region, air is the one option and we've got to pursue it. Now, again, I think probably in a matter of weeks he will have completed what he set out to do, because we do not have any indications that the K LA is going to give him that type of resistance that would delay his progress.

JIM LEHRER: So how do you feel about it yourself, Senator? You -

SEN. JOHN WARNER: Well, it's a human tragedy of great proportions. But you have to ask your question what if we had done nothing as a collection of 19 nations? Here in this most holy of weeks of Easter, and done nothing, and watched these same pictures -- how would you have reacted to that? So it seems to me that we had little choice but the 19 nations of mounting the actions they have taken today and to see them through to the finish.

JIM LEHRER: Senator, thank you very much.

SEN. JOHN WARNER: You bet, thank you.

FOCUS - ON THE FRONT LINE

JIM LEHRER: Next, a closer look at the military equipment and personnel on duty as part of NATO's mission. Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN: US Air Force A-10 Thunderbolts landed at Aviano Air Base in Italy today to participate in a new round of attacks against Yugoslavian ground forces. Pentagon Spokesman Ken Bacon explained their mission this afternoon.

KENNETH BACON: Our goal is to - as we've said many times - is to shift our ability toward attacking armor and troops on the ground, and we have begun to attack staging areas and other places where we find these tanks.

KWAME HOLMAN: The A-10 is nicknamed the "Warthog." It was highly successful searching out and destroying Iraqi tanks during the Gulf War.

MAJOR SCOTT VADNAIS, US Military Spokesman: The A-10 is a specially designed aircraft, it's designed specifically for close air support. It has a very large gatling gun on the nose that can fire up to 4,000 rounds a minute. It's designed to take out tanks, armored vehicles, as well as the softer targets like trucks or troop concentrations.

KWAME HOLMAN: The A-10's, however, fly relatively slowly and at such low altitudes they are at great risk of return fire. One week into NATO's military mission against Yugoslavia only one aircraft has been lost, an American F-117 Stealth fighter shot down over Yugoslavia over the weekend. The pilot was rescued, but the incident reinforced that all allied planes are vulnerable.

BRIGADIER GENERAL WILLIAM LAKE, Commander, 49th Fighter Wing: Combat is a dangerous business, and the F-117 is tasked with flying through the highest threat environments long before more conventional aircraft make that journey. There are no guarantees, and our pilots, men very much like your sons and your brothers and your neighbors, are courageously putting their lives on the line in support of our national objectives.

KWAME HOLMAN: NATO's 400 strong combined air force has a distinct American identity. More than half of NATO's planes are US military aircraft. During the first week of the campaign, NATO flu some 1,700 sorties into enemy air space, primarily from Aviano. The base has operated around the clock, since the strikes began with pilots and maintenance crews preparing constantly for their next mission.

PERRY McCIVER: It's a three-dimensional roller coaster.

REPORTER: What do you mean?

PERRY McCIVER: Well, if you can imagine being on a roller coaster with no tracks, no wheels, and able to move in any direction in any given second, that's what it is.

KWAME HOLMAN: Among the attack aircraft and Aviano are F-15 and F-16 jet fighters. Once airborne over Yugoslavia, they're accompanied by one of six EC-130's; they act as sort of a mother ship during bombing runs, directing and redirecting jet fighters using up-to-the-minute radar and other data. The EC-130's operate high above the bombing runs with a crew of 16.

SPOKESMAN: Our platform is called the ABCCC. It's the Airborne Command Control Center. Basically what we do is take information from the battlefield that we're assigned to, get information for the AWAC's and the battle staff in the back, up to 15 people, we take the information and we disseminate amongst the different fighters, helicopters, or any other tankers, and we coordinate what goes on.

KWAME HOLMAN: Much of NATO's sea-launched attack comes from the USS GONZALEZ, stationed about 60 miles off the Yugoslav Coast in the Adriatic Sea. Since the opening day of the NATO strike, the GONZALEZ has fired Tomahawk Cruise Missiles at Serbian military installations and air defenses more than 100 miles away. The GONZALEZ has been joined by the guided missile cruiser USS PHILIPPINE SEA and two other US ships. Together, they launched some 100 satellite-guided Cruise missiles towards Serbia in the first week of the NATO mission. In the era of war by computer, it was the click of a mouse, not the punch of a button, that blasted open the missile hatches and unleashed booster rockets. Currently, some 7,300 US military personnel are on ships and bases in the region. Morale appears to be high.

ROSIE MUNOZ, Technical Specialist: Well, the tempo is a little bit higher than normal, but overall, we are helping people. So I think it's a good thing, and I'm sure that whatever NATO tasks us to do that we will be prepared to do it.

KWAME HOLMAN: But the soldiers are not immune to home sickness.

SPOKESPERSON: The missions get long. And when you're over here so long, you just want to do your job and you're ready to go home.

FOCUS - MILITARY OPTIONS

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner has more on the military options available to NATO.

MARGARET WARNER: We get four perspectives now on NATO's mission and options from four retired military leaders: General George Joulwan was the top NATO commander when NATO sent troops to Bosnia in 1995; General Merrill McPeak was Air Force Chief of Staff during the Persian Gulf War; Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll was an Assistant Deputy Chief of Naval Operations in the 1970's, and he is now Deputy Director of the Center for Defense Information here in Washington; and Lieutenant General William Odom was Director of the National Security Agency in the mid-1980's, and he is now the Director of National Security Studies at the Hudson Institute. Welcome gentlemen.

General McPeak, first of all, your reaction to the day's news, which is that NATO has at least given authority to General Wesley Clark to expand the list of targets, included, it is reported, government buildings in downtown Belgrade. Is that the right move?

GEN. MERRILL McPEAK [RET.]: Well, first of all, I'm not sure that move has been made. Let me just say at a tactical level it appears to be me that this campaign, we're a week or so into it now, is going very well. A whole list of targets have been nominated and reduced by the air crews. Very business-like, sort of school, textbook solution, and we have had no combat casualties no US combat casualties in this week -- or so -- long campaign. So I think it's been going pretty well. The NATO authorities may conclude that they have to expand that target list in Belgrade. I don't know that they've done that. If they do so, I hope they're careful, because we do want to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties.

MARGARET WARNER: Admiral Carroll, would you say this is going well?

REAR ADMIRAL EUGENE CARROLL [RET.]:Tactically, certainly. We're doing tremendous damage, and Milosevic is paying a terrible price for his defiance. But in terms of objectives, we're not attaining the objective that we set for ourselves, which was to deter aggression against the Kosovars. He, Milosevic , is running wild there, and as we saw in the earlier scenes, the suffering is intense, the area is being cleared out, and from the air we can do absolutely nothing about it. We can bomb indefinitely, and we still will not affect the situation on the ground in terms of Milosevic control.

MARGARET WARNER: General Joulwan, would you agree that in terms of objectives it's not being met, and what would you add to what Senator Warner said about why so far the ethnic cleansing is continuing and there doesn't seem to be much deterrence in that at all?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN [RET.]: Well, I think Senator Warner also talked about in hindsight perhaps we would have considered several different options to give to our political leadership. In hindsight, I think he was correct. What we have to realize now, and I don't want to second-guess commanders doing a superb job. NATO is deeply involved. But the political objective as announced by the Council, North Atlantic Counsel and our own President, was to deter, to stop the killing. 40,000 Serb troops in Kosovo, and they're carrying out this genocide. So from a strategic level, from a strategic-political level, it just doesn't seem to have met those objectives.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree with Admiral Carroll that really air power just can't do the job?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN [RET.]: Well, that's what I keep emphasizing, that you have to have flexibility and alternatives -- so not just Plan A, but B, C, D, and E. I'm sure somewhere in the bowels of NATO, as well as in our own joint staff, people are looking at options. We do that. That is our profession; that's what we get paid to do. The political authorities may limit what you can do, but the planning that needs to go on I think should include many options. And I think by doing that, by even doing the planning for a ground option, you will restrict Milosevic 's ability to just have 40,000 troops go throughout Kosovo. He will have to put some on the Macedonian border, for example. So how do you take the initiative away from Milosevic? In my opinion, he has that initiative now.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree he has the initiative now?

LT. GENERAL WILLIAM ODOM [RET.]: Of course he has the initiative. I mean, he's winning day by day. We heard Senator Warner say, in effect, as I understood it, if not explicitly, certainly implicitly, the main reason he wants to keep bombing is to make us feel good so we will have done something. But he hasn't made a case that would achieve those objectives. Clearly, you've got to consider a ground campaign. Now, I agree with him that we're already where we are. And second-guessing -

MARGARET WARNER: We have to start from here, in other words.

LT. GENERAL WILLIAM ODOM [RET.]: Second-guessing what has already happened, I think that's a useful exercise, but there's also the problem we have to go from where we are today. Where we are today, I think we have to put ground troops in there, I don't care if it takes two weeks, four weeks or six weeks. And I think we have to set the objective of occupying Belgrade and destroying Milosevic 's regime. And when he knows that and he's been told in advance that we're going to detach Kosovo, he's lost it by doing this, then we will begin to change the incentive structures. Another thing we've got to do is to put no time limit on how long we're going to stay there because we may need to stay there until a generation changes and until we have a set of leaders who are civilized. Today we don't have those. Until we're willing to kill them we're going to have to hit here and watch them kill people like we're seeing on this film tonight.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. General McPeak, I think you've just heard three of your colleagues all say they don't think that air power alone can do it. How would you answer that, in terms of the political objectives here?

GEN. MERRILL McPEAK [RET.]: I feel like I must have missed something here, Margaret. No one ever said that air power would stop Milosevic from being a nasty personality to deal with. This whole bombing campaign has been about introducing ground troops in Kosovo. There are 10,000 such troops waiting in Macedonia now. The Kosovars have agreed to let them in. Our bombing is not because we like to watch bits and pieces of buildings go floating by us, but because we want to convince Milosevic that he should let those ground troops in. That's the whole point. That would mean that we would be inserting peacekeeping troops in a permissive environment. I'll say one thing -- if Milosevic continues to resist, we're going to make that environment permissive for the introduction of ground troops one way or another. As I said, we have achieved good results so far against a whole laundry list of targets, air defenses, logistics supporting military infrastructure, and now I would expect to see our air forces turn their attention or emphasize to a greater degree attacks on the Serbian ground forces in Kosovo. Look, it's only been going on a week or so. It's not time to throw in the towel here. I said seven or eight days ago on this program that the biggest risk was that we'd run out of stomach, and it sounds as though some are willing to throw in the towel after only seven days.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think, admiral, that if NATO just keeps bombing that ultimately Milosevic can be forced to change his mind?

REAR ADMIRAL EUGENE CARROLL [RET.]: No, I don't believe so. He is impregnable, our bombing has actually solidified the support for his regime. He had opposition, and now it's all focused on NATO, resenting the application of our force. And in order to go to Belgrade to take him out physically -

MARGARET WARNER: As General Odom suggested.

REAR ADMIRAL EUGENE CARROLL [RET.]: -- as General Odom has suggested, you're talking about a military campaign involving more than 100,000 troops, perhaps 200,000, a matter of months, and of immense destruction that will mean no one is a winner. There will just be no victory in this. I think Senator Warner used the term "prevail;" that's the best you can say, is we would prevail militarily in the ultimate game, but there would be no victor.

LT. GENERAL WILLIAM ODOM [RET.]: Well, this figure of 200,000, I don't think anybody knows how many troops are going to be there. And I agree with General McPeak that the air campaign is having a degrading effect. If it is, then it ought not to take 200,000 troops to do it. We ought to be able come in there pretty easily. It's my understanding that the tank forces are all T-55, 1950 --

MARGARET WARNER: The Serb tank forces.

LT. GENERAL WILLIAM ODOM [RET.]: The Serb tank forces are 1950's vintage tanks. There's no hand-held weapon in that - in the Serb arsenal that would kill an M-1 tank today. Therefore, tank forces, say coming down out the Voyavadina of Hungary, they wouldn't be going through the mountains, and I think it would be a very interesting kind of campaign. The Nazis went through there in about 14 days the whole country and into the Greece. And I don't think that this force today is a great deal more competent than the ones that the Germans ran.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, let's ask General Joulwan, who has the most recent experience with this force and with that terrain. Tell us how, if combat ground force had to be introduced, how would it be done, do you think it could be done?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN [RET.]: Well, first of all, our forces are trained to do this. We do combined arms, that's air, ground, sea. And you get a synergistic effect when you put those all together. In Bosnia we had tactical air control parties with the UN forces when we did the air campaign in August and September of '95. We had observed fire, and as General McPeak knows and others, that is your most effective fire.

MARGARET WARNER: I'm sorry, explain that kind of fire.

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN [RET.]: Observed fire. In other words, you have people on the ground that can pinpoint what you need to shoot at, or bomb from the air. That is to me the best sort of eyes you can have on target. We had those when we did the air campaign in Bosnia. So the synergistic effect, I think, is important here. You have 12,000 NATO troops in Macedonia now. Perhaps we should plan for, I don't say commit, but at least plan for a limited objective, something to take the initiative away from Milosevic . There's a damned good commander in Mike Jackson of the Ace Rapid Reaction Corps in Macedonia now. It's, to me, troublesome that we could have that many NATO forces two to three few miles from where atrocities are being committed and not at least come up with some planning.

MARGARET WARNER: Are you talking about, for instance, going at least into Kosovo a little bit and suggesting an enclave -- something?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN [RET.]: A limited objective. And, with all the air power we have there, you combine that with some sort of limited objective, I think we could take some of the initiative away. But the wrestling of the pros and cons of that, that's up to the military planners at NATO. Let them do the pros and cons of what it would take, the risk involved, but at least do the planning of what you can do with the force there, and you may have to generate more forces. But I believe you must take the initiative away. We fully support the air operation now, but I think we could do more than that operationally to try to at least get inside the decision cycle of Slobodan Milosevic.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree, Admiral, that the NATO forces ought to do something to change this equation a little bit?

REAR ADMIRAL EUGENE CARROLL [RET.]: I think we ought to resort to diplomatic negotiating tactics. I know that's not a popular thing to say when you're talking about a man like Milosevic, but some place between his arbitrary cruel, inhumane position and NATO's demand that we put 28,000 troops onto Kosovo and take control away from him is room for some sort of a working agreement. There's also the problem of conducting military operations through Macedonia. There's a question of the Greek willingness to support combat operations against Serb forces.

MARGARET WARNER: Which you'd have to go through Greece into Macedonia. General McPeak, how do you react to General Joulwan's suggestion?

GEN. MERRILL McPEAK [RET.]: Well, I like it better than Bill's idea that we ought to occupy Belgrade, or Gene's idea that we can negotiate some more with Milosevic. Neither one of those options seem to make a lot of sense to me. What George has suggested is we ought to at least do the contingency planning to run a ground force in there or to make some sort of a demonstration on the ground, and I think that might stand Farmer Jones logic test a little bit better. But, look, we're in our eighth day of air operations here. Even in Desert Storm we bombed -- we had an air campaign that lasted 39 days. We've had no US combat losses. We've inflicted heavy damage on the competition. What is the argument that we must abandon the course that we're on here? It's unclear to me.

MARGARET WARNER: General Odom is dying to jump in here.

LT. GENERAL WILLIAM ODOM [RET.]: Nobody is suggesting we abandon the air campaign, and I don't hear anybody condemning the air campaign, or even criticizing it. What I hear is the absence of anything in addition to that. And if -- General Joulwan's limited offensive out of Macedonia, I would sign up for that straight away. But what disturbs me is that we have an operation where we don't have contingencies if at the end of the air campaign we don't have what we consider as an acceptable objective. Now, that seems to me would bother you, General McPeak. Do you want to go to war with no aces in your hand when you're getting down and you're losing all your money? You spent all your money on an air campaign, and Milosevic is now in charge, he's killed so many thousands of people, and you look funny. I'm all for the bombing, but I want to go in with a combined arms force. I suggested a bigger campaign, because I don't care if it takes three or four, five months to plan it. If you start it, that clearly is going to affect his mind as much or more than what we're doing right now in the bombing.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me ask General Joulwan a very quick question before we go. Do you agree with General Odom that the Serb military may not be as formidable as we think it is, if we ever got there on the ground?

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN [RET.]: I think we have to caution there. If you do, the order of battle, you will see that there are disparities. They're willing to fight, we have should have no illusions about that. The Serb military will fight. We have to go in there with that in mind. I think we do have an advantage if we put our forces together. But history will have to record whether we chose the right action or not. I'm worried about we may meet our objectives from the air campaign, but lose tens of thousands of Kosovars who have been ethnically cleansed, or the Serbs committed genocide, and I'm not sure we will have gained much from the operation.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, thank you, General, thank you all four very much.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: In other news of this day, four New York City police officers were indicted on second-degree murder charges. They are accused of shooting to death an unarmed man. The officers pleaded not guilty to killing African immigrant Amadou Diallo in the Bronx last month. The killing touched off daily protests outside police headquarters that led to hundreds of arrests. Nearly all the federal government's essential computer systems are ready for the year 2,000. That was the report from a presidential task force today -- the government's self-imposed deadline for ensuring that major agencies are inoculated against the millennium bug. And to update our major story, this was day eight of the war over Kosovo. NATO's aerial assault expanded. New targets included some in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade. The Russians said they were sending war ships to the Mediterranean to monitor the operation. And President Clinton authorized another $50 million in humanitarian aid. And before we go tonight, essayist Clarence Page of the "Chicago Tribune" honors a major American music man.

CLARENCE PAGE: The Duke turns 100 this April. Duke Ellington died in 1974, but his music lives on in records and CD's, and in little echoes throughout the world of music. Duke Ellington was to modern music what Picasso was to modern art. He borrowed from Europe, Africa, and the Americas. He initiated new movements, and he grew through periods he associated with colors, like "Mood Indigo," "Diminuendo in Blue," and "Black and Tan Fantasy." Sweetness, violence, and dissonance form the colors on the palette he used to paint a portrait of his native land. "Composers reflect their times," Ellington said. His times were turbulent. Like George Gershwin, his contemporary, Duke Ellington was a pioneer, an American original who gave new meaning to the word "classical." Thanks to artists like them, America in the early 20th century no longer had to look to the rest of the world for musical innovation. Now the world began to look to us. Unlike Gershwin, Ellington was black, at a time when race played a big role in determining his possibilities, and therefore, the way he looked at the world. Edward Kennedy Ellington was born just 34 years after the Civil War in a segregated southern town called Washington, DC. His was a world of racial strife, African legacies, deeply held spiritual values, and an unflinching optimism about better days ahead for those who work for it. By the time Ellington was seven, he was considered a prodigy. In his teens, he led his own ragtime band. Gradually, he developed an urge to improvise, and in his 20's took that urge to New York City, a major incubator for a new art form called "improvisational jazz." World War I was over. The Harlem Renaissance was in bloom. The world of letters was being shaken by a new wave of black artists finding their voice, including writers like Langston Hughes and Dorothy West, and painters like Jacob Lawrence, Henry O. Tanner, and William Henry Johnson. The new black intelligentsia was reluctant to embrace musicians as a part of their Renaissance. Their Victorian tastes were offended by Ellington's "Jungle Sound," as he called his erotic mix of tom-tom rhythms and raspy, explosive brass. But Ellington would not be ignored. In 1928, the young Duke Ellington replaced King Oliver at Harlem's Cotton Club, where blacks could perform but not sit down as customers. The young Duke made the best of that indignity. It gave him access into to a new and powerful medium called radio. At 29 years of age, Duke Ellington quickly became a national star. For the next five decades, his band would grow and change, with such talented soloists as Johnny Hodges on alto saxophone, Ben Webster on tenor sax, Clark Terry on trumpet, and his most talented collaborator and second pianist, Billy Strayhorn. Ellington elevated jazz, the music of bars, speakeasies, and nightclubs, into an orchestral art form for the big international stage. His biggest artistic adventure came in 1943, as the first black jazz band to play Carnegie Hall. Here, he unveiled an epic three-part symphony called "Black, Brown, and Beige." The message of his masterpiece was headlined in its subtitle: "A Tone Parallel to the History of the Negro in America." Alas, his ambitious mixture of classical and jazz pleased the fans of neither -- too far ahead of his time, perhaps. Ellington did not perform the number in its entirety again. The world was changing, too. The rise of rhythm and blues and rock'n roll crowded out the big bands. Yet Ellington held on with remarkable resilience. A new Billy Strayhorn dance hit, "Satin Doll," put the Duke back on the charts. He would work on new compositions right up to his death. He would leave behind an historic legacy, almost 2,000 compositions representing almost every American musical form. Here in Washington, his hometown, Duke Ellington is remembered with a big stately bridge, an appropriate symbol for an artist who has bridged cultures and generations. In her novel, "Supporting the Sky," Washington writer Patricia Griffith once wrote that the bridge was haunted. "Just listen." She wrote. "When the wind blows up from the south, you can hear Ellington's piano." Standing here at the bridge, it's easy to believe. That's how loudly Ellington echoes in our memories. I'm Clarence Page.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer, thank you and good night.