December of this year will mark the nine—year anniversary of US and NATO intervention in the Balkan War of 1992—95.  For almost a decade, our troops have been conducting stability and support operations in Bosnia—Herzegovina, and, later, provided secure bases for the air war against Serbia in 1999.  Then—President Bill Clinton promised that the troops would be home by Christmas of 1996, but as the years passed, US military units that deployed to the Balkans became the 'forgotten' soldiers of a self—absorbed, pre—911 Clinton Administration.

Now that most of the US troops will be withdrawn, leaving behind only a small headquarters contingent, the American people rightly expect an accounting of our troops' accomplishments from the same media that actively promoted this Balkan adventure by nightly broadcasts of the terrible plight of the Bosnian people.  However, the airwaves have remained strangely silent about the results of our mission in the Balkans.  Worse still, the deliberate deception by the media and the Clinton Administration about the true nature of the conflict, and the often confusing array of questionable foreign policy decisions associated with it, have now opened up an unexpected front in the War on Terror.

In the early 90s, TV crews showed us every detail of the Bosnian battlefields, burning farmhouses, and battered marketplaces, in order to paint a picture of a complex ethnic war.  In reality, the Clinton administration just could not bring itself to declare that the war was largely a fight of national identity to gain freedom from a tyrannical dictator by the name of Slobodan Milosevic.  After all, Slobo was Bill and Hillary's ideological ally, a centralizer and a socialist.

This obfuscation resulted in a series of astounding and often contradictory decisions concerning vital military and national security matters.  Initially, the Clinton Administration agreed to an arms embargo, but then tacitly allowed weapons to be smuggled in from the Middle East to help the Bosniac Muslims.  He then went along with regional isolation protocols to prevent outside help from reaching all the belligerents. Then, he turned a blind eye to the infiltration of about 200 Mujahadeen fighters into Bosnia.  Either deliberately or unwittingly, former President Clinton had sown the seeds for a new Islamo—fascist threat; this time in Southeastern Europe.

After the Bosnian war, and after initial stability had been achieved, ostensibly, the Mujahadeen settled around Mostar, which is southwest of Sarajevo. They married, raised families, and assimilated into the Bosnian society.  Now, however, The Telegraph (UK) reports  that Bosnia has become

a "one—stop shop" for Islamic militants heading from terrorist battlegrounds in Chechnya and Afghanistan to Iraq, according to European intelligence officials.

The story goes on to say that Bosnia is a terrorist way—station, where fighters can pick up guns, money, and forged documents.  The foundation for this network, of course, was established by the 'Muslim foreign fighters' who settled in Bosnia after the war.  However, The Telegraph does not go into any detail as to how these Wahhabi fighters got into the quarantined region in the first place.  After nine years, the media can't seem to find a single US Soldier or Bosnian farmer to tout the progress we have made in that country now that we are leaving.  Perhaps it is because we have spent our treasure and blood building up a country that can now function as a safe haven for transient Islamic militants.

The only person The Telegraph could find to comment on the nine—year US operation was the head of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in Sarajevo.  Madeleine Rees said

The US had everything going for it here.  It stopped the war, set up and funded human rights initiatives.  But then it bypassed the local police, courts and legal system, and now confidence in the US has plummeted.

(This probably had something to do with the fact that the local police and courts were accomplices in the world—renowned Balkan drug trade and sex slave schemes.  But I digress.)

This is all the gratitude we get from Madeleine and the UN.  Meanwhile, the US now has been forced to deploy hundreds of military intelligence and CIA operatives to keep tabs on the Mostar Chapter of the Friends of Bill.  It was only a few months ago, that the mainstream media blasted the current Bush Administration for turning around the redeploying 1st Armored Division so they could put down the uprising of the extremist Shia cleric, Muqtada al—Sadr.  The American people were told daily how cruel and heartless President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld were in doing such a thing.  These poor soldiers were supposed to go home, and this further proves that Bush didn't have a plan, etc.

The mainstream media should now explain why the US has to put 300 intelligence agents on the ground in Bosnia, when they could be put to use in other obvious places.  But, then again, our National Guard has been stuck there for years, and the media has yet to refer to that situation as a quagmire.  Sadly to say, once the EU takes over, this quagmire could get deeper yet.

Clinton allowing the Mujahadeen to enter the Balkans in the early 90s, with US air support no less, is a replay of the classic scene out of the first Alien movie.  The ship's science officer, who is an android programmed to aid and abet in the capture of the Alien, busts the quarantine regulations to let a crewmember with an infant alien attached to his face through the airlock, and into the ship.  Later, as the android finishes examining the comatose crewmember and the attached creature, Warrant Officer Ripley asks the science officer, 'How is our guest doing?'  To which the science officer replies, 'He's one little, tough son—of—a—bitch.'  Ripley simply states,

'And you let him in.'

Douglas Hanson is our military affairs correspondent.