Wednesday, May 19, 1999

Dana Priest

Dana Priest, the Post's Pentagon correspondent was online to discuss U.S. military participation in the Balkans conflict.

A Post reporter for 13 years, Priest started out as an assistant foreign editor and then became a Metropolitan staff reporter. After joining the National staff nine years ago, Priest covered federal regulatory issues and went to Baghdad to write about American hostages being held in Iraq.

Priest has covered the Pentagon for the past four years. Her reporting has taken her to Bosnia to write about U.S. troops stationed there and on overseas trips with defense secretaries William Perry and William Cohen. She has also written extensively about the Army's efforts to integrate women into the workforce.

Read the transcript of the discussion below.

Austin, Texas: Can you speak about the morale of our troops in Yugoslavia? Do they feel like they're accomplishing anything?

Dana Priest: Two questions. First, all of our reporters and the members of Congress who have visited US troops report extremely high morale, as is often the case in high-intensity missions. Some frustration by pilots that their rules of engagement limit them somewhat--less now than in the beginning of the operation. The second question is harder to judge, I would think. There is the short run--the pilot who actually destroys a target on a given day--and the longer term one: what has this air war accomplished. It clearly has not prevented the "ethnic cleansing" or the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of refugees. It is destroying Milosevic's armed forces. Whether that alone will force him to a peace deal or to allow international peacekeepers in is still not at all certain.

Park Rapids MN: Kosovo is a province of Yugoslavia--Albania is a separate nation--why are we bombing Yugoslavia into giving a part of Yugoslavia to people who migrated from their own Albania to demand a part of someone else's country?

Dana Priest: As you probably know, Kosovo, under Milosevic, previously had a measure of autonomy. He then stripped that away and used his forces to begin large scale violence against the ethnic Albanians. The goal of the Rambouillet peace talks was not to take Kosovo away from Yugoslavia--as many KosoVAr rebels would have liked--but to give them back the autonomy--cultural and political--that they once enjoyed. Doing this is highly controversial because, as you point out, Kosovo is a part of a sovereign country. That is exactly why countries--like Russia--with their own independence movements are not supportive of this action.

Arlington, VA. : Dana, who is winning the Kosovo war?

Dana Priest: Good question. If we take a snap shot of it right at this moment, I'd have to say Milosevic's forces have won this round. They've all but wiped out the KLA, killed or forced out their popular base of support and have terrorized the population with their ethnic cleansing campaign. Most of their political, intellectual and military leaders are dead so even if they return tomorrow, the political landscape for them will be different. NATO, the Pentagon and the White House argue that you can't yet say won is winning because we are, as Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said recently, only in the first 20 minutes of a 2 hour movie. They acknowledge they can't stop the violence that is taking place now but have said they want to prevent any future destruction. Mmmm.

Washington, D.C.: Hi. I've been impressed by the quality of the Post's coverage of the Kosovo crisis, but some of my foreign friends insist that we don't get the "whole story" here... Do you feel American readers are being "spun" on this story? Are there geopolitical games being played that we don't hear about? Thanks.

Dana Priest: I agree that we are not getting the whole story here. That's why we try hard to send people into the field--in this case to Yugoslavia--and have reporters at the NATO headquarters and at the launching bases for the air war. Together, we hope, we get a much better, if incomplete, view of what's happening. Yes, I think we are constantly "spun." But we know this too and so we try our hardest to tell our readers this. Look at today's front page story by John Harris. It's about Clinton leaning, sort of, toward ground troops. But it also makes the point, high up in the story, that Clinton's announcement comes the day before Russian talks with Milosevic so you are supposed to understand from this that Clinton has another motive for saying this now.

Arlington, VA. : Dana, will there be a ground war in Kosovo, or a negotiated settlement?

Dana Priest: Totally unpredictable at this point. The White House and NATO countries are trying to do everything they can to avoid a ground war. I think the interesting question will be "how far will they go to avoid a ground war." Will they allow Milosevic to get away with his goals if it makes this stop short of a ground war. Will they allow him to get away with war crimes, if he, in turn, agrees to some kind of settlement. NATO and the Pentagon are definitely making plans for a ground war, but right now we don't see them being implemented in any preparatory way.

Alexandria, VA: Ms. Priest,
I read with interest your story explaining how mistakes are an unavoidable part of war. It was an interesting and informative piece.

However, coming as it did -immediately- following the bombing of Chinese Embassy, didn't you feel that it came close to crossing the line between independent journalism, and propaganda?

Dana Priest: Not at all. The reason I wrote the piece when I did was precisely because of the Chinese Embassy bombing. That was the moment when we figured people would be pondering this equation themselves. How deadly is war really? Is it worth it? Are the larger goals worth killing innocent civilians over, even if by accident.

Arlington,VA: It seems that we're still "quietly" bombing Iraq in the midst of Operation Allied Force. What's going on? Are we going to be totally bankrupt when we finish bombing everybody?

Dana Priest: That's right. The U.S. and Britain are still enforcing the so-called "no fly zones" over southern and northern Iraq. There was a pause in the north for about a month in the beginning of the Kosovo operation because they needed many of the planes used over Iraq for Operation Allied Force. But now they have resumed. As for being bankrupt, we have a large defense budget--about $288 billion--and Congress has just made it larger. I don't think anyone thinks these operations will bankrupt the nation. But they are very costly. The Kosovo mission alone is coming close to costing $7 billion so far.

Ljubljana, Slovenia: I think Milosevic was ready to give Albanians autonomy, but White House insisted on military presence in Kosovo.
That was also reported from German diplomats that mediated in Ramboulliet.
Your comment?

Dana Priest: I know neither the White House nor Britain trusted Milosevic to give the KosoVArs autonomy without a military presence to enforce it. Remember, he was amassing troops on the borders of Kosovo by the time the Rambouillet talks were coming apart and we've reported since then that he had put in place "operation horseshoe" many months before that. It was an operation designed to get rid of the people who supported the KLA and to expell much of the population.

washingtonpost.com: We are roughly half-way through our online discussion with the Post's Dana Priest. Submit questions by clicking on the hyperlink below.

DC: What coded message was NATO and the US sending to Milosovic by stating in the beginning stages of this operation that no ground troops would be utilized? In a diplomatic world where language whether subtle or strong is as communicative as weapons, what was the purpose and impact of such a statement?

Dana Priest: Honestly, I think they took ground troops off the table in order to get their publics (and the US Congress) to go along with them. Bad mistake many military strategists say. One could also read it as another indication of President Clinton's lack of leadership abilities, that he was unwilling and unable to make a case for at least preparing for ground troops before all this started, which many believe would have been the militarily prudent thing to do. Now, of course, he's trying to have it both ways, leaving the door open to ground troops but also saying he won't use them. The White House has also hired a political consultant to help improve the "public relations" aspect of the air campaign. Not a great sign.

washington dc: Speaking of money. How does the administration justify the fact that it is spending 120 times more to kill people than in "humanitarian" aid?

Dana Priest: Well, you know the warplanes and weapons, and the massive number of troops and support aircraft used to protect and guide them, are much more expensive than the humanitarian mission. The calculation is that the short-term expense of a military option will stave off longer term humanitarian expenses. Of course, the administration argues that there is a lot more at stake here than money. They have been willing to spend millions on the humanitarian mission, in part, I believe, because the scale of the disaster caught them off-guard and then public pressure demanded something be done.

Washington, DC: How do you think the lack of Western journalists in Serbia and Kosovo has affected public opinion about the bombing?

Dana Priest: Good question. The major newspapers have had people in Kosovo for very limited periods of time since the war began. On the one hand, I think that if the scale of atrocities described by NATO bureaucrats could have been described first-hand by reporters, the mission would have gotten more support. On the other hand, it is possible that first-hand reporting about the consequences of the bombing on civilians may have had the opposite effect. In brief, it makes us uncomfortable to have to receive information via government conduits and we much prefer to get it first hand. This is way we've worked hard to keep people on the ground. Both our reporters in Kovoso when the bombing started--Peter Finn and Jeff Smith--were snatched by Yugoslav troops and carted to the border where they were expulled and their visas cancelled.

Belgrade, Yugoslavia: I am reading, and I am impresed about Post coverage of this problem.
I want to thank God for two things: 1-That I am Serb and 'cause I don't hate American people, 2-'cause reading these questions, I can see they are much smarter than your amateur politicians!
How will all this end?
I am writing to you under alert! Have you ever heard an alert siren?

Dana Priest: Everyone I talk to wants this to end today. But it is not at all clear how or when it actually will. Since you're in Belgrade, I have to tell you that our impression was that since the bombing of the Chinese Embassy, NATO warplanes have not returned to the heart of Belgrade. We are still trying to figure out whether this is because their targets have changed or because they are very worried about making another mistake.
Good luck.

Wayne PA: Will NATO be for all intents and purposes "dead" if there is no satisfactory conclusion to this war?

Dana Priest: I don't think so. Too many countries have too much invested--literally and politically--in NATO. And whatever the outcome of the war, you can be sure that the White House and other NATO countries will put the best face on it possible.

Sliver Spring, MD: At the end of the war, when they tally up the body count, do you think Yugoslavian troops or NATO forces will be responsible for more human deaths?

Dana Priest: If you mean civilian deaths, I'd say Yugoslav forces. But that could change if NATO warplanes continue to make the kinds of mistakes that inevitably happen in war and that will, in all probability, increase as the bombing missions intensify. If you're talking about military deaths, then that is much clearer. NATO has so far suffered no combat fatalities. I would estimate that close to a thousand Serb troops have been killed. This is just a guess because neither the Pentagon nor sources in NATO have been willing to make this any clearer.

Washington, D.C. : Dana,

The strategy of this administration still seems to hang on how public opinion feels about all of this. What happens when the opinions of many people change and run cold on the bombing? Do we run away with our tails between our legs?

Dana Priest: Great question. Stay tuned. Public support, according to this week's polls, is dropping slightly.

Rosslyn, VA.: Does it make any military sense for Apaches to fly if ground troops are not dispatched to Kosovo?

Dana Priest: Some Army officers say not. It definitely is a novel use for the Apaches. In Sunday's paper, we wrote a piece saying this is, to say the least, an unconventional war.

Dana Priest: Enjoyed "chatting" with you. Sorry I couldn't get to all your questions.

washingtonpost.com: We're out of time now so let's bring this discussion to a close. Thanks to Dana Priest for answering our questions and to all of those who participated.