>How was the reporting under strict control? CNN was reporting live from the center of Bagdad.

Sorry, but after 1999 I don't count CNN as independent.

I've read reports about reporters complaining about being controlled, about having very limited access etc. Sorry, I didn't have any means of electronically archiving the reports, nor is that my hobby. And if I'm right, there's no way you would have seen those reports here.

>So Americans just looked the other way while their fellow soldiers were targeting civilians? This just simply did not happen.

And the Earth is flat.

http://db1.inform.dk/~freeserb/arhiva/e-index.html

>>His popularity sank each time there was a few months of peace. In 1997 he suffered a nearly mortal blow, when he lost municipal elections in most of the major cities. In 1998 his party (and the associated block) fell below 25% of support. In 1999 he came back to 69%, which he again lost only few months after piece came.
>
>Below 25%, yet he was still in power? Amazing, huh?

Not really - that was between elections. And he was a master of stealing the elections. He may have lost the vote many times, but he won the counting. And there were no recounts.

>>Oh they loved the bombs, even if they killed almost as many of them as Sloba's police and paramilitaries did. The bombing served the goals of their politicians.
>
>That is simply untrue. Anything to back that up?

Statements by their politicians during the bombing. See the archives above.

>>One weird thing is that there wasn't much fighting there (check the German intelligence reports of the time) until the UN observers were pulled out.
>
>And why did the UN observers pull out?

Don't know. Probably because they were told there may be bombing soon. The first open threat with bombing was in October 1998. They were surely not pushed out - they were a guarantee for all three sides (Serbia, UN and the Albanians).

>>Just threatening him is enough to have the nation rally around him. Deja vu.
>
>No one was threatening him when he started the war with Iran. Nor was he threatened when he started the war with Kuwait. And he remained in power. Get the picture yet?

So he's threatened now and he won't start a war. He does so only when not threatened.

I'm not connecting the existence of threats with warfare. I'm connecting it with his internal popularity. Any dictator's wet dream is to have an outside threat or palpable enemy, that's when the nation gathers around the leader, even if he's a dictator.

>>What would work would be to empower his internal opposition - that worked in the case of his brother-in-spirit Milosevic. But to empower the opposition, you need to funnel some money, something in the order of magnitude of a cost of a couple Tommahawk missiles. And to set an example that the world would welcome the new Iraq, and make that example known to the people there. A massive presence of UN troops there, as peacekeepers, support to inspectors, whatever - would do much more, and render Saddam harmless with far less cost. And you'd win the hearts of Iraqis, not the corpses of their children.
>
>So, which opposition group do you choose? Because they are far, far from united.

So was the Serbian opposition. They united under pressure from below and from outside. And they performed a bloodless revolution through elections, and one afternoon of mass gathering and taking over what was legally theirs.

> A massive presence of UN troops? What dreamland are you living in? In case you didn't notice, Saddam kicked out the UN inspectors in 1998, and the UN did nothing. Do you really think that when they couldn't even keep UN inspectors there, that they will be able to put troops there? Get real.

I pretend to stay imaginary and to dream that I said "massive presence". And if given a choice "UN troops inside or NATO troops all over the place", what do you think Saddam would choose?