In 1999, the U.S., in collusion with its NATO allies, attacked the sovereign nation of Serbia, which posed no threat to America or Europe.

The excuse for the bombing campaign that killed thousands of innocent Serbs and destroyed civilian infrastructure was that Serbs were responsible for human rights abuses in its own province of Kosovo and that the government was responsible for backing a campaign of "genocide" against ethnic Albanians there.

It was all a lie, of course.

Serbia posed no threat to the United States whatsoever. Serbia had no weapons of mass destruction. Serbia did not support international terrorism. Serbia had no ill intentions toward the U.S.

It turns out that as few as 2,108 people were actually killed in Kosovo over a period of months leading up to and including the period of heavy bombardment of Serbia by NATO forces.

This is hardly "genocide," as it was billed by Clinton, Defense Secretary William Cohen, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., former Sen. Bob Dole and David Scheffer, U.S. ambassador for war crimes.

By whipping up hysteria for an illegal bombing campaign, all of these men have blood on their hands.

It wasn't hundreds of thousands of dead in Kosovo, as some reports suggested. It wasn't even tens of thousands. It was, at worst, a couple thousand over a considerable period of time. That, of course, is still a dreadful and grisly toll. But, to put it in perspective, no global authority – not the United Nations, nor NATO – ever advocates intervention in the United States or anywhere else when the annual murder toll hits 2,000, which it does early in the first half of every year.

Think of the hyperbole we heard prior to the bombing campaign:

• "By the time the snows fall next winter, there will be genocide documented on a large scale in Kosovo," said Biden.

• "History will judge us harshly if we do not take action to stop this rolling genocide," said Hagel.
  
• "What we have in Kosovo and what (we) had in Bosnia was genocide, and that's why I think we should intervene," said Dole.
  
• "There are indications genocide is unfolding in Kosovo," said State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin.
  
• Cohen characterized the bombing campaign as a "fight for justice over genocide."
  
• Scheffer said Kosovo was one of the top three genocides since 1950, rivaled only by Rwanda and Cambodia.

But no one laid it on as thick as Clinton. He compared the atrocities in Kosovo to the Holocaust. Kosovo, he said, "is not war in the traditional sense. Imagine what would happen if we and our allies instead decided just to look the other way as these people were massacred on NATO's doorstep."

Nine years later, the true nature of our "friends" in Kosovo is becoming clear.

While the U.S. and NATO were pretending the bloodshed was all one-sided – conducted exclusively by Serbs – a new book reveals some of the hideous, provocative human rights abuses being conducted by the so-called "good guys," the supposed "victims" of genocide.

Investigators for the Hague tribunal for war crimes in the Balkans found a house where living Serb prisoners had their internal organs removed and sold by the ethnic Albanians. The money raised in this grisly trade supported the Kosovo Liberation Army, a Muslim band of terrorists allied with al-Qaida.

Today, the U.S. and much of Europe is supported the creation of an independent, breakaway, autonomous state of Kosovo, presided over by Hashim Thaci, a prominent leader of the KLA.

The allegations are hardly frivolous. They are made in "The Hunt: Me and War Criminals" by Carla Del Ponte, who stepped down earlier this year as chief prosecutor of the tribunal.

According to her sources, hundreds of young Serbs were taken by truck from Kosovo to northern Albania where their organs were removed. Some prisoners were sewn up after having their kidneys removed. They were then locked up again, inside barracks, until the moment they were killed for other vital organs. Other prisoners, aware of the fate that awaited them, pleaded in abject terror to be killed immediately.

The people who committed these crimes were backed up militarily by the U.S. Air Force, by NATO forces, with your tax dollars under the direction and leadership of President Bill Clinton.

How does that make you feel?