What, then, constitutes "victory" for Clinton? It is unlikely that the US Congress would suppress (or be able to suppress) the Cox Report with its apparently damning evidence of White House culpability in the campaign-funds-for-strategic- favors scandal. Just how damning is the evidence against Clinton with regard to the passing of ballistic missile and nuclear weapons technologies to the People’s Republic of China?

Enough for the Clinton Administration to use every lever of authority at its disposal to stop the declassification of the Cox Report and other inter-agency reports on the matter. The White House has called in every agency it can think of, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (FIAB) to put roadblocks in the way of declassification of the 700-page Cox Report.

The Washington Times of April 26, 1999, in an editorial entitled And the spy-ing goes on, confirmed this. "For months now, the Administration has been battling the Rep. Cox and his committee to keep these details secret." The Cox Report was due to be released by the end of March 1999 (the subject of the report had become publicly known in April 1996), but because of the Administration’s pressures this was postponed until the end of April 1999, with the later understanding that the ongoing conflict would enable the Clinton White House to further obfuscate and delay release.

"Given the national security consequences of the revelations as well as the president’s propensity to avoid any responsibility, it is now more imperative than ever that the Cox Report be promptly declassified," The Washington Times editorial said.

This is the scandal which eclipses the Monica Lewinsky matter which led to Clinton’s impeachment by Congress.

So, if a "legacy other than scandal" is the goal of President Clinton, then he must attempt to continue the distractions, which means the fighting. There is the prospect of switching the combat to a less-difficult "threat", such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, and there is evidence that this option has been well-considered.

It may well be, failing all else, that the US Congress will be required to determine what constitutes "victory". All agree, at least nominally, that NATO cannot survive as a viable strategic instrument if it fails to achieve its "objectives" in the war against Yugoslavia. There were still a few in government in NATO states who, in late April 1999, clung to the belief that air power alone could force compliance by the Miloševic Government to the NATO terms. But these were only, literally, the naïve, with no understanding of military history. No major strategic campaign has been won by air power alone.

There are others who believe that the insertion of ground forces into Yugoslavia, or even just the Kosovo-Metohija region, is an unfortunate necessity to achieve compliance. But they, too, are naïve: a Yugoslav abandonment of the most sacred heartland of the Serb people will not happen. Germany inserted 700,000 troops into Yugoslavia in 1941-45, and failed to successfully control the country. NATO is not prepared to do even that much.

Similarly, because the Serbian people see that they have been so maligned by the peoples (US, UK and France) whom they once suffered to defend in two World Wars, and accused of so many atrocities that they know have been committed against them as a people in the past, they will not surrender up even President Miloševic, as much as some of them may have disliked him in the past.

Furthermore, Yugoslavia’s military capabilities have hardly been touched, despite the bombing campaign (or perhaps because the bombing has been directed largely at civilian economic targets). So a military "victory" would not be possible without a massive, and unrealistically large, cost to NATO in economic, manpower and time terms.

What will be necessary is for NATO (or rather Clinton, because NATO will follow) to "redefine victory", if victory is to be achieved. The concern in even the anti-Clinton circles of NATO is that without a victory, NATO’s future credibility and viability will be lost. This is in great part true, and it is an additional reason why many senior members of the US and NATO military forces are quietly extremely angry at Clinton.

At first, a curious media besieged Rep. Saxton, requesting that he speak on CNN’s Larry King Live, and other prime time network television news shows. But, following a 45-minute telephone harangue of the Congressman by Secretary of State Albright, State Department pressure ensured that the networks withdrew their invitations for the Congressman to speak. Few in the Washington media want to jeopardize their access to the White House or State Department.