First, let me state that I was in favor of what we -- the US, led by Command-in-Chief, President Bill Clinton, who I generally* supported in this matter -- did in the 1990s: Getting involved in Kosovo, protecting the Muslim population against genocide by the Serbs.

Or so I had been told, and so I'd believed.

But perhaps things were not at all as they seemed.

(* I was in favor of our being involved, militarily. But I wasn't in favor of the specific tactic we chose: massive, indiscriminate arial bombings. I felt, instead, we needed to have eyes and boots on the ground, to see firsthand if something was going on, and stop it if so. Those misgivings seem now to have been prescient...)

Eric, of "Conservative Liberal", following leads from Julia Gorin's blog, links to several blogs with extremely graphic photos, apparently documenting a slaughter of 3,870 Serbian civilians by jihadists operating in Bosnia.

Which led, in turn, to letters like this one, a complaint to Australia's version of 60 Minutes:

Why is their no mention of the heinous crimes of the Bosnian Islamist Nazi warlord, Mr. Naser Oric, from April 1992 to August 1995 in and around villages adjoining Srebrenica & Gorazde? Mr. Oric received his specific instructions for these slaughters from Alija Izetbegovic - according to testimony under oath, by French UN general, Phillipe Morillon, at the ICTY Hague "war crimes tribunal". Mr. Oric's barbaric murders of Serbian women & children were rigorously documented in several UN reports and even PHOTGRAPHED & VIDEOTAPED by himself and shown to US & Canadian reporters while he LAUGHED as he watched his videos!! (see below links ). This monster cold bloodedly murdered - using the most hideously brutal methods over 3,870 innocent elderly Serbian men, women and even babies and children under 5 years of age, mostly by cutting throats and beheading, often preceded by the most horrific tortures including cutting off of limbs, lips, noses, ears, breasts, genitalia, burning of skin and gang rape. Yet you and your colleagues at Sixty Minutes have consistently FAILED to mention any of it in over 14 years of reporting. Why?

Similar crimes were perpetrated by the Croatian Ustasha Nazis against Serbs in Croatia from late 1990 onwards - soon after Mr. Franjo Tudjman came to power - and in the Serbian Krajina province which was cleansed of 275,000 to 350,000 Serbs by Messrs Franjo Tudjman, Ante Gotovina & Agim Ceku from August to November 1995 in the Clinton administration-backed massive ethnic cleansing operation known as "Operation Storm": the total number of Serbs cleansed from Croatia & the Krajina province being close to 600,000 from late 1990 to November 1995 with total Serbian CIVILIANS murdered estimated at 14,000 to 20,000 by independent Western observers (see the links below). Why is this never mentioned in any of your reports over the last 11 years?

Indeed, given the photographic evidence, why were we never told this at the time? The numbers cited by this letter-writer are truly stunning: could this be so? I'd like to say "no", but given that many still deny the Amenian genocide (at least 600,000 killed), and the tragedy in East Timor, allegations like these don't seem so unlikely.

Thoughts and questions in my mind:

(1) After viewing the photos, I can, perhaps, understand the Serbian reaction. But I want to be clear: indiscriminate slaughter of civilians by one group doesn't justify indiscriminate slaughter by another.

(2) BUT, given that we weren't told this side of the story, the press's coverage is already revealed to be suspect. What else, if anything weren't we told?

(a) Eric raises the possibility that we might have seen, on the other side, a inflation, and even manufacturing, of atrocities like the one exposed in Jenin (and, I'd add, numerous other occasions). Is that possible? Or was that part of the story still reasonablly reliable?

This guy clearly doesn't think so, and cites a Daily Telegraph report which allegedly says: "After five days of interviews the United Nations chief investigator into alleged human rights abuses during the fall of Srebrenica has not found any firsthand witnesses of atrocities."

(b) Are the numbers suggested in letter the above accurate? Tens and even hundreds of thousands of civlians murdered by Islamists in the Balkans?

(3) Did we back the wrong side? Or should we have simply fought the extremists on both sides? Or were there extremists on both sides? Were accusations of war crimes against Serbians justified?

(4) As is typical in a situation like this (which happens, sadly, several times a year, it seems), I feel disoriented.

Yesterday, I had accepted pretty much everything I'd been told about Kosovo and our involvement there. Today, not so much so: those photos look quite real, features match, everything. (And frankly, when I see brains and hearts pulled out of bodies, genitals cut off, and ritual burnings, I suspect the the same kind of people who used similar tactics in Sudan.)

I'm so annoyed at our media: Why must I have this experience over and over? Why can't they report the whole story, without leaving out crucial stuff like this? Why must I spend so much time doing the research myself? Isn't that supposed to be their job? And, if the letter above are to be believed, some of them had this evidence back then.

It's part of de-leftistizing myself, I guess. I keep having experiences like these, a sinking feeling and: "Oh, gosh, was that wrong too?" So much of what I've been told and taught has turned out to be false.

I was shocked to discover Reagan, who I'd disliked, was right: the poor did better under "Voodoo Economics", as the press snidely dubbed it. And he wasn't merely a stupid actor, reciting ideas that came from other people, as the press had also insisted. And mininum wage really does increase unemployment among the poor. And income inequality is a good sign, including for the poor, not a bad one. And FDR's policies were actually a strong part of the reason what should have been a short recession became the Great Depression. And we actually were winning during the Tet Offensive. And, as Cambodia and Laos proved, the "Domino Theory" wasn't a myth after all. And people didn't believe the world was flat in the middle ages.

So many, many lies, where the papers and TV news only report one view.

And now this. Any further info would be welcomed. One more part of history I've got to relearn from scratch. Sheesh. As Mark Twain said: "When I don't the papers, I'm uninformed. But when I read the papers, then I'm mis-informed."