Thank you for that very good clarification. My respect to you. You do seem to be familiar with the situation, which is good.

I had always been under the impression that Clinton meant we'd be out out of active military intervention in Bosnia by that timeframe but that oversight-monitoring (and protection of NATO)--as will be the case with oversight and protection of the reconstruction teams in Iraq, which will go on for a long, long time to come--might be ongoing. That's still an area of the world that's fairly tense from an "ethnic cleansing" standpoint, at least according to the last thing I read.

I can see why you'd be wondering about the similarities with the Russian actions.

I don't want this tension between us and Russia to be heightened. I was going to tag along with a team of medical folks to Russia next summer to have a look at some of their medical facilities. I figure that might not be possible now, but perhaps I'm being pessimistic. I don't much want to go if relations aren't easy.