May 4, 1999
Web posted at: 11:36 a.m. EDT (1536 GMT)

The resolution's chief sponsor, Sen. John McCain, spoke angrily against the parliamentary manuever to set aside the measure. The Arizona Republican also heavily criticized Clinton for ruling out ground troops, saying the administration joined forces with opponents of the Kosovo campaign to kill the resolution.

"The president doesn't want the power he possesses by law because the risks inherent in its exercise have paralyzed him," McCain said.

McCain, a former Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said United States' allies and enemies would no longer respect its power and resolve if the war in Kosovo is lost.

"I ask my colleagues in this late hour to put aside our reservations, our past animosities and encourage, implore, cajole, beg, shame this administration into doing its duty," he said. "Shame on the president if he persists in abdicating his responsibilities but shame on use if we let him."

The leaders of both parties worked to table the resolution. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) said the resolution was premature and its language was "substantially excessive, not necessary, and uncalled for." He also said that the Senate would like a longer time to debate such a controversial topic.

"This is the wrong language and its at the wrong time," Lott said. 

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota) said neither NATO nor the Clinton Administration asked for the resolution and that the United States cannot act unilaterally in what currently is a multi-nation military campaign. He also said the resolution was too broad.

"We have no clear idea on what it is we are authorizing with this resolution," he said. 

Daschle also took aim at McCain's criticism of Clinton, saying the president was not alone in ruling out ground troops.

"It isn't just the president. It is all of his Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is everybody in the Pentagon who advises the president who have said, 'This is not the time,'" he said.

But McCain said that because Clinton vocally ruled out ground troops early on in the campaign, he let Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic disperse his forces throughout Kosovo to "displace, rape and murder more Kosovars more quickly than he could have if he feared he might face the mightiest army on Earth."

"War on the cheap fails to achieve the objective we went to war for," he argued.

McCain, a candidate for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination, was one of the earliest voices to say that the U.S. must win this military action at all costs and to call on the Clinton Administration to prepare for the possibility of deploying ground troops.

His proposal would have authorized the president "to use all necessary force and other means, in concert with United States allies, to accomplish United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization objectives."

Though the debate was initially limited, senators spent all of Monday delivering speeches on the move to table the motion. From those floor remarks it was clear that a majority of senators did not wish to debate the issue at this time but that their reasons were varied.

With U.S. forces already involved in NATO airstrikes on Serbian targets in Yugoslavia and Kosovo, many Republicans have grudgingly given their support to the Clinton Administration. But some senators still oppose the action and want the U.S. to withdraw from the conflict in Yugoslavia. Others are against the introduction of ground forces.

Other senators from both sides of the political aisle said they feared that McCain's resolution is too broad. Several senators argued the move was premature. And still others complained that Clinton played the polls when he ruled out ground troops in the first place and are unwilling to back this president on anything.

By tabling the measure, the Senate also put some distance between a possible Senate vote and two votes in the House of Representatives last week in which the GOP-led body agreed to limit Clinton's authority to introduce ground forces into the Kosovo and refused to endorse the NATO airstrikes.

The Senate resolution was co-sponsored by Sens. Joseph Biden (D-Delaware), Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut), Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi), Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) and Richard Lugar (R-Indiana).

The senators all said that no options for achieving U.S. objectives in the region should not be ruled out because the cost of losing this war is too great.

The White House has so far said that no plans are being made by NATO to send in ground troops but all of the co-sponsors urged the administration to prepare for the possibility of such a move.

And on the KLA:

http://www.aim.org/aim-colu mn/mccain-supports-radical- muslims-in-kosovo/

and 

http://www.serbianna.com/ne ws/2008/01329.shtml

John McCain armed Kosovo Islamic terrorists
February 13, 2008
Source: Svet 

Americans of Albanian heritage collected a million dollars in one evening for the presidential campaign of Republican Senator John McCain, said the Albanian American Civic League yesterday, the lobby group headed by former Congressman Joe DioGuardi. A reception for McCain was held January 22 at the Saint Regis Hotel in Manhatten, and the senator, who is now leading in the runoff for the Republican party candidacy in the November elections, cut his campaign in Florida by one day to attend this gathering.

"Even in 1998 when we had problems with Milosevic, McCain did everything that we asked of him to the benefit of the Albanian people, including arming the KLA", announced DioGuardi. "We are American Albanians and we need a leader who will strengthen this country... We must support John McCain because he did everything we asked of him for Kosovo, from supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army to supporting the independence of Kosovo. Two years ago he spoke in Brussels and said that independence is the only solution", concluded this former congressman who has been fighting for the independence of Kosovo and Metohija for more than twenty years.

He explained that the first thing McCain said to him when he entered the hotel in Manhatten on January 22: "Joe, I saw your people in Michigan, and in South Carolina and in New Hampshire", from which this lobbyist deduced that all Americans of Albanian background will be voting for the senator from Arizona.

DioGuardi and his wife Shirley Cloys-DioGuardi have been friends with McCain for years, and he intervened several times in the Senate on behalf of the Albanians. Because of that, the Albanian American Civic League awarded him the "Balkan Award for Peace" a year and a half ago, and the initiative was the proposed Senate resolution - which McCain wrote - in which  thanks is extended to the Albanians for "saving all the Jews who lived in Albania or who sought shelter there during the Nazi Holocaust".

However, even though he is leading in the presidential nomination, John McCain has not yet succeeded in convincing the primary wing of the Republican Party - the conservatives - that he is the right candidate. One of the reasons is that he often spoke and voted against the majority Republicans, as in 1999 when he asked for more intensive air bombing of Serbia.

In April of that year, three weeks after the bombing commenced, he announced that the US is in danger of losing the war to the Serbian Army which has "antiquated machinery" and "absolutely no military air power", if massive strategic air attacks are not initiated. "Attacks on any infrastructure target must not be prevented. We all regret civilian losses, as well as our own, but they cannot be avoided," he said.

During the pre-election campaign in February 2000 at a meeting in Manhatten, John McCain asked for the release of all Albanian prisoners in the prisons of Serbia proper, and a year later he used his inlfuence to ask the administration for an urgent investigation into the killing of the brothers Bitici who were taken from prison and killed in the police training center in Petrovo Selo in eastern Serbia. This February 5 the senator held another meeting in Manhatten and in the public there was a visible Albanian flag.