XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX 04/05/99 23:09:48 UTC XXXXX BUDGET BUSTER: COST OF U.S. MILITARY OPERATION IN KOSOVO ESTIMATED TO TOP $3 BILLION The cost of the U.S. air campaign against Yugoslavia already has topped the $400 million mark, according to a soon-to-be-published report, and the price tag quickly could balloon to between $2 billion and $4 billion if the airstrikes proceed for even a few weeks longer. As the Clinton administration expands the scope of the mission, the cost of the operation now threatens to set off budgetary and political explosions on Capitol Hill, the LOS ANGELES TIMES is planning to report in a Tuesday dispatch from Washington. "If the bill for the Kosovo operation is handled through regular budgetary channels, it could easily burst the once-inviolate budget caps that limit spending by broad categories, cut into military modernization funds, and possibly starve domestic programs," reports the paper's Paul Richter and Art Pine. The Navy's sea-launched Tomahawks carry a price tag of about $1 million apiece; Air Force missiles, $2 million each. More than 220 cruise missiles have already been fired. The loss of the F-117A Stealth fighter over Yugoslavia alone is estimated to have cost $70 million. [Eat your heart out Ken Starr.] "I'd be surprised if we get this operation funded before the end of the year," Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Penn., a veteran House Appropriations Committee member tells the paper. "It's going to be very tough." X X X X X NATO BOMBING REFUGEES STUCK AT CAMP DIARRHEA "Not even during the Second World War did I witness a scene of human anguish comparable to what I saw Monday at Blace on the Kosovo-Macedonian border," writes LONDON TELEGRAPH reporter W F Deedes. "Some 65,000 refugees are gathered in misery and their own excrement," reports the GUARDIAN's John Hooper. London's papers on Tuesday carry shocking first-hand accounts from the scene that has been nicknamed "Camp Diarrhea." Most of the refugees at Blace, a refugee camp at the Macedonian-Serbian border, are from the provincial capital, Pristina. They are shopkeepers and secretaries, bar owners, nurses, electricians. Many have neatly cut hair and wear what were smart suede jackets, even fur coats, says one report. "One woman, wearing a fur, was covered in complete filth and was standing in a deep puddle of human diarrhea, there are no toilettes." Hooper writes: "During the three hours I was there at the sodden meadow, people were collapsing and being stretchered to a rudimentary medical center at the rate of one every three or four minutes. There were so many, and so few stretchers, that volunteers often carried them in blankets. One woman was taken away unconscious in a wheelbarrow... "The refugees' plight is made more unbearable by abuse, threats and maltreatment by the riot police. Standing behind the main customs shed, I saw an elderly man trying to climb up to the water tankers being kicked back down the slope. I saw guards repeatedly use their truncheons on those at the front of the crowd who were clamoring to escape." "The riot police call the refugees 'pigs' and 'bits of shit,'" one young volunteer stretcher bearer tells the GUARDIAN. The next scourge at Blace is likely to be an epidemic. Already, there are reports of meningitis and polio. Headlines the INDEPENDENT: "DYING, AS THE WEST BICKERS: Refugees from Kosovo are dying of disease and exhaustion while Western governments wrangle over plans to fly victims from the war zone." According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the line of people escaping from Kosovo extends back 18 miles. "I looked towards the hills that surround this awful scene," W F Deedes, "and there were all the signs of spring. Just above this squalor, the hillside was bursting out in new green and some of the trees were wearing white for Eastertide. "Then I looked down again at an old woman stumbling past me, crying and in the last stages of exhaustion. I thought: what have we got to flatter ourselves about at this new millennium? Man's inhumanity to man has lost none of its venom." X X X X X MIA: DAN, PETER AND TOM ROUGH IT OUT FROM NEW YORK Could America's million dollar anchormen -- Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather -- be afraid of Yugoslavia? Wars and disasters -- natural or otherwise -- are TV magnets for The Big 3. But this time around, the network anchors are missing in action, so reports Gail Shister in Tuesday editions of the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER. Shister pins NBC hotshot Brokaw to the wall. Why isn't Brokaw, author of the book THE GREATEST GENERATION, personally going to Yugoslavia to cover the war? While refusing to discuss NBC strategy, Brokaw tells Shister that this war "is very difficult to cover." "It's in a complex part of the world. These are not familiar players to the American people. From a military and political point of view, the administration only wants to say so much. It's not black and white." Does he want to be there? How will NBC decide? "I'm not going to give that away. I'm in a hotly competitive environment here. I'm not going to share with Peter, Dan or CNN, for that matter, how we make those decisions." Besides, broadcasters "ought not to get in the business of group therapy, taking you [TV columnists, we assume] through our decision-making. We have to reserve some privilege." Fearless Dan Rather, who has looked into the eyes of hurricanes, is ready to go. Sort of. CBS News' vice president for news coverage, Marcy McGinnis, tells Shister that if there was a "huge reason" to send Rather, such as nabbing an interview with a key player, he'd be on the next plane. The story "never stops being in play. Dan Rather can go anywhere at any time to do any story," says McGinnis. Fearless Peter Jennings, author of THE CENTURY, staying away from "Camp Diarrhea?" "We're getting reports from major European capitals, the U.N., Brussels, Yugoslavia," says an ABC spokeswoman. "As managing editor, Jennings is doing his job by pulling together all the information from New York." X X X X X ALANIS MORISSETTE FILM DEBUT IN JEOPARDY Mental-rocker Alanis Morissette's big film debut is mired in controversy, according to published reports. Morissette plays the role of GOD in the upcoming film DOGMA alongside Oscar brats Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. The movie is reported to be even more controversial than the 1988 film THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, and MIRAMAX [parent company DISNEY], the distributor, is taking heat over the way the film satirizes the Catholic Church. DISNEY may sell the recently completed movie to another distributor, or request edits to tone down the controversial messages. DOGMA, directed by Kevin Smith, features a trash-talking 13th apostle, the belief that Joseph and Mary had sex, and a female descendent of Jesus who works in an abortion clinic. In the film, God is obsessed with the game skee-ball and there's an updated Christ who no longer hangs from the cross but instead, offers a thumbs-up salute. Albright should bomb Hollywood. ---------------------------------------------------- Filed by Matt Drudge Reports are moved when circumstances warrant http://www.drudgereport.com for steaks and breaks (c)DRUDGE REPORT 1999 Not for reproduction without permission of the author
