Feeling Secure With The Media

If I had a choice between twenty personal body guards and one camera from a reputable media outlet, I’d take the camera every time. People don’t want to commit war crimes or screw up or kill people when there’s a camera there filming it. So if you get a CNN cameraman, or ABC or whatever. I mean, I’m slightly exaggerating to make the point, but it’s true. I would take the media with me in difficult circumstance and feel a lot more secure. Cause we would always be out-numbered. I mean there were 300,000. Most of them armed in Sarajevo, pissed off at somebody on the other side of the street from another ethnic group or whatever, and just about everybody hated us because we were a protection force that weren’t protecting anybody. We were just bringing in food and medicine. And so, from that point of view, there’s no way you’re gonna fight back and win. I mean, when I received a ridiculous order from the UN that said, “Use such force as necessary to guarantee the safe delivery of humanitarian aid,” that’s something the security council thought of. So I just said to myself, okay there’s 300,000 people here. It’s surrounded. The city is surrounded. I’ve got less than a thousand. We’re lightly armed. I’m going to ignore the order. And some of my soldiers said, “Yeah sir but we can, we can fight our way through that checkpoint, you know, that’s holding us up every morning.” And I said, “Yeah you sure can, but there’s twenty-eight more before you get to a safe border somewhere or the Adriatic and split. So you’re going to fight your way successfully and on the second one you’ll all be dead. So there’s no way that I’m going to permit you to do that.” So that’s where, that’s where I have some disagreement with other people who think you’re always a slave to the mission. No you’re not!