From the final chapter: at an Athens cocktail party in the fall of 2003 a young officer from the US embassy said that his first assignment, in 1993-4, had been Tirana, "We could do anything we wanted. In fact, they would like to be our fifty-first state. All the stuff was coming in right out at the international airport." The "stuff" he was referring to, I knew, was shorthand for military equipment. Then, he quickly moved to another subject while I took in the breathtaking implications of his remarks. It meant that long before Kosovo had gotten out of hand, and had broken into armed conflict, the US was fomenting and actively supporting revolt in the province-the US bears major responsibility for much of what followed, including the war and its unending tragic aftermath.