Have All Of Us Got It Wrong?

That does not mean that I endure the same torment and horrors as the 65,000 people trapped inside Gorazde by Gen. Ratko Mladic's ruthless war machine.

Nor do I know anything like the pain and suffering of the other countless victims on all sides of the most senseless barbarism to convulse Europe since the downfall of Adolph Hitler.

But, targets come in a multitude of forms and there are different ways of attacking each according to its shape and perceived threat.

In my case and those of 12 of my colleagues, it was decided by the self-appointed omnipotence that we should be punished for failing to think, feel, see, hear of speak the way he and his acolytes want us.

So it was that when I returned to my flat last Friday from a trip outside the country, I was informed by my answering machine that my press accreditation was revoked and I could no longer practice in Yugoslavia my profession of 15 years.

No reason was given for what is essentially my expulsion. I was only ordered by the disembodied voice to turn my credentials into the Federal Information Ministry and pick up a letter listing the alleged sins for which I am judged and condemned in secret.

I had no chance to defend myself and no appeal. Like their servants who bombed Gorazde and Sarajevo, those targeting me are entrenched far above me and I cannot reach or change them.

Therefore, it is for others that I write this.

I will not debate or put to the test what I have reported in my four years here. I stand by every story.

But, I do not claim a monopoly on reality, unlike those who rule this sad country. Nor do I demand as they do that my reports be accepted as the absolute, unquestioned truth. For in the end, real journalists are imperfect beings liable to the same mistakes as other mortals.

All that I ask is that people have the free choice of reading the stories that my colleagues and I write so they can be compared to the regime's versions of reality as constructed by the state media.

Readers and viewers should then rigorously, rationally and independently question and dissect all of the information before determining with all powers of innate human deduction and reason what makes the most sense.

If you were a member of Sarajevo's hungry, outgunned defence force, would you waste an estimated one million shells against your own people and their homes, hospitals, offices, museums, churches, synagogues and mosques? Or would you conserve them for use against those smashing and starving your city for two years?

Should the general who said that not a speck of dust was thrown at Dubrovnik be believed when he claims that not one shell was fired into Gorazde? Or should you believe the U.N. workers sheltering for their lives inside a bank vault?

Were the explosions in Gorazde really from remote-controlled mines detonated by its defenders for international sympathy even though Western reporters were banned from recording them? Or did the Muslims detonate the blasts on cue as a favor to the Channel S cameramen and their colleagues from Belgrade?

If hyperinflation was caused by U.N. sanctions, how come it has been halted while the sanctions remain? And, if it was so easy to stop hyperinflation, why did the regime not do something earlier to save its people from unprecedented economic suffering?

If the Soros Foundation is anti-Serb, why did it provide millions of dollars of free supplies to hospital and schools across Serbia that the government failed to help while its members and supporters rode about in new imported luxury cars?

If this is a state of law, why can almost 50 citizens be kidnapped from a train and a bus and remain untraced for more than a year?

If the Russians are such great chums, why has this country spent the last 50 years keeping them out. And, why has it done to foreign reporters what no Soviet regime did to the same extent even at the height of the Cold War?

Would Great Powers that are wrestling with their own internal economic crises really start a war so that they could then pour billions of dollars they desperately need themselves into a peacekeeping mission with no end?

Is it merely a coincidence that reporters, diplomats, U.N. personnel and aid workers from dozens of countries around the globe perceive essentially the same thing about what is happening here? Have all of us got it wrong?

Perhaps we really are part of some secret cabal against Yugoslavia orchestrated by a CIAKGB-Vatican-Bonn-Tirana-Tehran-Free Mason nerve center that we all call for instructions on what to write and think each day.

The secret police who bug our telephones must surely know.

Or maybe it's something else: maybe we all perceive essentially the same thing about the Yugoslav tragedy because as outsiders, we are the only ones who can cross front-lines to witness events that the rival sides see only from their own biased positions.

Whatever the answers to those questions and others that would fill volumes, the ruler should have nothing to fear from us if he is genuinely secure in the veracity of the information his media disseminates.

After all, very few stories that we write are ever seen by the public here.

If it is a matter of misinforming the international community, it is rare that governments put more credence in what foreign reporters say than what they are told by their own embassies and intelligence services.

But, if a political leader does, in fact, have his propaganda servants systematically and deliberately distort, slander, mislead, manipulate, brainwash and lie every day does that not show a total contempt for those he is supposed to govern?

How can we claim to represent their welfare and best interests if he confined them inside walls of disinformation, hate, bigotry, prejudice and ignorance?

And, if this is what is happening, does that not call into question every single reason he gives to justify the deaths of some 300,000 people and the destruction what was a modern society that had a brighter future than any other former socialist state?

Only a leader whose power and survival depend on a blind, unquestioning acceptance of his version of reality and history finds it necessary to resort to such practices.

That is why my colleagues and I are targets. But, we are only small fry. The main target is the truth.

(Author is a correspondent with Christian Science Monitor)