What happened in Kosovo?

I am trying to understand what happened before and during the NATO invasion of Kosovo in 1999. It is widely quoted as a point of reference for humanitarian interventions, and Clinton and other NATO leaders certainly claimed that it was a war to prevent the genocide of Albanian Kosovars by Milosevic´s Serbian government. Two things appear to contradict this.

1) The UN ruled that genocide did not take place in Kosovo, and Milosevic was eventually tried with "crimes against humanity". Claims by Clinton and others that hundreds of thousands of Albanian Kosovars had been murdered by Serbian military forces turned out to be false (although there was certainly evidence of killings and forced evacuations, but not involving far smaller numbers).

2) The vast majority of the violence in Kosovo appears to have occurred after NATO started bombing.

Can anyone verify or dispute these two claims, or explain to me in greater detail exactly what happened, and how an invasion that caused around 5,000 (impossible to get a genuine figure) civilian casualties, and used cluster bombs and depleted uranium has been justified as a humanitarian war?

One non-altruistic reason for NATO´s involvement in the crisis was the fear of instability in neighbouring countries after great numbers of Albananian Kosovars leaving as refugees. But the numbers of refugees greatly increased after the bombing started. Many of these people managed to return home after the end of the war (to a country that still has 90% unemployment, I think) but then huge numbers of ethnic Serbs remaining in Kosovo became refugees, driven out by ethnic Albanians or the fear of revenge attacks. So whether the war improved the refugee situation is debatable.

I realise that I am starting this thread on a Saturday night, and it will almost certainly die. Oh well.