It is important to point out the Western media exaggerations. However, I find the comments you cite somewhat insensitive to what has happened in Kosovo. Let us say "only 10,000" Kosovan Albanian men were killed as Slate reports, rather than 100,000. There are also reports of many women being killed, although far less than men. Let us say 2500-3000 women were also killed. The total murdered is then equivalent in relation to the population to about 2 million people or more being killed in the U.S. Doesn't the killing and other crimes deserve more empathy and sympathy for the victims than your "factual" analysis implies? I don't think it is enough for the anti-war left to just focus on the exaggeration by the media just like i didn't think it was enough to only attack the U.S./NATO bombing. Sure the mass murder by the Yugoslav military and paramilitary is less than what you might get from reading most of the mass media or less than were killed by the U.S. supported military and para-military in Guatemala and East Timor but it is nevertheless a massive crime. To acknowledge the murder by the Milosevic government is as important as saying that although the NATO bombing killed less people in the period from March 24th to mid June than did the Yugoslav military, the long run deaths and deprivation it causes is likely to be even greater than the killings by Yugoslavia during the war. Peter Jim Devine wrote: > from Scott Shuger's "Today's Papers" column in SLATE (copyright 1999 Bill > Gates): US Today reports: > news that many of the numbers used by the > Clinton administration and NATO during the Yugoslav war to describe > Kosovo's plight were "greatly exaggerated." Details: Instead of 100,000 > ethnic Albanian men feared murdered by Serbs, the real count appears closer > to 10,000; The 600,000 Albanian men described by President Clinton in May > as lacking shelter, short on food or buried in mass graves have in fact > come through the war healthy; and Kosovo's livestock and crops have also, > contrary to official wartime reports, been mostly unaffected. The story > quotes a Pentagon spokesman as denying conscious government deception, and > a Boston University professor saying that large estimates were used to tap > the memory of the Holocaust as a means of justifying U.S./NATO action. < > > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & > http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
