Well I guess it's a matter of who you prefer to believe/rely on, GeraldP, but before you go quoting the ICG maybe you should look at some of the people behind the organisation. It's simply time that the media look into the background of organisations that, sailing under the flag of convenience of prestigious independent NGO, actually play a semi-governmental, Western/US-biased role. Go to ICG's website and you will see who is behind it. Among the ICG board members we find:
Morton Abramowitz
Abramowitz helped Zbigniew Brzezinski open intelligence co-operation with China, helped deliver Stinger missiles to the Afghan mujahedin, became president of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and helped formulate the new world order with the US as its only superpower and was the eminence grise for Madeleine Albright and acted as adviser to the Kosovo Albanians in Rambouillet.
Various about him here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6539-2004Mar18.html
http://www.tcf.org/4L/4LMain.asp?SubjectID=1&TopicID=0&ArticleID=469
http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/surfdomarchives/002125.php
http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/ch_essay.htm
Kenneth Adelman
Well-known security policy hawk, affiliated with the Project for a New American Century, PNAC, and believed that huge stores of WMD would be found in Iraq. More about him here:
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/adelman_k/adelman_k.php
Richard Allen
Formerly associated with Nixon and Reagan; a Hoover fellow since 1983, he is currently a member of the U.S. Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee. More:
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/bios/allen.html
Louise Arbour
Former chief prosecutor of ICTY, she indicted Milosevic, by no political coincidence, while the bombing of Yugoslavia happened; newly appointed head of the UNHCHR.
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/p404-e.htm
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arbour/
Wesley Clark
Here is how he explains on his website that he saved 1,5 million Kosovo-Albanians: "From 1997 through May of 2000, General Clark was NATO Supreme Allied Commander and Commander in Chief of the United States European Command. In this position, General Clark commanded Operation Allied Force, NATO's first major combat action, which saved 1,5 million Albanians from ethnic cleansing in Kosovo." Tried to become the next president of the United States
http://www.draftwesleyclark.com/Biography.htm
William Shawcross
Writer and broadcaster, wrote "In all, some 200,000 people died in the Balkans on Europe's watch. It was America that stopped that. In 2001, it was only America that could have liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban. The results in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan are not perfect. But all those areas are better off than they were, and only the U.S. could have made those changes. Tony Blair understands that; many other European leaders do not." More here:
http://www.williamshawcross.com/first_page.html
Stephen Solarz
Former U.S. congressman, hard-line views on how to solve the Balkan problems and isolate Serbia further; like Adelman affiliated with PNAC. More about him here:
http://www.refugeesinternational.org/cgi-bin/ri/article?arc=00033
http://www.newamericancentury.org/kosovomilosevicsep98.htm
http://www.apcoworldwide.com/content/bios/solarz.cfm
Among other security hard-liners on the ICG board could be mentioned Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Soros.
And in all fairness there are also non-hawks such as Oscar Arias Sanchez, Emma Bonino, Marika Fahlen, Mohamed Sahnoun, Salim A. Salim, Thorvald Stoltenberg, Shirley Williams as well as Martti Ahtisaari (chairman) and Gareth Evans, (President and CEO).
But they don't seem to have any balancing influence on the reports of the ICG.
Finally, go here http://www.crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm?id=1151&l=1 and see how ICG is funded - and draw your own conclusions about its independence given that 19 Western governments and their allies and some ten major US foundations plus mainly US citizens fund its work.
First the death toll I gave above is a fact, not the subject of any controversy.
As far as the report... Hey, I calls it like I sees it. If CNN has a better analysis than FNC (not usually the case), then I'm not going to be a demagogue about it. However, I am puzzled as to where your last post is going, since your main complaints seem to be that:
1) They are not pro-Serb enough
2) They are hawkish
3) They have close ties to current and former US policymakers/advisors
In an apparent attempt to discredit him, you posted this about William Shawcross:
>>>Writer and broadcaster, wrote "In all, some 200,000 people died in the Balkans on Europe's watch. It was America that stopped that. In 2001, it was only America that could have liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban. The results in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan are not perfect. But all those areas are better off than they were, and only the U.S. could have made those changes. Tony Blair understands that; many other European leaders do not." <<<
Now to me that is just beautiful, as was the title of one of his editorials in April "We're not Bush's poodles: we're fighting on the right side of history". This leads me inevitably to ask you a direct question:
Jane, seriously what are you doing here? From what I percieve of your geopolitical views, you are in full disagreement with everything modern conservative foreign policy stands for.
Kind of laying your cards on the table, aren't you?