Posted on 09/14/2003 8:43:42 PM PDT by pfflier
Should we expect less of the impeached liar?
Bump!
It's getting to the point with the left-press, that little children are pointing at them and asking why they're lying. They think if they tell the world the sky is green, the world will fall for it. This would make a fine research project - a federally funded scientific study into the mass-delusion of socialism. (^;
2. March 31: Reporter (AFP) visits stadium -- nobody there.
3. March 31: Rubin: "We never made that claim."
Question: how good are the other atrocity stories we're getting?
TRANSCRIPT OF THE ORIGINAL STATEMENT
March 30 (James Rubin):
QUESTION: You said that the secretary had talked to Thaqi the day before. Has she talked to him again?
RUBIN: No. He called into the department today, and he provided another chilling account of what's going on in Kosovo. He basically indicated that the situation is worse today than it was yesterday.
QUESTION: Could you elaborate on that? Why it is worse? How it is worse?
RUBIN: He said that the killing is more widespread, that they're shelling the whole series of towns, that the Kosovar Liberation Army is doing the best it can under the circumstances, but that it's becoming increasingly difficult.
He indicated that people were being held in the soccer stadium in Pristina, that people were being held in two other locations, that several thousand people who had been evacuated from a particular town, whose name I don't have in front of me, are missing. And a number of other reports of that nature.
END OF QUOTE
Copyright 1999 Agence France Presse
Agence France Presse March 31, 1999 Kosovo-stadium 16:04 GMT
HEADLINE: No sign of Serbs massing Kosovars in Pristina stadium
DATELINE: PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, March 3<
A football stadium in the Kosovo capital Pristina stood empty Wednesday, one day after reports that Serbian forces were herding ethnic Albanians there in an apparent prelude to a massacre. An AFP reporter who visited the site said the stadium, whose galleries can host some 25,000 spectators, was completely empty and there were no signs of any mass groupings.
On Tuesday, Hashim Thaci, one of the commanders of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) told German TV ZD that 100,000 people were massed by the Serbian forces in the Pristina stadium.
But on Wednesday, rows of seats stood empty and the grass looked intact, an AFP reporter who managed to enter the stadium through a non-guarded entrance said.
The windows at the stadium offices were smashed in NATO air strikes overnight Sunday, when a nearby Serbian police headquarters was shelled.
A worker cleaning the broken glass said that "no one has entered the stadium for a long time, since there is not much to see there." Also on Wednesday, a spokesman for the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), Kosovo's largest moderate political party, said Serb forces have herded 3,000 residents of the Kosovo town of Pec into another stadium. Entire families have been rounded up since late Tuesday by Serbian paramilitary forces and the police, the spokesman said. str-md/an/po LOAD-DATE: March 31, 1999
March 31. James (Jamie) Rubin:
Q: Jamie, on that -- and I don't mean to suggest that you're not getting correct information, but we've gotten a report this morning which is what I believe is the first independent report out of Pristina in some days, saying that Thaqi's claim yesterday that a hundred thousand people were massed in the Pristina stadium --
MR. RUBIN: I didn't make that claim -- we didn't make that claim.
Q: Well, it's been referred to. But anyway -- anyway, this report says that this --
MR. RUBIN: I never heard him say that.
Q: He said it yesterday on German radio --
MR. RUBIN: He hasn't said it to us -- a hundred thousand people in the stadium.
Q Yeah, in the Pristina stadium.
Anyway, given the fact that he said this, maybe not to you, but he has said this, and the fact of the matter is is that the reporter that went there this morning and said it was empty and there was no signs of anyone in any large numbers at all had been there for the past couple of days at all, that the grass was intact and undisturbed and it is was just deserted, how confident are you in the reports that you are getting from him and others? And how comfortable are you repeating them to us in this forum?
MR. RUBIN: We believe that the basic information about the situation in Malisevo is accurate. We have our own independent corroboration that there is massive burning of houses. And Mr. Thaqi has been quite clear with us that he is hearing reports -- he is not saying that these things are facts -- and I am sure an enterprising reporter can debunk any report, if you wait long enough. But I think the reality is that reporters who are on the ground in Kosovo, and reporters on the ground in Albania, have tended to corroborate the vast majority of the information the KLA has provided about the atrocities being conducted. In fact, the reporting that I have seen from Albania and Macedonia, from direct interviews with refugees, has tended to corroborate most of the information that we have received. I have no reason to dispute the particular reporter's information about a soccer stadium. But let me say this. Our own information is rather dramatic about this whole situation here. U.S. government information is that, prior to forced expulsion, Serbs have looted the homes and businesses of ethnic Albanians in at least 20 towns and villages. In addition, Serb soldiers have reportedly occupied Albanian homes in Pristina. The refugees report widespread burning of homes in 13 towns and countless villages throughout Kosovo.
That point is well taken, but what is important is NOT only to be correct but also for the right reasons. If tomorrow I find myself chasing a Muslim terrorist or some other thug down the street and notice that a white supremacist with SS tatoos is helping me, I would not say that white supremacist is "correct on the issue."
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