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To: dschapin
To my knowledge

You need to work on your knowledge.

Last time I tallied the numbers, back in 2004, it was ~5k Albanian victims recovered in Kosovo, and a further 836 recovered in Serbia, where the Serbs had moved them in a failed attempt to play "hide the bodies".

I believe

Your belief is wrong.

The Serbs to this day haven't produced an accurate accounting of their losses, either civilian or military, during Allied Force. It is notable, however, that when Milosevic's public prosecutor levied charges against NATO's leadership, he utilized the same number of civilian casualties that Human Rights Watch had come up with, ~500.

The salient point here, however, is that for Belgrade's claims to the right to govern Kosovo to be taken seriously, they would have had to demonstrate both the willingness to be responsible to Kosovo's citizenry and accountable for their own actions, neither of which have ever been in evidence. We are still waiting for a full accounting of the crimes perpetrated by Serbian forces in Kosovo - but since the Serbs know that doing so would undercut their claim to sovereignity over Kosovo, they have declined. After 1999 and NATO's intervention, however, there's really nothing Belgrade could have done to retain Kosovo within their borders, your perception of moral imperatives notwithstanding.

Lastly, if you're going to complain about destruction of cultural heritage in Kosovo, you should acquaint yourself with not only what the Serbs have suffered, but what they have inflicted. They're the reigning champions in the 1990's Balkan church destruction derby by virtue of their efforts to erase evidence of Catholicism in the RSK and RS, so using it as a crutch to support Serbian claims regarding Kosovo is something of a non-starter.

50 posted on 01/12/2008 10:42:01 PM PST by Hoplite
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To: Hoplite

I was thinking the number of dead found in Kosovo was around 3,000 but your 5,000 could be a more accurate tally. I think the estimates for American Bombing victims are between 500 and 800. However, that number of people found dead in Kosovo does not tell us how they died. I would imagine that at least some of those dead were KLA fighters, citizens killed by KLA fighters, and citizens killed during the bombing.

So, if around 2,000 civilians end up having been killed by Government forces in the process of fighting a bloody civil war. Was that worth the US killing 500-800 civilians in bombing campaign that ended up focussing on bombing civilian infrastructure. Certainly its the huge humanitarian crisis the media and NATO were claiming during the bombing when they claimed that tens to hundreds of thousands of people were being killed.


51 posted on 01/13/2008 9:55:31 AM PST by dschapin
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