Iraqi war opponents were silent about Kosovo

The Washington Times ^ | 13 March 2003 | Stella L. Jatras

[Doctor13]

The article "Critics of Kosovo, Iraq swap war-making reservations" (Nation, Saturday) discusses the different positions held by those people and nations who are against war with Iraq today but supported

[Wraith]

What Hoplite does not understand is simply that the Serbs can't always be the bad guy. I was there under in Kosovo under the NATO/UN umbrella and got to understand the true nature of the KLA animal and he of course was sitting at home pretending to understand what was happening in Kosovo.

The Serbs who I will acknowledge have their fair share of Blood on their hands like the Croats and Muslims but in the case of Kosovo they got the short end of the stick. And why do I know this simply because they the KLA in Kosovo were busy killing their own people i.e. taking out the LDK political opposition in order for the KLA to realized their own state run Mafia of which they would realized all of the profits. Those that are before the ICTY courts is living proff. I had the opportunity to speak to some moderate LDK Kosavar Albanians LDK who managed to escape the KLA death drag net with their lives. A lot did not.

Of course Hoplite armed with the opinion of others will disagree but that’s ok he is but a simpleton who can only rely on the written opinion of others to make his point while he safely sites close to the potty in his house with mom. With Hoplite their is not truth only his side of the story. I believe this is evident throughout FR reinforced with the fact the he has nothing better to do but to fight with everyone. He should deal with his personal issues and not display them on FR.

[Hoplite]

Hi Wraith. = )

[Seselj]

This should be easy...

Your PDF proves nothing except that the people who compiled it were politically motivated or paid by someone to write anti-Serb lies. In fact, that report's information is based on interviews of Albanian refugees (and probably KLA too). Obviously Albanians are going to paint a bad picture of the Serbs. Not a reliable source of information.

Secondly it makes no attempt to justify how it arrives at its count of 10,000. The fact remains, about 4000 bodies have been found in total, and of those ~4000 no one is able to say which percentage are civilians and which percentage are KLA terrorists, or even which percentage are Albanian. Maybe all bodies found are Serbs.

The count does not exclude KLA's, because every body unearthed is always assumed to be a civilian (maybe if he was actually buried holding an assault rifle in his hands, then they might assume he wasn't a civilian).

Also, your report concentrates only on the period after the bombing began. It ignores the fact that prior to the bombing there were not hundreds of thousands of refugees, only a few internally displaced for their own safety.

I know Milosevic promised to "behave" in Oct 1998. That was because the KLA at that time agreed to disarm. A few weeks later they attacked some police and killed them. When you have criminals who are too well-armed for the police to handle, you have no choice but to send in the army to deal with them. Any other country would of done the same.

I can't deny some war crimes happened. But 10,000 civilian deaths is ridiculous. The facts just don't support it.

[Hoplite]

Of course it's going to be easy - you simply refuse to accept any information that goes against your viewpoint and try to fill the ensuing void with fabrications

It ignores the fact that prior to the bombing there were not hundreds of thousands of refugees, only a few internally displaced for their own safety.

This is quite simply yet another lie foisted upon us by Milosevic apologists - the UNHCR was estimating "well over 400,000 people," displaced from their homes in Kosovo, with 250,000 of them still in Kosovo on 3/23/99, before the bombing started.

Furthermore, it's obvious you can't even be bothered to become at least familiar with the material I referenced, as your statement " it makes no attempt to justify how it arrives at its count of 10,000" is unsupportable - here, have a nice read.

So yeah, this was easy, just not for the person you were hoping.

[Seselj]

the UNHCR was estimating "well over 400,000 people," displaced from their homes in Kosovo, with 250,000 of them still in Kosovo on 3/23/99, before the bombing started.

That's nothing but a wild guess by the traditionally anti-Serb UNHCR to justify the bombing which suckers such as yourself believe without question, sadly. There is no way the UNHCR or anyone else could of arrived at an even remotely accurate figure of how many people were displaced, with all the fighting going on and people constantly moving around.

Regarding your link, it proves nothing except that anyone can write their own biased version of events.

[Wraith]

Hoplite look who is calling the kettle black? Don't bother trying to engage in a civil discussion with hoplite, its truly a waste of time.

[Seselj]

At least I will get a few laughs out of it. That's why I like arguing with people who are ignorant of the facts.

[Hoplite]

I can't deny some war crimes happened.

You should have stuck with that.

Now you've placed yourself in the position where everybody in the world who reported on the refugee crisis in Kosovo prior to March 24th is a liar, rather than just you and those still reiterating the Serbian Refugee Minister's claims on the subject.

There is no humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo whatsoever Bratislava Morina, 3/30/99.

What shall we make of the Macedonian Government, who on March 22nd stated that a conservative estimate of the number of refugees who had crossed the border in recent days was about 10,000?

Let me guess - they're lying as well, as you have a lock on the truth, even if you cannot prove it.

And that's what this is going to come down to - you declaring victory because I am ignorant of nonexistent facts and refuse to accept your transparent fabrications, isn't it?

Don't worry, you're in good (plentiful) company in this regard.

[Hoplite]

RIP Smokegenerator.

[Wraith]

Well have at it if you enjoy a good laugh.

[timestax]

Yeah, hardly a peep out of them. Just a few Catholics protested Kosovo,Belgrade bombing, here in the SouthWest Ohio area!!

[Southack]

"Today, France and Germany demand proof that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, yet they had no qualms about an undeclared and unjustified war against the Serbian people by our wag-the-dog president."

It was actually even more hypocritical than that.

France's President Chirac *demanded* that NATO bypass the UN and wage immediate war on the Serbs.

It was Chirac's Bastille Day speech, in which he chided the U.S. for appeasing a Milosovic who was as bad as Hitler, that convinced President Clinton to likewise ignore the UN.

So no UN inspectors were sent in to Kosovo to verify Chirac's wild-eyed claims of mass graves of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, and no UN resolutions were passed authorizing the use of force against Serbia.

Worse, Chirac ordered French troops in neighboring Bosnia to capture a Serbian-held bridge purely to *spite* Milosovic's forces in Serbia.

And after the war, "ex" Bader-Meinhoff terrorist Joshca Fischer and Gerhard Schroeder were able to replace Milosovic with a card-carrying Communist and Bader-Meinhoff sympathizer (Zolan Djindjic), who kept quiet about the French/German "go-to-war-against-Serbia-without-the-UN" double-standard regarding the U.S. and Iraq - quiet to the day that he was assasinated (probably by pro-Milosovic forces who were pissed about the double-standard, and certainly *not* by mafioso who stood to gain no profit but would be certain to feel military heat for such a hit).

[faithincowboys]

yeah, what else is new?

by the way, isn't there a 100% probability that the leading lights of the Democrat party are hoping that our boys fail--which of course means that our boys will have to die and get wounded in large numbers for their dreams to become realized.

sick-making!!

[DestroyEraseImprove]

Iraq civilian body count passes 6,000

LONDON (Reuters) - New information from remote locations of Iraq has pushed up the civilian death toll from the U.S.-led war by 500 in the last month to at least 6,000, an Anglo-American research group says.

The Iraq Body Count's (IBC) latest figures, based on media reports and more than a dozen counting projects from independent investigators in and outside Iraq, put the minimum number of civilians dead at 6,055 and the maximum at 7,706.

"Both the U.S. & the U.K. said they were taking every effort to minimise civilian casualties and talked a lot about smart, precision weapons," IBC researcher John Sloboda told Reuters.

"From that, one could have expected a clean war with very few casualties, but I don't call 5,000 to 7,000 very few. It is clear the coalition claims were political claptrap."

The latest IBC toll has risen by about 500 after information arrived from areas that had not been reached before by outsiders. The group says its statistics are the most comprehensive collation of civilian deaths available.

"If you look at a map of Iraq, there are still a lot of places, that you would imagine allied troops have gone through, where there have been no reports of killings yet, simply because no journalist or researcher has gone there," said Sloboda, a psychology professor from Britain's Keele University.

The IBC, run by British and American academics and peace activists, has chastised London and Washington for not setting up an official investigation into civilian deaths.

"Then there are the deaths by malnutrition and dehydration as a consequence of the war which we haven't even started talking about," Sloboda added.

The United States and Britain have repeatedly stressed their tactics were designed to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.

But they are declining to give estimates.

"We made every effort to reduce civilian casualties by a careful targeting policy," a spokesman for Britain's Ministry of Defence said.

[F-117A]

I've done this before too, you see, and there are fewer refugees in the Balkans now than when Slobo clinton was having his way!