Here is a thought-provoking reference, as supplied by Abnews, a service supplying useful contemporary news abstracts, headed by Dr. James Sanchez.
Source: Parenti, Michael. "Where Are All the Bodies Buried? NATO Commits Acts of Aggression", in Z Magazine, June 2000. pp. 35-37.
In 3/1999, NATO launched an 11-week airwar on Yugoslavia that violated the UN charter, NATO's charter, the US constitution, and the War Powers Act. The justification was "mass atrocities perpetrated by the demonic Serbs and their fiendish leader, Slobodan Milosevic, not seen since the Nazis rampaged across Europe."
The State Department announced one week after the start of the war that it had proof that 100,000 ethnic Albanian men had been massacred; one month later it claimed that 500,000 Kosovo Albanians had been exterminated.
In mid-May, Secretary of Defense William Cohen stated 100,000 military aged men had disappeared and were presumed killed by the Serbs.
Soon, as public support for the war began to decline, Amb. Scheffer raised that figure of disappeared men to "as many as 225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 50".
Just before the end of the airwar, British Foreign Office Minister Geoff Hoon stated that 10,000 ethnic Albanians had been murdered "in more than 100 massacres." A day later AP reports that 10,000 ethnic Albanians had been killed by the Serbs, echoed by the New York Times that stated "at least 10,000 people were slaughtered by Serbian forces during their three-month campaign to drive the Albanians from Kosovo."
On 8/2/1999, Bernard Kocuhner, UN chief administrator in Kosovo, head of Doctors Without Borders and an ally of the KLA stated that 11,000 bodies had been found in mass graves throughout Kosovo, citing UNICTY data (UNICTY denied having found such mass graves).
The Kosovo-based Council for the Defense of Human Rights & Freedom, staffed in part by KLA, first stated 10,000 had been slaughtered (stating the basis of the estimate was interviews with refugees), but could provide no documentation.
In 6-8/1999, the New York Times ran 80 articles, almost one per day, making references to mass graves.
In mid-June, the FBI sent a team to investigate two of the sites listed in the war crimes indictment against Slobodan Milosevic, one said to contain 6 victims, the other 20. Weeks later the FBI team left Kosovo having failed to find a single major mass grave.
Months later, the Financial Times reported that the FBI had found only 200 bodies at 30 sites.
Forensic investigators from (sic) other investigators had similar disappointments: French investigators at Izbica expecting to find a mass grave with 150 bodies found zero; a Spanish team expecting to find 2,000 bodies in mass grave instead found 187 individual burials, none with signs of torture (most appeared to have been killed by gunfire or mortar shells); Spanish forensic expert Emilio Perez Puhola concluded that the references to mass graves was merely "machinery of war propaganda".
The private forensic research firm Stratfor estimated the total "massacre" victims numbered not in thousands but in hundreds.
In 7/1999, the Washington Post reported 350 ethnic Albanians "might be buried in a mass grave" at a mountain village: NATO officials leter reported finding "four decomposing bodies" with no details about their identity or cause of death.
In 8/1999, tryig to salvage the massacre story, the Los Angeles Times and New York Times speculated that mass graves might be concealed in wells; the New York Times would lamely admit that a search of wells had found only one well containing the body of one man, three dead cows, and a dog.
In 7/1999, a mass grave site in Ljubenic, reported to hold 350 bodies was found to hold 7.
In villages where mass murders were reported (Izbica, 150 reported killed; Kraljan 82 men; Djacovica 100, Pusto Selo) no bodies could be found. The new theory of mass graves having been dug up could not be confirmed.
The worst mass murder blamed on Milosevic was the alleged massacre of 1,000 ethnic Albanians, whose bodies were reported to have been thrown down mine shafts or dissolved in vats of hydrochloric acid at the Trepca Mine Complex. In 10/1999, UNICTY investigators reported that not one body was found at the site after an intensive search.
Additional stories of a "Nazi-like body disposal facility in a furnace" near the mine was investigated by UNICTY which found no trace of bodies.
By the end of the year, the stories about mass murders had largely died out, with isolated reports sich as the AP report of 11/30/1999 about "10,000 people killed in Kosovo" being rather unusual. In the same period NATO had quietly redefined a mass grave as a grave including at least 2 bodies.
On 12/31/1999, the Wall Street Journal reported the forensic investigations had confirmed 2,108 bodies and most were not "war crimes" victims.
(Quote) "In sum, NATO leaders used vastly inflated estimates of murdered Kosovo Albanians as a pretext to intrude on the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, destroy much of its infrastructure and social production, badly damage its ecology, kill a substantial number of its citizens, and invade and occupy a large portion of its territory in what can only be termed a war of aggression."
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Thought for the Day:
"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."
(Adolf Hitler)
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