NATO spent the war downplaying stories of mass murder in Kosovo. Its "official estimate" of 3,200 dead dominated the Western media at the time -- "Not Too Many Dead," the headlines read. "Things in Kosovo Not That Bad". Then a State Department official came along and released a high estimate, which led some to expect more bodies than there were.
Does anyone else remember last spring that way?
Seth
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nathan Newman [SMTP:nathan.newman at yale.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, November 11, 1999 12:38 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Kosovars Gained Autonomy with Fewer Losses than Expected
> (RE: Latest on Kosovo death toll
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> > [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Carl Remick
> >
> > [Sorry for overposting, but I thought this story, from today's NY Times,
> > warranted it. Remember, in April the U.S. State Department was
> > charging the
> > Serbs with killing up to half a million Kosovars.]
>
> You are referring to the US ambassador for war crimes (David Scheffer) who
> argued that up to 100,000 (not 500,000) young men were unaccounted for and
> might be at risk- a charge he used to counter official NATO estimates of
> 3200 Kosovar deaths.
>
> It appears that the official NATO estimates were more accurate, a bit low
> compared to the actual killings by the Serbs, but even Sheffer only
> referred
> to higher possible death rates as a possibility.
>
> Actually, it was left critics of intervention (not left defenders) who
> hyped
> the Kosovar deaths after intervention, arguing that NATO intervention was
> leading to the mass murder of the very people who were supposedly being
> helped. Instead, the actual result of intervention seems to match
> relatively closely both the death rates expected by NATO and the political
> outcome - Kosovar autonomy.
>
> Lower than expected Kosovar deaths is good news. It means that the
> Kosovars
> were helped with less loss than expected.
>
> Attachment:
>
> From: Agence France-Presse
> Monday, April 19, 1999
>
> WASHINGTON, April 18 (AFP) - The scale of Serb atrocities in
> Kosovo may be much greater than previously thought, with the possible
> death toll running into tens of thousands, a senior US official
> indicated Sunday.
>
> "We have upwards of 100,000 men that we cannot account for," in
> Kosovo, the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, David Scheffer,
> told Fox News Sunday.
>
> He said that NATO estimates of some 3,200 deaths in Kosovo were
> "very low."
>
>
> --Nathan Newman