I took the liberty of forwarding Jon Cina's message, forwarded by Jason Schulman to the SR list, to STRATFOR Inc. for a comment. (I didn't include any indication that it came from this list.)
Here is Stratfor's response:
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 From: George Friedman <friedman at stratfor.com> Organization: STRATFOR Inc.
Dear Mr. Cina:
The assertion that the Serbian government has hacked our web site is not only highly inappropriate, it is poisonous to rational discourse. Your position appears to be that no reasonable person can raise the question of whether NATO was being truthful in its assertions without being in the grip of the Serbians. I cannot understand why you would think that this enhances discourse.
It is possible that bodies were moved, destroyed or otherwise handled. That is why forensics teams are there. They are trained at detecting crimes well after bodies have been removed. That is why we carefully interviewed spokesman for several teams, including the FBI. We asked specifically whether they uncovered evidence of moved bodies. Evidence would include blood or body fragments in emptied graves, gasses and so forth. According to the FBI and others they found no such evidence at those grave sites where they were told that the Serbs had buried bodies but had moved them. Now, you may dispute this claim, but your dispute is with the forensic teams and not with us.
The ICTY Office specifically told us that the number of grave sites under investigation was 400. They may have been mistaken but that is what they told Stratfor during two separate interviews. As has happened several times in our investigation, numbers are given out by numerous authorities casually and without verifiable evidence. This is one of those cases.
The issue of the number of dead is crucial in two senses. First, it is what NATO claimed and it matters whether NATO was truthful or not. As a citizen who lived through the Vietnam War and its false justification at Tonkin Gulf, I demand accuracy from my government before committing our country to war. They said that thousands were being killed. If that isn't true, it matters to me. It is a standard I set for my government. You are free to set other standards. Second, if the threshold for invasion and loss of sovereignty can be set at 200 killed in ethnic violence, then casus belli would have been established for invading any country from the United Kingdom to Turkey to South Korea. NATO made war on Serbia because they charged that the Serbs had committed crimes sufficient to demand military action. If thousands were being killed, then I would agree the war was justified. If Serbia's crimes are not distinguishable from those of other country's, then the decision to bomb Serbia becomes morally suspect. The question of magnitude is of paramount importance.
The comparison with Rwanda and other countries is quite simple. We are looking for evidence validating NATO's claims. In trying to determine the reasonableness of claims such as yours, which is that mass murder took place but that the evidence was covered up by the Serbs and by the circumstances of the killings, it is necessary to consider the logistics of mass murder. If this is a macabre subject, it is one that you raised with your assertion of coverup. In other instances of mass murder, it proved impossible, under war time conditions, to sanitize the situation so completely that forensic teams would have difficulty uncovering evidence. Indeed, the evidence was visibile for everyone to see. Thus, the question is whether in this case, mass murder could have been conducted in such a way as to make verification impossible. That is a very dubious assertion.
Please note that I have answered you with courtesy, without claiming that you are either an apologist for the KLA or NATO. I assume that you are, as I am, someone concerned with the truth of the matter, and that it is possible for you to assume that a reasonable person could disagree with your point of view. I respect that you like many others might disagree with our view without being a fool or a puppet. I expect the same from others.
Dr. George Friedman Chairman