http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/kosovo/koso1006.htm Crisis
in Kosovo Numbers
were best available, officials
say by Steven Komarow Many of the figures
used by the Clinton administration
and NATO to describe the wartime plight of
Albanians in Kosovo now appear greatly
exaggerated as allied forces take control
of the province. "Yes, there were atrocities. But no,
they don't measure up to the advance
billing," says House intelligence chairman
Porter Goss, R-Fla. Instead of 100,000 ethnic Albanian men
feared murdered by rampaging Serbs,
officials now estimate that about 10,000
were killed. 600,000 ethnic Albanians were not
"trapped within Kosovo itself lacking
shelter, short of food, afraid to go home
or buried in mass graves dug by their
executioners" as President Clinton told a
veterans group in May. Though thousands
hid in Kosovo, they are healthy. Kosovo's livestock, wheat and other
crops are growing, not slaughtered
wholesale or torched as widely
reported. Kenneth Bacon, spokesman for
Defense Secretary William Cohen,
says the best estimates available were
used. He says Cohen was right to compare Serb
leader Slobodan Milosevic to a
World War II Nazi. His forces burned
houses and made 800,000 Albanians flee for
their lives, he says. And if other war crimes turn out less
than expected, "I don't think you can say
killing 100,000 is 10 times more morally
repugnant than killing 10,000," Bacon
says. Then why
exaggerate? "In order to justify this
thing, they needed to tap that memory
of the Holocaust," says Andrew
Bacevich, professor of
International Relations at Boston
University. Meanwhile, food and medical aid
programs in Kosovo are taking a back seat
while the United Nations rushes to
assemble a police force. The "missing men" -- young Albanians
who were believed killed -- are home with
no jobs. NATO forces are struggling to
keep them from seeking retribution. The changing numbers in the province
raises questions. Goss, who opposed the
bombing campaign, says the administration
deliberately emphasized the most dire
reports. "There is a credibility question
with President Clinton and his
administration on these matters," he
says. Mike Hammer, spokesman for the
National Security Council, says there was
no effort to mislead. The administration
found that "as you go through a campaign
like this, there is a great deal of
uncertainty." Even lower numbers justify action, he
says. "We needed to move because of the
campaign of ethnic cleansing that could
not be allowed to stand." Paul Risley of the U.N. tribunal
that indicted Milosevic says the portrayal
of Kosovo as a wasteland shows the lack of
good information during the war. "This was
a trip-up of the Western media and the
Western governments." |