Dyer's recipe for Kosovo apologists  12/12/99

In the column entitled "Reports of genocide in Kosovo exaggerated?"
Gwynne Dyer shares an imaginative recipe for Kosovo war apologists
(Sunday Telegram, Dec. 5).

First, take the 2,108 bodies exhumed by war crimes investigators. Assume
all were ethnic Albanians, in contradiction to investigators' statements
that some were Serbs. Assume, despite press reports about numerous KLA
mass reburials for their "martyrs," that all were ethnic Albanian
civilians and no KLA fighters were killed in battle.

Second, take the number of bodies per investigated gravesite and
multiply by the number of reported sites not yet investigated to
estimate bodies to be exhumed next year. Ignore that investigators chose
to investigate the largest, most plausible claims first, and will
encounter diminishing returns to further investigation.

Third, lend plausibility to your extrapolation by citing an even larger,
official-sounding number of deaths based on reports received from
self-styled eyewitnesses. Ignore that these are the very reports
investigated by war crimes investigators and found to be false in some
cases and inflated in others.
Cart before the horse.

Fourth, indignantly proclaim that your extrapolation is an appalling
number and would have been much larger if NATO had not intervened. Put
the cart before the horse and ignore that NATO started the war producing
the very numbers you are trying to exaggerate.

Fifth, and most important, frame the whole issue as a crusade with but
one consideration: the well-being of KLA supporters. Ignore hundreds of
Serbian civilians killed and thousands maimed by NATO bombs; hundreds of
Serbs, Roma, Slavic Muslims, and non-conforming ethnic Albanians killed
by KLA supporters under NATO's occupation; massive damage to housing and
infrastructure; and so on.

Finally, to the list of five artificial ingredients listed above, add
several screams of "genocide" and stir. Ignore all inconvenient facts
because, after all, the sole purpose of this recipe is self-exoneration.

Brian MacLean
and Dr. Osvaldo Croci
Sudbury, Ont.

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