At 15:49 8/05/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Michael Coghlan wrote:
>
>> >It is a definite fact that he has. Consider the Cambodia case, where he
>> >and Herman compared the Cambodian genocide to that in East Timor. They
>> >were similar in absolute numbers killed, but the Cambodian was
>> >exaggerated in the press, including faked photographs, forged refugee
>> >testimony, etc,=20
>>
>> Excuse me. I realise that this is not the main point of your posting BUT:
>>
>> - what do you mean the Cambodian case was exaggerated?! I work with
>> Cambodian people daily and hear first hand of the unbelievable trauma they
>> have been, and still are, subjected to. I have been to Cambodia and seen and
>> felt for myself the social, political, and more importantly, the psychic
>> dislocation that lingers there. I stood in the genocide museum in Phnom Penh
>> and saw the thousands of photos of the dead that the Khmer Rouge ghoulishly
>> took and displayed. Again, what do you  mean exaggerated? The numbers were
>> exaggerated? What's it matter if it were 10, 20, 100, or 500,000? The impact
>> is colossal. A week in Cambodia is enough to see the fear that still lives
>> in their eyes......or have I missed a point here?
>
>I mean, there were faked photographs publicised at the time, which the
>media continued to use even after the fraud had been admitted. There was
>a claim of two million slain, which was retracted and changed to
>"thousands", but the media continued to report the millions figure and
>failed to report the retraction. And so on. (Incidentally, the totals
>C&H consider "the most careful attempt to sort out the confused facts to
>date" give 750,000 total dead, 200-300,000 outright executions. The case
>above is only about outright executions in the immediate wake of the
>takeover.)
>
>As for what it matters if the numbers were exaggerated, consider the
>opposite case: that of Cambodia bombed by the US in the years preceding
>the Khmer Rouge takeover. Now, exactly the same people who scream in
>outrage that Chomsky "denies" the KR genocide because he wants accurate
>figures instead of lies, also scream in outrage because he reproduces
>the Finnish Inquiry Commission's findings that the US bombing killed
>several hundred thousand people, instead of merely tens of thousands, as
>US propaganda insists. This also, according to the same Commission,
>created the conditions where the Khmer Rouge could become more than a
>tiny, marginal group. Now, for pointing this out, Chomsky supposedly
>portrays the US as the "Great Satan", blah blah blah.
>
>It is in fact a point that Chomsky has made, that if *someone else* is
>to blame for atrocities, then the "numbers don't matter" -- whereas if
>the US is to blame, they suddenly take on an extreme importance.
>
>(And btw, neither Chomsky nor I deny the enormous atrocities in Cambodia
>or the suffering that has resulted from them.)
>
>Fair enough Dan. I take your point. And as I said in my posting to Tresy,
the US may have paved the way for the KR's reign of terror, but the real
Satan was the KR.

- Michael Coghlan. 
>---------------------------------------------------
>Dan Clore
>
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