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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (14874)	10/11/1999 9:57:00 AM
From: George Papadopoulos	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Neocon, your "confirmed" numbers are misleading... I am afraid we will never know the exact number of casualties. What the Yugoslav sources have confirmed is about 500 soldiers dead...I would probably double that to be closer to the actual number. Civilians are between 2,000 to 2,500 dead. The destruction of the Yugoslav military machine has been an incredible failure...13 tanks damaged, 7 left behind totally destroyed and 6 taken back to Yugoslavia for repair. But the civilian infrastructure has been devastating...this, along with the Russians' sellout, was the only reason Milosevic "capitulated" and signed a pretty good agreement to end the war...only to see Nato contuinually violating everything on it. I would like to point out that the number of dead in the conflict against the terrrorist KLA was about a few thousand, mostly civilians (both Serb and non-friendly Albanian)... Now we got the Russians bombing the hell out of Chechnyans...using Nato's tactics as an excuse...what a sad sad sad war that was and its repercussions will be felt for decades... ok, back to work, four more days to the end of the final extension of tax returns (sending your hard earned tax dollars to Uncle Sam). OT: I loved Mystery Men

To: Neocon who wrote (14874)	10/11/1999 10:01:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

Thank you, Neo! Just one follow-up question. Are these civilian deaths all a consequence of NATO bombing, or are they an estimate of all deaths from the conflict in general? If the latter (which I doubt), is there a breakdown of which deaths were due to what? Oh, yes, and one more question. If this is all from NATO bombing, I presume it is from bombing of Kosovo as well as of Serbia proper. Right? I KNEW I should have followed this whole Yugoslavia mess, instead of sticking my head under a pillow, hoping it would just all go away. The Russians screamed their heads off about the NATO operation at the time, but now they are citing it as justification for what they are doing in Chechnya. (And I don't know enough to know when they are scrambling the facts of the Yugoslav case and when they are not. That'll teach me!) Joan P.S. What on earth is a "broken pipe"? Just tried to send this, and got a message that I had a broken pipe. Why can't the computer geeks of the world speak a language the rest of us can understand? <gg>

To: Neocon who wrote (14874)	10/11/1999 10:10:00 AM
From: George Papadopoulos	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

Another post on soccer and Russians who did not make it to the Euro Championship thanks to a horrendous mistake by their goalie three minutes before time against Ukraine (the goalie would be executed if he was Iraqi<g>). This is kind of funny and it shows you in what state the Russians find themselves at... Russians ``do it their way' in soccer despair By Peter Graff MOSCOW, Oct 11 (Reuters) - For once there was something besides armed conflict, economic ruin, apartment block bombings and allegations of official corruption on the front pages of Russian newspapers. In a country where all news seems to be bad news, all hopes seem to get dashed and trusted leaders always seem to let the country down, the big news this weekend was soccer. Russia failed to reach the European championship finals. The news was not just bad. It was distinctly Russian. Saturday's 1-1 draw against Ukraine ended a soccer season that had seen the sort of leadership scandals, wasted triumphs and futile hopes this country usually saves for slightly less passionate pursuits, like economic and political reform. Russia's run of six successive qualifying wins was broken when goalkeeper Alexander Filimonov punched the ball into his own net three minutes from time. Boris Yeltsin, checking out of the hospital where he watched the game in bed with the flu, was shown on television chewing over the final goal with his press secretary, the presidential hands describing a ball bouncing into the net. The stories in Monday's newspapers might as well have been written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky whose novels helped claim, back in the 19th century, Russia's title as the undisputed world champions of synchronised existential despair. ``WE DID IT OUR WAY' ``We play football no worse than we do everything else,' said the headline atop the Vremya-MN daily. ``Let's be blunt. We did it our way...Just like we do so many other things: elect presidents, collect harvests or, for example, build roads,' it said. The Russia-Ukraine match rekindled a bitter rivalry. Although neither Russia nor Ukraine had a national side during Soviet days, clubs from the countries' capitals had been fierce foes for decades. Russia took a 1-0 lead into the 87th minute. Then Filimonov punched Andriy Shevchenko's looping free kick into his own net. The AC Milan striker was credited with the goal. The newspaper Sport Express called it ``A Russian drama' and said Russia were eliminated despite their best match in years. ``The window to Europe has been shut,' said the newspaper Sevodnya, using a phrase laden with intentionally ironic geo-political meaning in this part of the world. A reporter from Komsomolskaya Pravda, another daily, summed it all up: ``As I looked at our players leaving the locker room I saw nothing but a feeling of emptiness. On Moscow's central streets and avenues cars made their way carefully past groups of people who could see and hear nothing, stumbling in the middle of the road. ``We had lost hope.'

To: Neocon who wrote (14874)	10/11/1999 10:45:00 AM
From: John Lacelle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

Neocon, Got to update your figures old boy: American casualty figures should be 4 if you include one Marine hit by a vehicle on the Macedonian border and one Recon Ranger that died because his parachute failed just the other day. Also, I believe the destruction figures for JNA (Yugoslav Army Forces) are greatly exagerated. Most of those "tanks" destroyed by NATO aircraft were decoys. For example, it was thought that we had destroyed perhaps 60% of the tanks on the ground in Kosovo of the 300 that the JNA had on the ground. However, after the cease-fire agreement, the JNA removed about 270 tanks from Kosovo. Of the 30 left behind about 1/2 had suffered severe mechanical failure and were abandoned and about 15 had been destroyed by NATO aircraft. The Pentagon was amazed that we had over- estimated the destruction of the JNA tank numbers. The real total of JNA tanks destroyed was about 5%, not 60%. Real damage to the JNA was significant but nothing near the estimates by NATO. Don't believe the ficticious numbers produced by NATO right after the war. Wait another year or two for the actual numbers produced by the Pentagon. -John