182) An Armenian Tangles With An Armenian

In my continuing quest to honestly dig up the cold, hard facts Armenians are in such short supply of, to see whether the Armenian "Genocide" has credence — I am SINCERELY giving the reality of a genocide the benefit of a doubt — I travelled to the site of a quarterly publication called "The Armenian Forum." Unfortunately, the majority of their articles are not available online, but one of the few made accessible featured an exchange between the publication's editor, Ara Sarafian, and a representative of one of our more popular Armenian organizations, ANI; this one piqued my . . interest.
Ara Sarafian criticized a map showing the deportations, killings and "concentration camps" that was initially prepared in 1920, and updated by ANI utilizing the latest in Armenian research. Mr. Sarafian found a number of discrepancies.

(One of the immediate discrepancies was the existence of "concentration camps." Were there Auschwitzes and Dachaus, with the barbed wire and German Shepherds, at destinations like Aleppo and Damascus? Or are the Armenians once again striving to find desperate parallels to the Holocaust? According to Armenophiles like Christopher Walker, there would have been no need for the bankrupt Ottoman Empire to construct "concentration camps," since Mr. Walker proclaimed in PBS' "The Armenians — A Story of Survival" that the Armenians were marched off and "just dumped in the desert to die." There is especially no need to build any pesky concentration camps in the desert, I tell you.)

Rouben Adalian shot back in an article the publication titled, "Tendentious Criticism." (Here's the link.)

Dr. Adalian tellingly states: "The most commonly used reference of documents on the Armenian Genocide is the Bryce-Toynbee (Blue Book)" (Which confirms how weak the evidence for the Falsified Genocide is, if Armenians mainly resort to such a widely discredited source... especially in this day and age), as he goes on the attack. I was a little stunned over the degree of his outrage... When Mr. Sarafian replies (luckily for him, he's the editor..."it's good to be the king"), he sounds a little taken aback as well, accused of having "ulterior motives," and even "malice." And rightly so, for him to be taken aback; Mr. Sarafian was only pointing out inconsistencies... why should that be malicious?

Ulterior motives? Could Dr. Adalian suspect Mr. Sarafian is a paid agent of the sinister Turkish government? Every time Armenians come across an anti-Armenian view... not that this situation is anti-Armenian, it's just pro-truth, so let me rephrase: Every time Armenians come across a pro-truth view, they love to charge the person with the truthful view that he or she must have been bought off by the Turks. (I guess this must be the reason why Turkey is so economically unstable, with all these pay-offs they have been making.) Armenians can't stand it when their dogmatic views come under attack... perhaps especially by fellow Armenians. Maybe Dr. Adalian was hurt that Mr. Sarafian did not get it clear that all Armenians need to be 100% in agreement with each other, regarding every single ridiculous claim supporting the "Genocide."

A paragraph is quoted from the Bryce Blue Book, relating to how Armenians were likely killed en masse via drowning. (By U.S. Consul Oscar Heizer, to Ambassador Morgenthau on July 28, 1915.) Ara Sarafian responds, partly by providing a photograph of a "kayik" (rowboat) and by noting "drowning eight thousand people ... would require some two thousand trips. Drowning was uncharacteristic of the fate of Armenians in Trebizond during the Armenian Genocide." He also added that Heizer noted cases of probable drownings, but reported no mass drownings.

However, Heizer's quote undoubtedly gives the impression that there were mass drownings; now that I went back to analyze the statement, I can see the words don't exactly claim mass drownings, but when I first read these words ("A number of lighters have been loaded with people at different times and sent off... It is generally believed that such persons were drowned... gendarmes who proceeded to kill all the men and throw them overboard... A number of such [kayiks] have left Trebizond loaded with men and usually,,, return empty after a few hours."), I could see why Mr. Adalian provided these words to support his contention. Oscar Heizer was quite apparently yet another U.S. consul who totally accepted at face value whatever the missionaries and Armenians told him... leading me to believe these consuls served the same agenda as their boss, Henry "Holier-than-Thou" Morgenthau: make the Turks look like monsters at every opportunity.. Otherwise, wouldn't Heizer have done the right thing by verifying this piece of hearsay before sending it in?

Mr. Sarafian correctly notes: "Reproducing indefensible claims about mass drownings does not help those people — ANI supporters among them — who seek affirmation of the Armenian Genocide. It erodes the credibility of Armenian Genocide studies and opens people to ridicule when they repeat these claims, having relied on ANI to provide them with solid facts."

I'm impressed with Ara Sarafian; this is exactly what Armenians need... SOLID FACTS. Unfortunately, they keep relying on bogus sources like the Blue Book to get those facts. (Not that one can blame the Armenians for their refusal to let go of the Blue Book... they simply don't HAVE any credible sources. I mean, aside from Adolf Hitler, and that quote of his that he likely never said.)

C.F. Dixon-Johnson, British author of the 1916 book, "The Armenians," also took issue with the mass drownings-hogwash.

["Consider (apart from the time that would be required for the collection and embarkation of the victims) the number of sailing boats necessary to carry 8,000 or 10,000 people “some distance” out to sea, even if the boats were able to make more than one journey! And still this was the preposterous story vouched for, according to Lord Bryce..."]



As I've been doing throughout this site.... all one needs to do is apply a little common sense to the ridiculous claims made by the likes of the Morgenthaus, the Bryce/Toynbees, the Lepsiuses, the missionaries; I am preparing this particular page well after I wrote my look at Leslie Davis and the U.S./Western consuls, but there I only applied logic to Leslie Davis' claim ("independently" verified by a missionary) that ten thousand bodies were drowned in a lake. There, I only examined how could these two individuals have come up with that exact magic number? How could they have counted these bodies, all on their lonesome? Now I run into this other report, wirtten in this "Armenian Forum" piece we're examining: Lord Bryce reported to The New York Times on Oct. 7, 1915 that Treibzond's Italian consul claimed ten thousand Armenians drowned in the Black Sea in one afternoon.

There is that magic number again... ten thousand casualties. Can it be any more obvious how PHONY these reports are?

Mr. Sarafian writes Bryce perhaps thought better of this report's accuracy, as he did not include it in the 1916 Blue Book. Well, the damage was done, wasn't it? This report must have come across no less absurd upon Bryce's first hearing of it, and yet he freely laid it on the media.... and newspapers like The New York Times eagerly gobbled up this kind of News that was clearly Unfit to Print.

Ara Sarafian


All one has to do is THINK. As Ara Sarafian logically tells us, drowning eight (or ten) thousand people by boat would have been impossible to achieve in one afternoon.

Yet ANI's Rouben Adalian gets outraged when these silly conclusions are even minimally analyzed. Especially when these silly conclusions are confirmed by his beloved Blue Book... the main thrust of British propaganda of which historian David Fromkin concluded (in 1989's "A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East"): "British officials who played a major role in the making of these decisions provided a version of events that was, at best, edited and, at worst, fictitious."

Let's take a moment to apply some logic to the Blue Book. As we know, Great Britain and other imperialist powers had been planning the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire for decades... there were even secret treaties to that end. Now that W.W.I. was underway, this was the British Empire's golden opportunity to divvy up the Ottoman Empire among its allies, make sure much of the solidly Turkish regions would be ruled by "second-class Christian" Greeks and Armenians, and stuff the remainder of the Turks into an Indian reservation. To help implement this grand scheme, they came up with their notorious propaganda bureau, Wellington House, headed by Lord Bryce. His number one man, Arnold Toynbee, would later admit ALL the reports used were by the unconscionable missionaries, whose testimonies were taken at face value, because they were Christian heroes and people of God. They, along with Morgenthau and Lepsius, helped each other with these phony-baloney reports, for various reasons... to take the heat off the Russian ally's atrocities against the Jews, to justify Britain's post war land grabbing, and to induce America to enter the war... not to mention gaining Christian sympathy so that the missionaries can bilk oodles of dollars from teary-eyed Americans, in what would amount to the most successful charity in American history.

The war is over. Since the British were built into a frenzy with the nonstop assaults of the Bryce-Toynbee hogwash in their nation's press (which, like The New York Times and practically every other newspaper in America, accepted these reports at face value), the Turks had to pay in more ways than just the loss of their lands and their right for self-determination. Nearly a hundred and fifty Ottoman officials were rounded up and fifty six were sent to the island of Malta, in preparation for a "Nuremberg" trial. Armenian scholar Haig Khazarian was appointed to head a team of mostly Armenian researchers, and was given over two years to come up with conclusive genocidal evidence.... having full access to the Ottoman archives, since Istanbul was under British and French occupation. (We'll be getting to how the editor of "The Armenian Forum," Ara Sarafian, was given free access to these same archives in a few moments.) The British clearly had no sympathy for the Turks, and at the beginning of the Malta Tribunals were anxious to smear the Turks... however, to the credit of the British, under the watchful eye of the international community, they could not come up with a SINGLE SHRED OF GENUINE EVIDENCE. All the detainees were finally let go (without compensation).

Conclusion? The Bryce-Toynbee reports, although British produced, could not be used by the British themselves, as real evidence. Yet, Armenians like Rouben Adalian still point to this poppycock as a credible source. When you think about it... it is truly unbelievable, what the Armenians want to get away with.

Hovannisian


"Publications in Armenian Studies need to be held to the highest Academic standards," Mr. Sarafian wrote in his critique of ANI. But see, Ara (if I may call you Ara), that's exactly the problem with what your brethren comes up with. I'd like to say Armenians' regard for the truth takes a back seat to their desperate desire to legitimize the Armenian "Genocide," but if this back seat is from a car, one would be lucky if such regard for the truth is even stashed away in the trunk. Sam Weems dissected one of your chief generals, Richard Hovannisian, in his "Armenia - Secrets of a 'Christian' Terrorist State." I put Dennis Papazian under the magnifying glass of integrity on this site, along with so many other Armenian reports.

I'm glad you say you hold the truth in high regard. At least you're thinking in the right direction.

I read another of your reports from this publication you are (co-)editor of... let's talk about you, now.



I learned from "The Ottoman Archives Debate and the Armenian Genocide" (Armenian Forum 2, no. 1, Spring 1999) that you worked in the Ottoman State Archives for six-seven months (mostly in 1992) and for two months in 1995... after which you were given clear signs of no longer being welcomed.

First, I'm glad you didn't hop aboard the illegitimacy-of-these-archives bandwagon (not here, anyway)... you are aware Vahakn Dadrian claims the sinister Turks have purged these archives, don't you? Yet, in the same breath, he dares to claim there is enough in the archives to still incriminate the Turks.

The reason why Armenians like to claim the archives have been purged is that they just haven't been able to find the kind of explosive evidence they would prefer, so it becomes convenient to then say, SEE. No wonder we couldn't have found anything... obviously, the Turks shredded the good stuff. However, if an Armenian is to make such a claim (as usual, without any evidence), then they CAN'T come back and say the stupid Turks couldn't even do a good enough job of destroying the evidence, because we are still able to dig up the facts here and there to prove the "Genocide."

(On second thought, too many extremist Armenians can claim this. Anything will do, as long as it suits their purposes.)

Secondly, wasn't it nice of the Turks to even allow you such unlimited initial access to the archives? Boy, I'll bet you wouldn't be able to get such nice treatment from the archive house in Armenia... which I understand still remains closed. What do you suppose they might be hiding?
This Ankara University page that Holdwater came across inadvertently claims there are 150 million documents in the Turkish Archives and "classified documents are immediately available to researchers without any restrictions... now accessed freely by local and foreign researchers." Are they on the level? If you're interested, put an "ian" in your last name, contact them, and see what happens. (There may be a more direct link elsewhere; run a search, and do some homework.)


Now, if the Turks have started to get a little antsy with you and other Armenian "scholars," can you really blame them? After all, as much as I admire you for championing the truth, I don't get the feeling you would be acting like a true scholar. In other words, you are ONLY looking for evidence that will prove the Armenian "Genocide." When you run into evidence that flies in the face of the "Genocide," I've got the strongest suspicion you are not going to go out of your way to publicize such counter-evidence.

This is what Prof. Malcolm Yapp criticized Vahakn Dadrian of.... Dadrian does not act like a true scholar. He acts like a prosecutor. The same goes for all the other Armenian professors I've analyzed on this site... they all march to the drum of the "Armenian AND? Anthem."

Now maybe you're different.... but here's a clue that you're not.

I've read Kamuran Gurun's excellent "The Armenian File; the Myth of Innocence Exposed," and it seems like you have, too. (Good for you. I wish every Armenian would read this book, with an open mind.)

(An open-minded Armenian... hmmmm... referring to the "genocide," quite an oxymoron.)

On page 214 of his book, you write (and I checked) a report from the Minister of the Interior to the Grand Vizier on Dec 7, 1916 states that 702,900 individuals were relocated; 25 million kurush were spent in 1915, and 236 million in 1916.

This is a significant point, because it's one of my contentions on TAT that the bankrupt Ottoman government would not have spent so much money on the Armenians if they wanted to murder them. (I've been told these amounts translate to millions of dollars in today's values.)

However, you go on to claim these refer to a resettlement of Muslims and not Armenians.

Unfortunately, all we have on this is your word... and I'm not saying you're lying, because I would like to believe...desperately, in fact... that you are one of the few Armenians where truth really prevails; however, your colleagues have crumbled my faith in the integrity of Armenians, so I'm afraid your word is not good enough. I am not going to accept your version as the truth, although you have succeeded in casting some doubt in my mind... as you could be telling the truth, and I would like to believe you.

[ADDENDUM, Mid-2005: I now believe Ara was correct on the point of the 702,900 referring to Muslims, and that Gurun was in error. In addition, the whole of the money in the Refugees Fund referred to, 261 million, was not earmarked strictly for the Armenians, as Gurun made it sound. But it's not like a portion of this money was not allocated for the Armenians, as one infers from Ara's conclusion. See black box "Addendum" below to get an idea of the Armenians' share.]

However, it would appear to me the major resettlement program going on at the time was with the massive resettling of the Armenians, and not the Muslims. Obviously, some money needed to be spent for resettling the few hundred thousand Armenians. Even if the Armenians were earmarked for destruction, a good portion of money would have needed to be spent. Despite the kinds of reports U.S. Consul J. B. Jackson would irresponsibly prepare that at least your one-time buddy Rouben Adalian would slobber over (without any care for substantiation, as he has demonstrated in your little feud), you know food and supplies were provided for the Armenians (even if the worst of the gendarmes, who also had to be paid for, withheld or misused these goods). And you know the Armenians weren't just dumped in the desert to die, as Armenophiles love to claim... some kind of support system needed to be established at the other end, unless you think the Armenians were forcibly interned in concentration camps. (However, if there were Dachaus and Auschwitzes, if that's what you would prefer to believe... those kinds of places must require real expense to construct and maintain.) No doubt the relocated Armenians had no picnic, trying to re-establish their lives, especially with the shortages of food and resources that plagued the entire empire... but the side we never hear about as to what really happened to them was on the order of this and this.

So then, the question is... if the 261 million kurush recorded was for the Muslims and not the Armenians (and I guess the source document... which I footnoted under #3 of the Questions page, and can probably be checked by anyone who is interested, at the Turkish archives... specifically states this money was for non-Armenians, in order for you to have made your claim), how come the Grand Vizier decided to keep the considerable sums that must have been spent on the Armenians... a secret?

ADDENDUM:

I have been largely avoiding Turkish sources at TAT, but since writing the above, I came across the following, at the ataa.org site, entitled "Armenians in Ottoman Documents":

Allocation of funds for the deportation
Sükrü Bey, the Director of Settlement of Tribes and Refugees was assigned, with orders to carry out the deportation in an orderly fashion, in addition to meeting the food and lodging expenses out of the Refugees Fund.

In order to meet all needs, the provinces of Konya, Adana, Aleppo, Suriye, Ankara, Mossul and the sanjaks of Izmit and Eskisehir were allocated a total of 2,250,000 kurus as needed. Again additional allocations were made as they were needed.

There is a ton of actual ciphered telegram details in "Chapter II"... what a wealth of fascinating information. Pertinent to this topic at hand are the following examples:

23 - PAYMENT OF THE ARMENIANS' FOOD AND LODGING EXPENSES FROM THE FUND ALLOCATED FOR THE REFUGEES
[Ciphered telegram sent by the Ministry of the Interior to the province of Konya regarding that the necessary food and lodging expenses of the Armenians be paid out of the refugees fund.]
15 B. 1333 (29 May 1915)

145 - PROVIDING FOOD FOR THE ARMENIAN CONVOYS

[Ciphered telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to Sükrü Bey, the Director of the Refugees, regarding providing information whether the funds allocated for feeding the Armenian convoys is sufficient, and whether this has been paid out of the property funds.] 17 Z. 1333 (26 October 1915)



Ara, it appears there can be no question a fund was set up to meet the expenses of the Armenian resettlement program... and that the claim in the Gurun book was very believable. Where in the world did you get your information from?

Straying from the "Fund" topic, there are some others here that I found very interesting:



34 -PROTECTING THE DEPORTED ARMENIANS ON THE ROADS AND PUNISHING THOSE WHO ATTACK THEM
[Ciphered telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to the province of Erzurum, regarding the protection of the Armenians on the roads during their deportation, the punishment of the deserters and those who attack them, and that the old road be used in the deportation.] 1 S. 1333 (14 June 1915)

149 - PREVENTING THE ATTACKS DURING DEPORTATION

[Ciphered telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to the province of Diyarbakir, regarding changing the route in order to prevent attacks against the Armenian convoys sent from Urfa to Re'sulayn and Nusaybin.] 25 Z. 1333 (3 November 1915)

153 - DISPATCHING THE GENDARMERIE WHO ACTED INAPPROPRIATELY TO THE MILITARY COURT

[Ciphered telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to the governor of the sanjak of Urfa, regarding court martial of the gendarmerie accompanying the convoys sent from Urfa to Rakka, due to their inappropriate acts arising of negligence.] 28 Z. 1333 (6 November 1915)

169 - THAT ARMENIANS WHO HAVE NOT BETRAYED AND WHO HAVE NO RELATIONS WITH REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEES NOT BE DEPORTED 7 Ca. 1334 (3 March 1916)

259 - HANDING OVER THE POSSESSIONS OF THOSE WHO HAVE RETURNED TO THEIR LANDS

[Ciphered telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to the province of Bitlis, regarding that the properties of those individuals who were deported and who returned to their homes, be returned to them and not to their executors or to their agents] 3 S. 1337 (4 May 1919)



"153" in particular is very revealing... according to Bruce Fein, over a thousand soldiers (and civilians) were punished for ill behavior toward the relocating Armenians.

There is too much detail within these pages to get into at this breakaway "Addendum" section, but practically everything I've read has humanity and care in mind... making sure the property of the Armenians were protected, that people purchasing the property were required to pay market value, all the many exemptions among the Armenians...

WHAT KIND OF A "GENOCIDE" IS THIS?

Since Ara was at the Ottoman Archives, did he not come across the nearly three hundred ciphered telegrams put up at the ataa.org site? Did he think these telegrams were doctored, or were written for show in order to fool future historians? How could anyone going through these documents believe the intention of the Ottoman government was to murder the Armenians? If anything, the welfare of the Armenians was being kept in mind... obviously, there were failures to implement these intentions, but the hearts of the officials were in the right place.

A Turkish professor, Dr. Yusuf Halacoglu, using these authenticated telegrams as his main evidence, explores the ins and outs of the resettlement of the Armenians in this revealing PDF file. He uses the same figure above, 2,250,000 kurush, and its breakdown. In a footnote, he writes: "The 1915 budget of the Directorate for the Settlement of Nomadic Tribes and Refugees was 78,000,000 kurush and its 1916 budget was 200,000,000 kurush. The funds were spent for the deported Armenians, Greeks and Arabs as well as Muslim refugees coming in from territories invaded by the enemy. (BOS, BEO, No. 334063)." The Armenians also benefited from money sent from the United States and distributed by the missionaries and the consuls... with the government's knowledge... and money collected by Armenians in the U.S. secretly delivered to the deportees.

Let me move on now with what I had written previously....


You also go on to report:

"The cipher telegram records show that the Ottoman government had complete control over its subject peoples; Armenians were systematically deported and destroyed throughout 1915-16; and Talaat Pasha was in charge of deportations through a telegraphic network and an obedient state bureaucracy. Ottoman archives... corroborate the freely accessible Western sources, which provide us with a more complete picture of the systematic destruction of Ottoman Armenians in 1915."

Holdwater, ADDENDUM Continued: WHAT! If anything, the cipher telegrams show exactly the reverse. Perhaps Mr. Sarafian knows of more incriminating telegrams... if that's the case, then what are they? Talk is cheap... it is not correct to come up with incriminating conclusions such as "systematic destruction," if the goods are not available. Such telegrams would be exactly the smoking gun genocide advocates have been looking for, to prove the all important "intent" requirement of the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide.

The Ottoman government had anything but "complete control" over its peoples. This is why the crimes that occurred against the Armenians took place, by criminals and revengists who took the law into their own hands. Even a most zealous and hostile "witness to genocide," missionary Mary Graffam, testified to the limits of government control: "I am not in any way criticizing the government. Most of the higher officials are at their wits end to stop these abuses and carry out the orders which they have received, but this is a flood and it carries all before it."

If anything is going to give legitimacy to the Armenian "Genocide," it's these telegrams. Not the ones forged by Aram Andonian that your fellow Armenians readily accept, based on the bulk of Armenian and hypocritical "genocide institute" web sites which immorally still present them as fact.... but the actual telegrams. Not only were the big orders needed to be given ("Kill all the Armenians")... but one would reasonably expect there had to be many sub-orders needed to fine-tune such a Herculean operation. It's just amazing that nobody has come up with a genuine document constituting a definite order for massacres, given that so many people lazily accept the Armenian Falsified Genocide as actual fact. Your Armenian scholarly forefathers, led by Haig Khazarian, sure tried their utmost to come up with such a document at the Malta Tribunals... and they couldn't come up with a thing, even though they had the luxury of having everything available in Allied-occupied Istanbul, and over two years to search.

I'm sure there are telegrams that lend evidence to the Armenians being "deported" (the correct word, if you consult your dictionary, is "resettled," or "relocated"; the Armenians were not banished outside the country's borders)... nobody is denying the Armenians were transported. However, your credibility comes into question when you claim these telegrams prove the Armenians were "systematically.... destroyed." Which telegrams are those? If anything, there are some telegrams that demonstrate a sensitivity toward the Armenians' well-being.

As far as whether these telegrams corroborate Western sources regarding a "complete picture of the systematic destruction of Ottoman Armenians in 1915," please don't just make a tiresome statement; come up with the no-buts-about-it goods. That's exactly what you Armenians need to come up with to make your case, and so far you've come up with ZILCH.

(To conform to the definition of genocide as specified by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, remember: not only must you come up with the authentic hard goods to prove intent... but you also must explain that other bugaboo regarding the Convention's not protecting "political groups." Don't forget, it was the Armenians' violent political alliance with the Russian forces, and not their ethnic or religious identity, that rendered them subject to the relocation. [As extra evidence, not that you need it — since you very well know what your Ottoman forefathers did — you may consult Boghos Nubar.] You've got a big job ahead.)

When I wrote a few paragraphs ago: "Armenian professors... all march to the drum of the 'Armenian AND? Anthem'... Now maybe you're different.... but here's a clue that you're not," here's the point I wanted to connect to:

You've likely read Gurun's "The Armenian File," and if you truly are a proponent for the truth... there is no way you can argue against the voluminous evidence supplied by mostly "neutral" sources within "The Armenian File" that turn the Armenian "Genocide" on its ear.

You cannot say so conveniently, as your fellow Armenians do (simply because they have no respect for the facts and because they can get away with it), that the book is a product of Turkish "lies," or Turkish "denialism." The mostly non-Turkish sources in that book are all well documented. Unlike your fellow Armenians, you cannot say that, because you have put yourself on record by making statements, in your mini-battle with Rouben Adalian, to the tune of valuing "the highest Academic standards."

If the truth is so important to you, why are you turning a blind eye to all the irrefutable facts presented in that book? Could it be because you have just one goal, like Vahakn Dadrian and just about every other Armenian "scholar".... and that is to only pay attention to information so long as it's supportive of the Armenian Falsified Genocide? (Even though the reader must bear in mind that Ara Sarafian and the old school, highly unscrupulous "extreme" of Vahakn Dadrian appear to have significant differences.) You're really breaking my heart, because on one hand, you make it sound like you're coming across as the rare Armenian who respects truth, honor and integrity, regarding the "genocide"... and on the other hand, you dismiss counter-evidence, and put forth unproven statements alluding to the "systematic destruction" of the Armenians. I know it's the Armenian way to play both sides of the fence, but I sincerely wished you would have been different... if you want to pass yourself off as a proponent of the truth.

A truth-seeker must have the courage to stick to his or her convictions.
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