194) Armenian Apologists of Non-Armenian Origin

Is there an end to Armenian (and Greek) apologists of Non-Armenian (and non-Greek) origin? After the many, many years of relentless, anti-Turkish propaganda, how could there be?

One can almost understand the irrational and fanatical demons that drive too many Armenians (and Greeks), but for non-Armenians to outdo Armenians themselves... that is so very mind-boggling; the readiness with which they so willingly and simplistically narrow the matter down to white hats and black hats.

On this page, I wanted to highlight a few of these prejudiced folks who only happened to catch my eye. These examples, of course, only represent the tippiest tip of the iceberg.

A photographer by the name of Rudy Brueggemann operates a web site that appears to criticize several different genocides, but I inferred he had a special love affair with the Armenian "Genocide." He relates, on a somewhat entertaining page, of a trip to Turkey, going from one site of "genocidal" note to the next. He gives us a picture of "Midnight Express," a man on a mission who is very afraid if the Turks should happen to catch him. (I guess he was afraid he was going to be hung upside-down by that film's "Bluto," get whacked on the soles of his feet and then be sodomized.) His aim: "To document historic evidence of the attempted extermination of the Armenian people in the early 1900s," hopefully telling of "a little-known story of enormous human evil. At another level, I hoped they would provide additional evidence against what my Armenian journalist friend called the 'big lie,' or Turkey's denial that Armenians were victims of a government-run, systematic mass murder." (Ah! He's got an Armenian tale whose version of events he has totally accepted, and he goes on to classify the Armenian "Genocide" as ... a "little-known story?" Brother, there are many genocides that are barely spoken of, but the Armenian "Genocide" is definitely not one of them. In addition... excuse me, but what is there on his web page that documents historic "evidence"?)

He goes from site to site, especially to the memorials of Young Turks (photographs of which he has plastered his big old copyright notice upon... hey, they're only unremarkable shots of scenery with the purpose of documentation that any tourist could have mustered)... with the outrage that the Turks would be despicable enough to honor the memory of these men. (Opinion on Talat Pasha: "I knew exactly who 'this fucker' was — a man whose crimes equaled those of Hitler and Stalin." Hoo-boy! Good going, fella, doing your thorough homework on the subject.)

Actually, the man has done his homework... he just rejects flat out of hand what the "Turkish government says." Even to the extent of saying, "The Turkish... government links Armenians to the Nazis by claiming an Armenian battalion served under the Nazi Wehrmacht and that Armenians published Anti-Semitic propaganda during the second world war." CLAIMING! In other words, to his closed-up little Armenian-loving mind, the fact that Armenians were at one with the Nazis is a lie, like everything else.

(Of course, I am only assuming Mr. Brueggermann is not an Armenian... his web site pays lip service to other genocides, but as is a commonly deceptive Armenian practice, his is only one of many web sites that masquerade as general genocide sites, but actually serve as fronts to hurl hated and defamatory mud against the Turks. For a non-Armenian or non-Greek to be motivated to construct a site for this purpose would either take passionate anti-Turkish bigotry, or perhaps the ethnic background of the site's creator is not quite what visitors are led to believe.)

He travels east, and an Armenian-Turk suspects the man is not on the up and up, and refuses to have his photograph taken. (Previously, Mr. Brueggermann himself refuses to "trust this kind, elderly Armenian man." Isn't that carrying paranoia too far? Probably that's why the man refused to allow his photo to be taken... his senses told him there was something really fishy about Mr. Brueggermann.) The Armenian-Turk's senses were on the mark... Mr. Brueggemann takes every opportunity to lie about who he is, and what he's up to.

At the end of the story, when he's finally "free" of the Land from Hell, he breathes a sigh of relief that he no longer has to misrepresent himself... and yet, on the boat that is taking him safely away from being hung upside down and getting his bare feet beaten (a la the cinematic Billy Hayes), he STILL misrepresents himself to two female Australian tourists who ask what he did during his "vacation." (As of this writing, March 2003.) A real man of honor.

Curiously, a Turkish cab driver somehow DID figure out what Mr. Brueggemann was up to (along with a Turkish restaurateur who strongly suspected the man was not whom he claimed he was), and Mr. Brueggemann began to quake in his dishonest boots. Yet, the Turks were cool about the back-stabbing nature of their country's guest (the Turks didn't go to the "Gestapo" with the information), and very friendly... as were, evidently, every other Turk Mr. Brueggemann came across. You would think that in itself would have opened up the man's blindly prejudiced eyes. Some people who have been brainwashed are clearly beyond hope.

This man's irresponsibility in considering only one side of a story and callously preparing a biased web site based on his distorted views clearly makes him guilty of murder... in the form of "Rufmord."

ADDENDUM: This page was among the first prepared for the site, where I had a tendency to write with greater fire and brimstone. Subsequently, Mr. Brueggemann and I had a brief correspondence. I haven't visited his site to see if he has made changes... at his core, he's probably too diehard a believer to have done so... but I hope he has come to realize that, at least partly, he has erred in relying so exclusively upon his sources, to have arrived at such ruinously accusatory conclusions.


The Scales of Good and Evil

An interesting web site that lists the "Top Ten" Evil and Good people in the world. I'm mainly including this site to prove to Rudy Brueggemann, above, that he was dead wrong when he asserted Talat Pasha was "a man whose crimes equaled those of Hitler and Stalin." Well, the Top Ten Evil List says otherwise. Hitler clocks in at Number Three, and Stalin is at Number Nine... but Talat Pasha comes in dead last among the runner-ups, on the heels of Heinrich Himmler. ("Heinrich Himmler was the architect of the "Final Solution." Tallat (sic) Pasha decreed there must be no Armenians on the Earth. 1.5 Million Armenians were beaten, raped, robbed, and killed.") There you have it, it's official.

(Gee. I wonder where Talat Pasha actually decreed, "there must be no Armenians on the Earth." Even I haven't run into that one, having visited so many Armenian web sites, the last few months. Quick, Armenian web site owners: make a note of that, to include in your lists of "Talat Quotes.")

Even in the tables of infamy, the Turks get the short end of the stick. How dare Talat Pasha not beat out Gilles de Rais, who only killed a measly 140 people. Why, Talat Pasha was responsible for having made sure 1.5 Million Armenians were beaten, raped, robbed, and killed.

Looking around this web site for a few minutes, I was intrigued with the correspondence between a Romanian and the webmaster, discussing whether Vlad the Impaler should be on the Evil List. (If memory serves, Vlad only killed a few hundred thousand folks. Why should he beat out Talat Pasha, when Talat Pasha had 1.5 Million Armenians beaten, raped, robbed, and killed?) Most Romanians regard the inspiration for Dracula as a good guy, as the Romanian explains... because even though he killed so many people, many of the killed were only Turks, you see. (Turks and rich people.)

Then there is a reader's mail which serves as the only indictment against an entire country, when the idea of the site is to list individual evil-doers. Yet, this person ("Bob D.") could not restrain himself from breaking the rule. Which country would that be? You guessed it... Turkey. Although Bob D. nicely gives the Turks credit for providing a safe haven for the Jews... a very little-known fact among "ordinary people"... he feels "how the Turks have treated the Kurds (a genocide of thousands of them in the past 20 years) puts Turkey on the most evil list, too." Let's see now... Genocide of the Armenians. Check. Genocide of the Greeks. Check. Genocide of the Assyrians. Check. Genocide of the Kurds... (sigh.)



Mike Joseph and Jenny Randerson


Mike Joseph, as far as I could figure, is an an author who is " writing a book on the Holocaust... based on his family's story as survivors of that genocide." His speech, "Denying Hitler's Question" was delivered on April 24 or 25, 2002, in the National Assembly of Wales (co-sponsored by the Armenian-Wales Solidarity... why, those Armenians are everywhere) appeared on a page of a site called CRAG (Campaign for Recognition of the Armenian Genocide, described as "a single-issue pressure group," whose "central aim is to secure official British Government recognition of the Armenian W.W.I experience as genocide."

He hopes to make the case that Hitler's infamous quote, which he recites as "Who after all talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?" was definitely made. (This is yet ANOTHER variation of the alleged quote! I wish people who are in a quandary to have us believe Hitler actually said this thing would get right exactly what he is supposed to have said..!) At any rate, Mike Joseph's supporting statements are what caught my eye, rather than the stupid quote.

Mr. Joseph tells us the reason why Adolf supposedly uttered these words was to "convince" his generals that genocide would be in their future. Unfortunately, the 1939 speech in which this quote was supposedly made had nothing to do with the Jews... Hitler was invading Poland. (And did Hitler need to "convince" anybody? He was Der Fuehrer!)

As Mike Joseph describes giving his lecture in the University of Wales (Swansea), he is annoyed to find a student sitting with a "fixed, waterproof kind of smile that displays scorn rather than satisfaction." When the student objected by bringing up such seemingly incidental points as 1) There was no genocide, 2) Armenians were just as bad (the student was being kind), and 3) Western references to the "genocide" were mistakes, lies and forgeries, Mr. Joseph sniffed that these were "lame assertions"... particularly in light of Mr. Joseph's having examined a paper by "a leading Turkish denier of the Armenian Genocide, Professor Dr. Türkkaya Ataöv."

Even if Mike Joseph truly managed to tear apart Dr. Türkkaya Ataöv's paper, how can he justify pooh-poohing the "lame assertions"? Dr. Türkkaya Ataöv's paper, Hitler and the Armenian Question, mainly deals with... as the title promises... Hitler's connection with the Armenians.
Hitler

Hitler, not long after the days when Mike Joseph alleges Herr Richter served as der Fuehrer's Rasputin.

The gist of Hitler's intimacy with the Armenian "Genocide," according to Mike Joseph, had to do with the Nazi leader's association with a Max Erwin von Scheubner Richter.... a Vice Consul and commander of German forces in the Ottoman Empire. (At the same time? It would be odd for a diplomat to simultaneously serve as a soldier.) Mr. Joseph claims Richter had firsthand knowledge of the genocide apparatus, sending the message to Berlin that "The Armenians of Turkey for all practical purposes have been exterminated."

Hmmm. I'm not in the know as to the extent of Richter's responsibilities during the War, but I'd imagine he would have had to remain wherever he was stationed ... and did not have the freedom to check out the far corners of the Empire, to actually know what the extent of this probable "extermination policy" could have been. The evidence clearly does not support nearly the entire Armenian population (1.5 million) of the Ottoman Empire was done away with (the Welsh gentleman claims "over" a million and a half Armenians met their "destruction," more than the number in the entire Ottoman Empire), as the Armenians, who took a few thousand years to reach a total worldwide population of three million before WWI, could not have mushroomed to over seven million... in just eighty years or so... if only a few of them were left behind. This incriminating assertion was only Richter's opinion, probably influenced by the violence he had direct involvement with.

Richter would become a Nazi, managing the SA... and would be shot dead in 1923, during Hitler's premature misstep in challenging the State.

With Richter, Mike Joseph proves the Turkish professor was incorrect in asserting Hitler's associates were "completely ignorant" of the genocide.

I just read the professor's paper, and found it to be very professionally prepared and documented. (The professor obviously believes in the facts he's talking about, and Mr. Joseph's "cheap shot" statement of "...So when Professor Ataöv spins, we may be confident he spins in time with the Turkish government," is out of line; once again, the desperate assertion that anyone who believes there was no Armenian "Genocide" cannot make up their own minds, and must be paid or somehow influenced by the Turkish government.)

Here is a very wise passage from Professor Ataöv's paper:

In many human records there may be contradictions, and interpretations may be disputed by different parties. But a "statement", a single sentence attributed to a man; i.e., Hitler, whose opinions are now in utter disrespect, is a detestable piece of propaganda. It is ugly and loathsome to expect any gain from words, supposed to have been uttered by someone whose uniqueness in history has been to lead a great nation off to war, conquest and ruin. How can just ten words summarize a controversial phenomenon of the last century and the beginning of the present one?

I didn't find where the professor said Hitler's associates were "completely ignorant" of the genocide....although I didn't look through the paper with a fine-toothed comb... as this is the only thing Mike Joseph is talking about having possibly countered, in the professor's paper. (Mike Joseph only alludes to the "hard evidence" of Hitler's quote as a " smoking gun"... but does not specify this evidence.) Is it possible the professor might have been referring to Hitler's associates during the time of the alleged quote's speech (in 1939) who were ignorant of the Armenian "Genocide"? And not some Nazi who died sixteen years earlier..?

How many of the 12,800 German military personnel stationed in the Ottoman Empire during WWI went on to become "leading Nazi criminals," anyway? (He's trying to say all these soldiers had firsthand exposure to the "genocide"... including the many who were stationed at the western part of the nation in Gallipoli, led by Liman von Sanders?) 12,800 personnel is not that large a figure from a war that took place nearly a quarter-century prior to Hitler's speech. Did Mike Joseph get a list of these individuals and cross-check them to see who among them rose to become Hitler's associates, in a position to be able to influence Hitler's mind? Or is Mike Joseph just giving his opinion, here?


The main falsification of history by the Armenian apologists lies not in what they say, but in what they do not say.


ADDENDUM (03-2006):

This page was among the first written for TAT, and leaves much to be desired, both in style and content. Regarding the influence of the insignificant Nazi, Max Erwin von Scheubner, whose value Mike Joseph blew out of proportion thanks to his uncritical acceptance of whatever Armenian propaganda throws his way, the reader is advised to get a clearer picture of those who most likely really served as a genocidal influence upon Hitler. The fact is, Hitler did not have to look beyond his own back yard.



Mike Joseph claims, "my point of view, though deeply respecting evidence and truth, is not academic but personal." (Since some among his family were victims of the Nazis, Mr. Joseph apparently craves making an association with the Armenians... so that he may enjoy that warm and fuzzy bonding sensation, I suppose. Well, what about the Turks who died under the Armenians' campaign of systematic extermination? The one "The Jewish Times" stated (in their June 21, 1990 edition) served as the REAL "appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust"? I guess Mike Joseph can't identify with those sufferers, perhaps because they're Muslims, and don't count.)

If he so deeply respects evidence and truth, how can he cite Lloyd George, Lord Bryce and the young Arnold Toynbee? Hey. Learn your history. None of these men were objective, when it came to the matters of the Ottoman Empire. The very prejudiced Lloyd George was intent in wiping the Turkish nation off the face of the map. The latter two ran Wellington House, an exceptionally effective propaganda bureau whose only purpose was to vilify Britain's wartime enemies. So don't go quoting from their fairy tale 1915-1916 book, discredited immediately after the war, if you want to present yourself as a man of integrity.

Also in Mr. Joseph's footnotes: "Hitler's rhetorical question was posed in a speech to his military commanders on 22 August 1939... Versions of the speech were also taken in evidence at the Nuremberg Trials." There was an attempt to introduce the quote at the Nuremberg Trials, but the judges were too smart to be taken in. It's widely known the quote was rejected at the Nuremberg Trials. (The Nuremberg Tribunal accepted two versions of this Hitler talk, USA-29 and USA-30, and neither text contained the quote; they refused to approve a third version. So, in a way, Mike Joseph is technically not lying, since versions were accepted — just not the versions with the quote. However, Mike Joseph is clearly giving the impression the Hitler quote was accepted at Nuremberg.) What kind of "respecting evidence and truth" is this?

And here's the whopper:

"Responsible for implementing the genocide, the Turks had their own SS — the Special Organisation, and there was even a Turkish Wannsee Conference, a secret gathering of 75 top leaders in Istanbul on February 26, 1915 to finalise the operational plan for the solution to the Armenian Question. A plan which achieved the destruction of over a million and a half Armenians."

STOP THE PRESSES! Mr. Mike Joseph has actually found the REAL "smoking gun" genocide advocates have been searching for all these many years. Why, it's the Turkish Wannsee Conference. That's IT! Case closed.... genocide proven!

I guess we can all go home now. But... wait.

I wonder why this amazing and case-closing discovery hasn't made headlines? I wonder why the Armenian web sites, who have no qualms about putting in all kinds of misleading disinformation to trap the unwary, haven't made any mention of this "Wannsee Conference"? (At least none of the many I've been visiting, of late.)

(This whole Armenian "Genocide" business is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. I'm spotting similarities in what Mike Joseph is saying with the words of professional Armenian ministers of disinformation, like Dadrian and Papazian. When I first read this Mike Joseph piece, I got the feeling he conducted his own independent research. Now I'm getting the strong feeling the only research he conducted was copying the findings of the Armenian professors.)

Then he goes on to say the Ottomans had "concentration camps." In case Mr. Joseph isn't aware, two typically required components of a concentration camp are people held against their will (think prison walls and barbed wire), and armed guards. Is he trying to tell us the relocated Armenians were forcibly imprisoned in a Turkish Auschwitz or Dachau that the nearly bankrupt Ottoman Empire spent the cash to construct? (I guess if there were a Turkish Wannsee Conference and Turkish SS in his little fantasy world, there must have been similar counterparts to Nazi concentration camps.)

This "concentration camp" assertion is repeated, on another page of the CRAG site, by a Jenny Randerson, identified as "the leading figure on behalf of Armenian Genocide Recognition in Wales." She "spoke with tremendous emotion and clarity," saying:

"Turkey can certainly be blamed for its modern denial [of the Armenian Genocide]. And I say to representatives of the modern Turkish Government who have sought to put pressure on me since I spoke out on this issue, that as someone who in past life was a historian, I know how to judge evidence and weigh up the pros and cons, and to judge where the truth lies."
MIDNIGHT EXPRESS

Bluto heats up the feet

HAH? Are we now to assume the Turkish government had nothing better to do but to "put pressure" on this rinky-dink lady? (I wonder what form this "pressure" took? Did she get a nasty letter? Or did the Turkish government send "Bluto," the prison guard from MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, to put the little lady's feet in red hot iron shoes?) And if she really was a "historian," perhaps she has forgotten the duty of a historian is to look at a story objectively, with none of that "tremendous emotion"! (What do you make of the Malta Tribunal, "historian"? As if there is not a wealth of other impartial evidence that would cause doubt in any reasonable person's mind... any reasonable person who refuses to get suckered in, that is.)

Where does this near-pathological sympathy for the Armenians stem from? I certainly don't want to make charges I can't back up (that would be the way too many Armenians and Greeks choose to go, in their campaign to give a negative impression upon Turks, whenever possible), but just one of the many, many well-financed Armenian organizations, AGBU, has a budget of twenty seven million dollars. Multiply that with all the other millions from all the other Armenian organizations, worldwide... Where does this money go? (Of course, a good portion goes to buying politicians and media air time, if America is an example... but there is so much of this money. Where does it all go?)

Assuming these two are pure at heart, let's examine what their possible motivations could be. Mr. Joseph is a presumed Jew who was affected by the Holocaust... so now he's seeing Nazis where he wants to. Ironically, he is overlooking the Armenians' role during World War Two, when they lent a healthy hand to their Nazi pals to clean up Jews, probably like Mr. Joseph's murdered family members. Otherwise, let's say these two think the Armenians got a raw deal and are basically outraged. What would compel them to spend so much time and energy on the subject? I understand the Japanese are still whitewashing or "denying" some of their crimes during the WWII era... as with the Rape of Nanking... but that wouldn't make me create a web site over such an injustice, and go out and give speeches. (It took me years to finally get around to creating this web site, that I fervently believe in!) If Mr. Joseph and Ms. Randerson are so outraged over what happened to the poor, innocent Armenians, why are they not speaking up for some other examples of man's inhumanity to man... all the more glaring, because we never hear about them?

What about the crimes of their own country, when Britain was an empire? While "Exterminate All the Brutes” was, at times, a colonialist policy... when many thousands of barely-clothed African natives were wiped out under British machine guns, or when during the second Ashanti war, the king was actually made to kiss the feet of British officers? What about the one successful genocide in relatively contemporary history, the total wiping out of the Tasmanians? If the British Empire did not send settlers to the Tasmanians' part of the world, the Tasmanians would probably be alive today. Why are these two hypocrites choosing to focus on favorite whipping boy Turkey, and not looking in their own backyard? And if it's too uncomfortable for them to consider the genocidal history of their own forefathers, what about all the many other uncelebrated victims of genocide... why are Mr. Joseph and Ms. Randerson not crying over these other victims? Because these other victims weren't Christian, and many weren't white? Could Mr. Joseph and Ms. Randerson's racism and religious bigotry be at the root of why you won't catch them shedding tears over the many massacred Turks, by their beloved Armenians?
Lloyd George

While I'm aware the Welsh might feel a strange compulsion to carry on the proud Turk-hating principles laid by David Lloyd George, the Welsh prime minister of Great Britain who designed to wipe Turkey off the face of the map... I hope not all Welsh people are as closed-minded, unfair and hysterical about the Armenian "Genocide" issue as these two; it would be enough to make one lose one's respect for Catherine Zeta-Jones..!

Mark Mazower


nniversary Professor of History at Birkbeck College, London, Mr. Mazower reviewed The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Falloden by Viscount Bryce Uncensored Edition by James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, edited by Ara Sarafian, at this site. At least he makes an attempt to consider the Turkish perspective (for example, he correctly cites that there were one and a half million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire), so he's not as hysterically bat-blind, as many other Turcophobes are. However, in an essay entitled "The G-Word," the "Genocide" indeed bloody well took place, pip-pip, no question about it.

He cites the usual statistics, such as "Between 1894 and 1896, at least a hundred thousand Armenians had died in massacres in eastern Anatolia." In 1915, the Armenians began to get their raw deal because "Enver and his circle needed scapegoats for their recent military failures," similar to Hitler's Jews-as-scapegoats.

"According to the inspector-general of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia, the Governor of Van had given an order 'to exterminate all Armenian males of 12 years and over'. On 20 April, the Armenians of Van rose in self-defence, and held on till a Russian advance reached them in May." That's the kind of information that would interest me... an actual order for extermination. However, this is the first time I'm hearing about this supposed order. (Well... actually... I did read Ambassador Morgenthau's despicably biased chapter [in "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story"] entitled "The Revolution at Van," where Morgenthau characterized the governor as a man who "hated the Armenians," and opined [since the only "evidence" Morgenthau cites is from missionaries] "There is little question that he came to Van with definite instructions to exterminate all Armenians." Could this silly book have been the "evidence" for the British professor we are now referring to?) Mazower believes:

1) Enver was looking for scapegoats to take the attention away from his military failure,

2) Enver's brother-in-law, was appointed Governor of Van in February 1915

3) Blood is thicker than water, so in order for Enver to save face, the brother-in-law orders a cruel slaughter of Armenian males.

Oh, for the love of all things that are good and holy. How very tidily convenient. A schoolchild could only believe this silly rationale.

Did the Ottoman inspector-general claim that the governor gave this order? If so, when did the Ottoman inspector-general claim this... during the kangaroo courts in Allied-occupied Istanbul when people were saying everything and anything to save their necks? Why wasn't this information used as evidence for the Malta Tribunal, where the British searched feverishly for nearly two-and-a-half years to convict Ottoman officials of genocide? Or did some Armenian put these words into the inspector-general's mouth?

Then, on April 20, 1915, the Armenians rose up in "self-defense." If the Anniversary Professor buys any more into the Armenian B.S., he would start becoming Armenian himself. Professor Mazower unfortunately has his chronology mixed up. You see, before the poor, innocent Armenians rose up in "self-defense," they had already rebelled in Van, months earlier.

The professor would think the "Call to Arms" documented in the November 1914 issue of the Hunchak Armenian [Revolutionary] Gazette must have had some effect: "The entire Armenian Nation will join forces — moral and material, and waving the sword of Revolution, will enter this World conflict ... as comrades in arms of the Triple Entente, and particularly Russia... Armenians proud to shed their blood for the cause of Armenia...."

Just the fact that the Armenians would be able to hold the city until the Russians arrived, as the professor writes, should have made the professor raise his eyebrows... how could these unarmed, defenseless citizens manage to mount such a significant counter-offensive against the implied considerable Ottoman forces [carrying out such a huge order as the near-entire extermination of Armenian men in the Ottoman city where there were the most Armenians would have taken a lot of manpower]?

(Morgenthau, through his ghost-writer: "The whole Armenian fighting force consisted of only 1,500 men; they had only 300 rifles and a most inadequate supply of ammunition, while Djevdet had an army of 5,000 men, completely equipped and supplied. Yet the Armenians fought with the utmost heroism and skill; ... I cannot describe in detail the numerous acts of individual heroism, the cooperation of the Armenian women, the ardour and energy of the Armenian children, the self-sacrificing zeal of the American missionaries, especially Doctor Ussher and his wife and Miss Grace H. Knapp, and the thousand other circumstances that made this terrible month one of the most glorious pages in modern Armenian history. The wonderful thing about it is that the Armenians triumphed." 300 rifles, limited ammunition, and they hold out for over a month against "5,000 men, completely equipped and supplied"? Tell us another one, Henry.)

(Oh, here's another one. The Van governor, Djevdet, would nail "horseshoes to the feet of his Armenian victims." It is truly criminal that the ambassador and former lawyer had such low moral scruples that he would be responsible for this fiendish book, based entirely on hearsay... regarding the Armenians, at least.)

As the Times link above states, the Armenians refused to join the army. The Armenians were in open revolt. For years, their revolutionary leaders had planned to strike when their nation was at war, and in preparation for such treachery, they had amassed a huge cache of weaponry and even uniforms, throughout the empire. The fact of the matter is, many Armenians in the army deserted. (The 205,000 Armenian fighters, by Armenian Boghos Nubar Pasha's count, had to come from somewhere... and he was not only talking about the Russian Armenians... since the Russian Armenians were already part of the Russian army; Nubar was referring to other Armenians as well, helping the Allied cause. Turkish professor Yusuf Halacoglu claims "pertinent documents" [letters from Armenians are provided as examples] — in his "Realities on the Armenian Immigration, 1915" [TTK Publications, Ankara, 2001] — demonstrate 50,000 Ottoman Armenian soldiers deserted to join the Russians, and many thousands of "Armenian soldiers went to America to be trained in the US Army to fight against the Turkish Army." One Ottoman-Armenian who betrrayed his country to join the Russians, although probably not as an Ottoman soldier but as an Armenian teenager, was Gourgen Yanikian ... at 78, he tricked two Turkish diplomats to come to a California hotel room on the pretext of donating a painting to Turkey, and shot both dead on January 27, 1973) Mr. Mazower repeats the Armenian claims that the Armenian soldiers fought loyally, and I'm not saying some did not. But there were MUCH too many signs of their disloyalty, and any nation would have reassigned them to "labor battalions," under the circumstances.

Arthur Tremaine Chester wrote in his Feb.1923 article that appeared in The New York Times Current History, "Angora and the Turks":

The facts are that the Turks sent an army to the Russian border to defend their country against the threatened Russian invasion. The army consisted of Turkish subjects of all nationalities, being drafted just as ours are drafted. At the front the Armenians used blank cartridges and deserted in droves. This was bad enough, but the Armenians were not satisfied with this form of treachery. The provinces in the rear of the army had a large Armenian population, and these people, feeling that there was an excellent chance of the Russians defeating the Turks, decided to make it a certainty by rising up in the rear of the army and cutting it off from its base of supplies.

"Working through the military, the regional bureaucrats and Enver's own secret service, the Teskilat-i Mahsusa, which carried out his dirty work throughout the Empire, the new leadership had begun preparations for the killings perhaps as early as February 1915." For goodness' sakes. Everyone knows the Ottoman Empire had a generally "a la Turca" kind of inefficiency and disorganization about it. How could a GENOCIDE be implemented if these regional bureaucrats were not communicated with? At least ONE telegram would have survived, don't you think? If anything, the telegrams on record indicate the welfare and safekeeping of the Armenians were being kept in mind. And DON'T tell me the sinister agents of the Teskilat-i Mahsusa traveled to the far corners of the Empire, when manpower was at such a shortage during this desperate period of wartime (with battles on multiple fronts), and that these secret agents conveyed their genocidal instructions on paper with invisible ink, or something out of a cheap spy movie... just so later generations could not find evidence of their government's evil-doing. The Ottoman Turks were already aware the Turks' name was mud throughout the Western world, no matter what they did... and "covering their tracks" would not have even occurred to them. Especially when they had freed themselves of the years-long and humiliating European-imposed capitulations... and were in a "To Hell with you" mood.

The professor raises the interesting point: "...The Turkish authorities, ... do not seem to blanch at the term 'massacre' but are beside themselves when the G-word is mentioned." "Why does it matter whether or not the massacres are 'officially' a genocide?"..

The answer is, a genocide is the worst crime against humanity there is. Genocide, as defined by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, makes clear that genocide is a crime of "specific intent." One cannot infer genocide from actions, one must prove by direct evidence that the accused party intended to destroy the protected group. Has any such reliable evidence ever been found? To answer this question, ask yourself... how come World War I's "Nuremberg," the Malta Tribunal, which set out exactly on such a mission, released every single Ottoman official in the end?

At the time of the Convention's ratification, the Secretary General of the U.N. also made clear that the Convention does not protect "political groups"; homicide becomes genocide when the destruction is directed at members of a protected group simply because they are members of that group. The Ottoman Armenians did not constitute a protected group because the Dashnak and Hunchak guerrillas and their civilian accomplices openly and admittedly waged war against their own government. "The relocation would not have taken place had the Armenians not violently and politically allied themselves with the invading Russian forces... the relocation had nothing to do with the Armenians' ethnic or religious identity."

So what does the professor think, Turkey has to admit a genocide when a genocide as defined by the U.N. Convention on Genocide did not take place? If the professor is so desperate for admission of genocide, he might do better to look at the background of his forefathers' actions.

The professor does make a valid point when he speculates one reason why the Turks are sensitive to this issue is "...more intimately bound up with official Turkish self-perceptions." Naturally. When Turks have been unfairly accused by the West of being barbarians for many centuries, naturally the Turks would be a tad more sensitive. Wouldn't anyone?

Regarding the professor's thought-provoking assertion that the Turks hate the idea of genocide but don't mind "massacres," let's examine this for a moment. Massacres aren't such a nice thing either. However, the Turks admit to the massacres that took place in their history, because what are they going to do? As opposed to genocide, massacres did take place. Turks don't claim they have been angels throughout history... and unlike Armenians, Turks tell the truth.

However, what about the extent of these massacres? For example, when the professor states, "Between 1894 and 1896, at least a hundred thousand Armenians had died in massacres in eastern Anatolia," one gets the idea that the savage, cruel Ottoman forces deliberately carved up innocent people... kind of like this image: massacre painting



From Armenian web sites, included among the rows of photos with skeletons and suffering people, of dubious origin... to prove the "Genocide." In fact, this photo is the only evidence that would make me think a genocide took place, as the Ottoman soldiers are clearly cutting up the innocent victims. Oh, hold on a second! This is a PAINTING, not a photograph...

Maybe the men on horseback weren't even meant to be Turks. Some Armenian might have run into this image and thought, hey! This could serve a purpose...

However, given the motivations of the many prejudiced people who reported these massacres (as Bryce and Rev. E.W. McDowell cited at the bottom of Mazower's page; E.W. was a missionary.... enough said. Bryce was running Wellington House, Mazower's nation's unscrupulous propaganda machinery, and Bryce's Blue Book was discredited after the war), is it fair to accept at face value this image whenever we hear the Turks have been guilty of massacres? For another view of the exaggerated Abdul Hamid massacres, look here. One reason that has been put forth as to why the half-Armenian Abdul Hamid has been accused of massacring Armenians is because he hated Armenians, like Hitler hated the Jews. (Kind of like the reason Mr. Mazower gives for the Armenian "Genocide": Enver Pasha needed scapegoats!) Is that what really happened?

There are many examples of missionaries and others claiming massacres of horrifying numbers in villages where only dozens of people lived. (Read this eye-opening examination of the Bristol Papers, for example.) Gladstone really went to town with his exaggerations in his report of the Bulgarian atrocities because he was, well, Gladstone. (As with the Armenian episode, note the inequality; 10,000 Bulgarians died vs. 262,000 Turks/Muslims, with a further 568,000 exiled [McCarthy]; the latter victims were invisible, in Western eyes.) Armenians who perished with the retreating Russians did not die at the hand of the Ottoman sword, and yet these 40,000 souls (Hovannisian wrote some 150,000 [1967]) are listed among the massacred Armenians of the "Genocide." (As Kamuran Gurun brought up, 2-3,000 Armenians who were with the French died during a retreat.... Were the French guilty of "massacring" these Armenians?)

And who committed many of the actual massacres, anyway? Troops acting under government orders, as is usually implied? No. Armenians would provoke their neighbors with revolutionary acts and outright massacres, and the Muslims would then be out on an "eye for an eye" blood feud. (Armenians and Greeks act.... and Turks react.) Many of the Armenians who got murdered on their relocating marches were victims of Muslim bands, a good number out for revenge... and the gendarmes who were assigned to protect the Armenians were few in number, or rotten in quality. (Rotten in quality because of a sinister campaign to exterminate the Armenians, or because there was a desperate war situation with mortal enemy Russia at the gates, and manpower was critically short? For example, The Ottoman central government had ordered the Van governor to send gendarmes to guard columns of Armenian deportees. He responded that because most of his forces were at the front fighting the Russian Army and its Armenian irregulars, he was left with only 40 gendarmes at his disposal and they were protecting Muslim villages against Armenian attacks. Yep, the same Van governor, I'd imagine, who had given the order "to exterminate all Armenian males of 12 years and over," according to Professor Mazower.)

Alluding to some of these massacres, U.S. Admiral Colby M. Chester wrote in 1922: "There have been riots, now and then, when local Turks have felt that their rights have been outraged by outsiders. It seems to me that once or twice I have read something about riots in America in circumstances of like sort, although of differing detail. Speaking generally, the Turks are far more patient than Americans would be."

The admiral's son, Arthur Tremaine Chester, embellished the unfairness of massacre reports in 1923, with: "It has been the custom of those who wish to condemn the Turk to give religious intolerance as the cause of all disturbances in Turkey. I have never heard one of these people admit that politics, treachery, or any other similar cause had any connection with them. If an Armenian or Greek is killed, it is always referred to as the massacre of a Christian."

It was true then, and it's still true now. One would hope apparently fair-minded men like Professor Mazower would take the trouble of scratching beneath the surface, but swallowing the Armenian line hook, line and sinker is just too easy and irresistible, I suppose.

The professor concludes, "perhaps as many as one million Armenians" died. That's from an original population of one and a half million, as he himself believes. (Yet the Armenians themselves concede one million Armenians survived.) Of Mazower's remainder of only half a million, we have to conclude there were hardly any young men... as Professor Papazian, among other Armenians, keeps telling us the survivors were women, children and old men. (The young men were all shot on the spot, you see.) This is why, when it took the Armenians a couple of thousand years to reach a worldwide population of three million just before the war, their numbers mushroomed to seven million in just eighty five to ninety years.



Professors Robert Melson & Roger Smith

On September 14, 2000, Professors Robert Melson (of Purdue University) and Roger Smith (College of William and Mary) offered testimony in Support of H. Res. 398, yet another one of those ubiquitous Armenian resolutions that have have been getting in the way of running real government by my country's Congress.

I was familiar with Professor Justin McCarthy's testimonies before Congress, offering evidence to the contrary of these resolutions. (Here's the one where Dr. McCarthy went into battle on the very same resolution.) Professor McCarthy presented some hard facts to change the minds of many of the prejudiced congressmen. So I was very interested in what non-Armenian professors had to say in the very same forum... they had to give equally hard evidence as well, it would seem to me, and not the garbage the Armenians are usually content with. This is all I'm interested in... the cold, hard facts.

PROFESSOR ROBERT MELSON

Professor Robert Melson began his testimony by declaring "When I was ten years old in 1947, my family and I immigrated from Poland to America where we found a home and a sanctuary from the Nazis' attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe..." blah, blah, blah. (Mike Joseph, the Welsh Holocaust Survivor from above, looking to bond with fellow genocide sufferers, might find a good pal in Professor Melson.) Dr. Melson declares, "I firmly support both parts of the resolution on scholarly, moral, and strategic grounds." Ohh-kayyy. "Strategic," definitely.


"The Armenian genocide was the first genocide of the modern era and set a precedent not only for the Holocaust but for most contemporary genocides especially in the Third World..." Blah, blah, blah... all right, already! Let's get to the facts..!

Okay, here it comes:

"In order to understand the phenomenon of genocide members of the Foreign Service community need to study the Armenian Genocide and America's reaction to it. And one of the best places to start are the records of the State Department itself, especially Ambassador Morgenthau's Story."

ARRGHHHHHH!

AMBASSADOR MORGENTHAU'S STORY? That fictionalized wartime propaganda garbage that was ghostwritten by another author, and based on letters and diaries sometimes prepared by Morgenthau's Armenian secretary, that usually had no bearing with the original letters and diaries (which were already suspect, given that some of them were written by Hagop Andonian in the name of Morgenthau), as expertly uncovered in The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story? The one that distinguished war and political correspondent George A. Schreiner criticized in a searing December 11,1918 letter to the racist ex-ambassador, declaring: "In the interest of truth, I will also affirm that you saw little of the cruelty you fasten upon the Turks. Besides that you have killed more Armenians than ever lived in the districts of the uprising. The fate of those people was sad enough without having to be exaggerated as you have done."?

I think I'm going to have a heart attack.

The Armenians and Greeks can try to pull the wool over the unwary on their web sites by using such false evidence, but come ON, Professor Melson... you are facing one of your nation's highest branches of government..! You can't use "evidence" like "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story," a book that only pretends to be history, and has used the unethical practice of putting quotation marks around statements never actually uttered...!

Okay. Okay... (sigh.) Let's see if he's got anything else to offer.

"Let me start with the first point. When confronted with mass death and forced deportations, the contemporary world community has often reached for the Holocaust as a paradigmatic case of genocide, in order both to make sense of and to condemn..." Blabbity blah blah blah....

"The Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust are the quintessential instances of total genocide in the 20th century. In both instances a deliberate attempt was made by the government of the day to destroy in part or in whole an..." SNOOOZE!

So the Holocaust and the Armenian "Genocide" are the same thing? Oh, really?

"The mix of ethnic conflict over land driven by a murderous nationalism should be familiar to any student of the contemporary Third World or post-communist Yugoslavia..." Hey, let's quit referring to the murderous actions of the nationalistic Armenians for free land, and get with the program already..!

Okay, I'm fast forwarding through more of the same... ah. Here we go. "Evidence."

"Henry Morgenthau was the American ambassador during some of the worst moments of the genocide. He received information from American consuls like Leslie A. Davis in Harpout, as well as from missionaries and other American citizens."

So it's the same, familiar song. Morgenthau. Missionaries. U.S. Consuls like Leslie Davis, few of whose views differed from Turcophobe Henry Morgenthau, and who relied on the word of lying Armenians and missionaries. I covered Leslie Davis (and his The Slaughterhouse Province, independently published by Orthodox friend Aristide Caratzason) in his own page at TAT.

What can be said of scholars working on the Armenian 'genocide,' who, in publication after publication, over the past decades quote the outright lies and half truths which permeate Morgenthau's 'Story' without ever questioning even the most blatant of the inconsistencies?

Dr. Heath Lowry
"The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story"



"On the basis of this information he concluded that the Ottoman government of the day had decided to exterminate the Armenians..." Morgenthau already had that made up in his mind the moment he decided to vilify the Turks and Germans in order to induce America into war. (For one reason, to better clear a path for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.) The ambassador was eagerly working in cahoots with that British pair of propagandist falsifiers, Lord Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, who worked for Britain's Wellington House... and also with Vicar Dr. Lepsius, who as president of a German-Armenia organization and as a religious man, was far from an impartial observer. All of these Turk-haters rehashed the same false information between them. Unfortunately, as far as ACTUAL proof of a government-sponsored genocide plan, Morgenthau had none; and neither does our friendly professor, Dr. Melson. (Not so far anyway... let's keep going. Maybe he'll have a big bomb awaiting....)

Turning to the last point allow me to speak as a proud American citizen, not only as a scholar of genocide...

Hold on a minute — let me get my flag out.

You are NOT a scholar of genocide, if this malarkey is the best you could come up with. The only reason why you are called a "scholar" is because you happen to be operating in a society that is pre-disposed toward views like yours, with little regard to the truth (as far as the Armenian "Genocide" is concerned)... given the century of bombardment of unilateral anti-Turkish propaganda from biased people just like you.

I find it thoroughly dishonorable that knowing what we know about the Armenian Genocide, we persist in using euphemisms like "tragedy," "catastrophe," and "massacre" when referring to the mass-murder for fear of offending Turkish sensibilities. Would we abide such behavior from a Germany that denied the Holocaust?

Thank you for your useless opinion... got any more facts for me?

The Big Finish:

Dr. Robert Melson

Last March I had the privilege of participating at a conference on the Armenian Genocide at the University of Chicago, which was attended by American, Armenian, and Turkish scholars. We discussed the Armenian Genocide in open fora, with Turkish scholars not once questioning the facticity of the genocide. Indeed, some of their contributions concerning the ideology of the Young Turks was fresh and to the point. While talking to my Turkish colleagues it dawned on me that one of the reasons they were openly and courageously researching and discussing the Armenian Genocide, despite their government's denial, was because they were Turkish patriots who wished to see Turkey move towards a more modern, more open, more just, and more democratic society. In their view having Turkey bravely confront her past in the manner that Germany did with the Holocaust, South Africa did with apartheid, and the United States is attempting to do with the legacy of slavery would be a major step in the healing of the breach, the maturation of Turkey into a democratic civilization. It is of no help to my Turkish colleagues and to other democratic forces in Turkey, nor indeed to the good name and honor of the United States, to have the President use half-truths and euphemisms when speaking about the Armenian Genocide.

Thank you for allowing me to testify Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.


Lord. Please rescue me from this insane, untruthful world.

The Armenian forces have been beside themselves to recruit "Turkish scholars" since Turks, awakened mostly in the early 80s from their silence, finally decided to give Armenians a run for their money... necessitating the Armenians to recruit some additional artillery. These Turkish scholars — I cannot speak for all of them, and perhaps there are one or two independent true believers of the Armenian "Genocide" among them — have their own agendas; either they want to be the darlings of the West, make a name for themselves (Woo-hoo! A Turk into the Armenian "Genocide"... still a novelty factor to exploit, there), and some just hate Turks. (Since everyone else seems to hate Turks, aren't some Turks entitled to do the same?) Other "Turncoat Turks" simply appear to be sponsored by the wealthy Armenians, such as Taner Akcam. Exactly for the Propaganda-Photo-Opportunity moments such as this one, that Professor Melson is making darned sure to exploit.

Professor McCarthy:

Recently there have been meetings on the Armenian Question held in Germany and America. The meetings in America were mainly held behind closed doors. They were secret. No one but the participants knows what went on in these meetings. Some few meetings have allowed the public to listen, but have never included speakers who have doubted the existence of the "Armenian Genocide." Nevertheless, these meetings have been widely publicized, because there have been both Turks and Armenians at these meetings. The Armenian nationalists say, "You see, Turkish scholars agree with us."

This is exactly what Professor Melson was dishonestly hoping to do with the unwary congressmen who were listening. Little did they know these "Turkish scholars" had to belong to the club, first. An objective scholar like Professor McCarthy would not have been allowed to attend this "conference on the Armenian Genocide." Nor would have any of the vast majority of Turkish scholars who are not patsies to the Armenian cause. There is almost no room for honest debate in conferences as the one described.

Professor Melson, along with Professor Hovannisian and others, serve on the seven-member Academic Council of the Armenian National Institute (ANI), a group that openly admits its dedication "to the study, research, and affirmation of the Armenian Genocide." Any historian who doesn't maintain an open mind has no business being a historian, or university professor.

Professor Melson may not be Armenian, but he is so tied up with the Armenian cause, for all purposes and intents, he is an Armenian.

Let's get on with our next Congressional Testifier.


DOCTOR ROGER W. SMITH



Let me begin by putting a human face on the issues we have been asked to discuss: Did the killing of the Armenians beginning in 1915 constitute genocide?

Good start. There's promise, here.

He goes on to relate being friends with a retired career U.S. Ambassador for two African states, who expressed the pointlessness of addressing an Armenian genocide for events that occurred so long ago, suggesting what might have happened "may not have been genocide anyway, and in any case, it was time to forget the events and move on." Now here is a man who is thinking straight.

Dr. Smith criticizes his friends for not being aware of the "costs" involved, including: 1. Lack of respect for the victims; 2. Sending signals to would-be perpetrators that they can commit genocide, then deny it, and get away with it; and 3. Cutting us off from knowledge that might help prevent future genocides.

Gee. It sounds like Dr. Smith is describing exactly the costs that could come about from the Armenian refusal to admit their campaign of a true policy of extermination... that the The Jewish Times opined (in its June 21, 1990 issue):

"An appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust might be the systematic extermination of the entire Muslim population of the independent republic of Armenia which consisted of at least 30-40 percent of the population of that republic. The memoirs of an Armenian army officer who participated in and eye-witnessed these atrocities was published in the U.S. in 1926 with the title 'Men Are Like That.' Other references abound."

As for his second point, it's not without validity; few Westerners like to acknowledge the systematic extermination campaigns the Armenians implemented in W.W.I and were an active part of during W.W.II, and so the Armenians have gotten away with their crimes so far... feeling free to systematically engage in mass murder when they pulled off a sneak, cowardly attack in Azerbaijan in the early 1990s.

I would love to ask the professor if he is such an ethical man concerned about the costs of genocide why he is closing his mind to the one where Turks were the victims, and others (such as this forgotten historical episode, while not necessarily a genocide, a direct parallel to the Armenian "Genocide," with similar casualties, only occurring nineteen years prior)... why is he choosing to single out the one and only Armenian "Geno$ide," where there certainly is plenty of objective, Western and even Armenian evidence to the contrary? I have a feeling I will know the answer to that question, so let us allow him to continue.

He then cites the Rwandan genocide and the resulting "confusion about how to describe the clearest case of genocide since the holocaust."

The Armenian case is the prototype for much of the genocide that we have seen since 1945: It was territorial, driven by nationalism, and carried out with a relatively low level of technology. There are also powerful resources for the study of the Armenian genocide in the reports of the American officials at the time, notably Ambassador Henry Morgenthau and Consul Leslie Davis...

SIGH.

The evidence of intent is backed by ...

All RIGHT. Now we are getting somewhere. Cold, hard FACTS. After all, the one thing that proves the Armenian "Genocide" could not have been a genocide as defined by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide is that "specific intent" needs to be proven. (along with that other bugaboo that "political groups" are exempt... you know, like the Armenians, who politically allied themselves in violent fashion with Russia, the invading enemy?) This is something which cannot be inferred from actions, but which must be proven by direct evidence "demonstrating that the accused party intended to destroy the protected group."

This is exactly what the British hoped to find in their feverish research during the Malta Tribunal, for two and a half years, while every Ottoman document was freely available before the term "shredding" was invented, utilizing a team of mainly Armenians, and going so far as the shores of the United States in desperate hopes of coming up with something... anything. To the credit of the British, they knew how to separate fact from fiction, and all the Morgenthau, Bryce Blue Book, Andonian forgeries of Talat Pasha telegrams, the Hitler Quote (oh. Forgive me, the Hitler Quote wasn't invented yet. Don't blame me, there is such a dearth of REAL evidence for the Armenian cause, I figured I'd help our Armenian friends, by giving them whatever they have)... were simply not considered, and every single Ottoman official who was imprisoned for all that time were not only guilty of genocide, but of ANY war crime.

Okay, I'm excited. This is the first time or two I've encountered an Armenian apologist even admitting the essential feature of "intent." Let's see if Dr. Smith really has anything, or if he's just Lost in Space.

...explicit Ottoman documents.

Great! What are they?

"Are the Armenians, who are being dispatched from there, being liquidated? Are those harmful persons whom you inform us you are exiling and banishing, being exterminated, or are they being merely dispatched and exiled? Answer explicitly..."

(Huh?)


Intent is also backed by...

Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Get back to those "explicit Ottoman documents." What were they??

...the outcome of the actions against the Armenians: It is inconceivable that over a million persons could have died due to even a badly flawed effort at resettlement.

Uh-oh. I've got a feeling we're in "opinion" territory again. I feel like the momentum for cold, hard facts is being lost... What was that? "Over a million persons...died?" Heart, please! Stop from sinking... not only are we exiting the exciting territory of cold, hard facts, but we're fast entering familiar Armenian fantasyland territory....

Moreover, the pattern of destruction was repeated over and over in different parts of Turkey, many of them far from any war zone; such repetition could only have come from a central design.

Nobody is arguing there were massacres, but give me some proof, PLEASE. This "pattern of destruction," where's the proof? Claims by Armenians and missionaries, and racist U.S. Consuls like George Horton?

Further, the reward structure was geared toward destruction of the Christian minority: Provincial governors and officials who refused to carry out orders to annihilate the Armenians were summarily replaced.

For example?

Perhaps they refused to carry out such orders, as no such orders have been known to exist. "Summarily Replaced"? Were there that many candidates around to take the places of the ones who refused to follow the orders that were never received, during this desperate stage of wartime and manpower shortage? Imagine the "training period" any new official would need to go through, gumming up the works of the nation's operations even further than they were already gummed up.

Armenian men were drafted into the army, set to work as pack animals, and subsequently killed.

Oh, yes, the old Armenian argument that the Armenian troops were summarily executed. Proof?

Leaders were arrested and executed.

Well, I don't want to sound like a broken record here, but let's be honest. (Good grief, what am I asking... for my "opponent" to be honest, as well?) As much as the Armenians and their supporters cannot bring themselves to admit it, the Armenians fired the first shot. The Armenian troops deserted in droves to hit the Ottoman army from the back.

The leaders of the Turkish-Armenian section of the Dashnagtzoutune did not carry out their promise of loyalty to the Turkish cause when the Turks entered the war. The Dashnagtzoutune in the Caucasus had the upper hand. They were swayed in their actions by the interests of the Russian government and disregarded, entirely, the political dangers that the war had created for the Armenians in Turkey. Prudence was thrown to the winds; even the decision of their own convention of Erzurum was forgotten and a call was sent for Armenian volunteers to fight the Turks on the Caucasus front.

That was reported by an honest Armenian historian (what an oxymoron!), K.S. Papazian, from his 1934 work, Patriotism Perverted.

So here we've got the Ottoman Empire in her death throes, fighting a desperate war for survival, and, look! It's mortal enemy Russia at the gates, known to ruthlessly and murderously slaughter all Moslem/Turkish people in their wake. If they come through the door, every Turk knows it will amount to a death sentence, for them and their ailing nation. And isn't this just peachy? The Ottoman Armenians choose precisely this moment to betray their country, where they lived and prospered for centuries.
Komitas/Gomidas Vartabed [1869-1935, a.k.a. Soghomon Soghomonian]

Komitas

Who do you think is going to lead the revolutionaries? The Armenian street-cleaners and window-washers? No, it would have to be the Armenian leaders, wouldn't it? Of course they are going to be arrested, and pay a high prce for their treason. And not ALL of them were executed. (For example, Peter Balakian cited a couple of survivors in his "Burning Tigris" work, including his own "Action Priest" relative; famed musician Komitas was released after two weeks' imprisonment.)

Russian Lt.-Col. Twerdokhleboff, having witnessed (later in the war) one of the many Armenian atrocities against Turks that he had witnessed, logically concluded: "...As the educated classes of the Armenian population could very well have prevented the massacre, it is to be concluded that these classes played a greater part in the crime than the bands, and that, in any case, the chief responsibility rests with them."

Then the deportations of women, children, and the elderly into the deserts of Syria and Iraq began. The American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, immediately recognized that the forced marches into the desert, and the atrocities that accompanied them, were a new form of massacre. "When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were simply giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact."

Even Robert Lansing, the American Secretary of State whom Morgenthau reported to (and who helped edit Morgenthau's worthless piece of propaganda that passed for a book, to make the Turks look even worse... so he was no friend of the Turks), said in 1916:

"I could see that [the Armenians'] well-known disloyalty to the Ottoman Government and the fact that the territory which they inhabited was within the zone of military operations constituted grounds more or less justifiable for compelling them to depart their homes."

If the Armenians were relocated (they were relocated; deportation means banishment outside the nation's borders), they had nobody to blame but themselves. It's tragic the innocent Armenians among them suffered, but that's what you get when you follow-the-leader. There were many innocent Turks who suffered at the hands of the not-so-innocent Armenians, at the cost of their lives.

Any government has the right to do exactly what the Turks did, especially under such critical circumstances, and when there is an armed rebellion. Don't believe me?

Not incidentally, Dr. Smith, where did you get that quote of Ambassador Morgenthau's from... the one where he says, "When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were simply giving the death warrant to a whole race"? Why, it's from that phony, made-up, ghostwritten book of his, isn't it? Morgenthau had reasons to draw his Frank Pallone (a congressional synonym with the rhyme word, "baloney") conclusions, as the book was intended as propaganda, and the racist former lawyer's agenda was to present the Turks as evil incarnate. However, in his private diary/letters, he was singing a whole different tune... he got the lowdown of the result of these "deportations" directly from the mouth of an Armenian leader, and learned what took place was far from a "death warrant." What an exemplary scholar you are proving yourself to be, so far.

Particularly once I discovered, after examining Dr. Smith's congressional testimony, the paper this very testimony was based on... a paper he had written with two other "scholarly" Armenian apologists, in which they shamelessly attempted to discredit Dr. Heath Lowry (link at bottom). There is an excellent chance Dr. Smith read Dr. Lowry's "The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story," from 1990, in which Dr. Lowry proves beyond a shadow of a doubt... by cross-checking with Morgenthau's own diary and letters... what an unreliable source Morgenthau is. Even with this extremely likely knowledge, Dr. Smith still refers to Morgenthau as a credible source. (Hmmmmmm... but why?)

If you would like to read the actual relocation telegram Talat Pasha authored, here is where to go. And here is the first sign of considering this awful but necessary step, after patiently suffering through all the many Armenian rebellions (six months' worth) in a mortal wartime situation.

The ambassadors of Germany and Austria, representatives of governments allied with Turkey, also quickly realized what was taking place. As early as July 1915, the German ambassador reported to Berlin: "Turks began deportations from areas now not threatened by invasion. This fact and the manner in which the relocation is being carried out demonstrate that the government is really pursuing the aim of destroying the Armenian race in Turkey." And by January 1917 his successor reported: "The policy of extermination has largely been achieved; the current leaders of Turkey fully subscribe to this policy."

This is the only incriminating "evidence" that does have weight. Let's not forget, though, that these ambassadors were restricted in the same way Morgenthau was, confined to Istanbul as they were. They had to rely on the opinions of others, and if they were getting their reports from Germans on the scene, no doubt the goings-on did not look pretty and they reached some of their own subjective opinions. (More likely, these officials were bamboozled by the same reports of missionaries and Armenians, allowing for their own Christian sympathies to quickly rise to the surface.) However, even if the on-the-scene Germans witnessed actual massacres by the Turks, which I would highly doubt they would have (unlike the Russian allies of the Armenians, who served as genuine eyewitnesses), such does not prove a government-sponsored policy of extermination. If the successor of Baron von Wangenheim (the latter of whom did not escape Morgenthau's libeling, in Morgenthau's book) actually said "The policy of extermination has largely been achieved; the current leaders of Turkey fully subscribe to this policy," that was only his dramatic opinion, and he was dead wrong. Just examine his words; if the "policy of extermination" succeeded, that would mean the Armenians would have truly been "annihilated" in the true meaning of the word, and we know the majority survived. And is he actually claiming the Turkish leaders openly subscribed to an extermination policy? (What an irresponsible conclusion... if he, indeed, said those words, and somebody didn't stuff them in his mouth.)

In 1921, the Armenian Patriarch told both the British and the missionary-president of Istanbul's Robert College that a million Armenians had survived. The post war population of the Ottoman Empire, based on half a dozen NEUTRAL sources was a median average of 1,300,000, and certainly no more than 1,500,000. Do the subtraction, and then tell me if that amounts to whether the "policy of extermination" actually succeeded. If as much as a third of the Armenians died, they did not all die from massacres and the trials of the relocations.... they died from the same reasons their fellow Ottomans died: famine and disease... and as combatants. Aside from the regular famine and disease running rampant within the Ottoman Empire, for example, large numbers of Armenians escaped into Russia (after 1916) for fear of retribution when the Turks were strong enough to reoccupy the eastern vilayets; the ones the Armenians had slaughtered the Moslem residents of. Many Armenians subsequently died of famine and disease in Russia, and are naturally counted as victims of the Turks. (Like the 2-3,000 Armenians who died accompanying the French during a retreat, as cited in the Mark Mazower section above, were counted as dying directly at the hands of the Turks.)

Ambassador Morgenthau, assuming he was telling the truth, himself reported in his phony book that thousands of Turks were dying daily.... DAILY... from the above causes. Logic would tell any of us that at least a few Armenians would have bitten the dust in the same way, as well. (Morgenthau estimated "that the empire has lost a quarter of its Turkish population since the war started." That would be from all causes... massacres (of which up to 600,000 Turks likely died at the hands of the Armenians directly... more than the entire loss for the Armenians, combined), war casualties, famine and disease. No different than for the Armenians.

Getting back to the Germans, no higher an authority than the commander of the German forces, General Liman von Sanders (as witness for the defense, in the trial of Tehlirian, assassin of Talat Pasha), testified:

"I consider it my duty to state that, in the five years I was in Turkey, I never saw an order signed by Talaat against the Armenians and neither can I testify whether or not such an order was ever issued."

Von Sanders was in line to see such a smoking gun; he was exposed to a barrage of government communications every day. If the Ottoman government truly embarked on a policy of genocide, they would have had to get word to the local officials in order to carry out such a massive policy. (And it wouldn't have stopped THERE. Logic suggests there would need to be plenty of "fine-tuning-the-genocide" orders that would have followed.) I realize Turks share in similarity to the American Indians in that for the longest time the Indians were thought to be the bad guys.... before the world finally wised up, when some necessary "revisionist" history came into play... but the Turks would not have gone so far as to send out smoke signals, to communicate their murderous orders. (Now I'll see that idea in Armenian web sites... why not? They have claimed just about every other insane idea in their desperate quest to prove a genocide, and to soothe their sense of self-identity.)

Dr. Smith: Warning! Warning! You have failed to convince me, even though I am sure you got through to many of the ignorant and prejudiced politicians you were addressing. (Certainly, you did not have to convince the bought ones.) Armenians and Greeks know they are far ahead of the game, thanks to their "built-in constituency" of the ignorant and the prejudiced, and that's all they need to persuade folks like these fuzzy thinkers.

Naturally, Armenians and their supporters who cannot believe an American professor going against their views would do so out of integrity must be accused of being paid for by the Turkish government...which is precisely what happened with Dr. Heath Lowry. (Dr. Smith himself was a party to the execrable smear campaign.) Anyone who thinks Dr. Justin McCarthy is motivated by anything but regard for the truth has an agenda to fulfill. Professor McCarthy takes the time to attend these congressional resolutions because he knows if he doesn't, hardly any other Western scholar else will (representing the Turkish truth). He knows he is one of the extremely scarce American scholars who has taken the time to research this unknown area, in an authentically scholarly way, looking at BOTH sides of the story. This is why when he gives testimony, his words have weight.

The two professors based their testimony on hearsay, opinions and discredited sources (like Morgenthau's book). WHY would they take their valuable time to testify on this issue? WHY would they identify so strongly with the Armenian "Genocide" and embarrass themselves by exposing their sorrowful partiality and poor scholarship, when any objective scholar would clearly have room for doubt based on the mountain of Western and even some Armenian evidence that goes against the Armenian perspective? If they are so "moral" about attempting to right a wrong, why are they focusing on this one lone example of Man's Inhumanity to Man, supported by the millions and millions of dollars by wealthy Armenians worldwide, when there are so many sad examples of truly unknown genocides that go begging for recognition?

Suspicious, isn't it?



ADDENDUM: After writing the above, I ran into the paper Dr. Smith's testimony was based on.... and there was ACTUAL GENOCIDAL EVIDENCE (a telegram). It was my duty to let you in on this evidence, since I told you I don't intend to hide anything. (Actually, he already presented it above... it was so ambiguous, this "evidence" didn't even sink in

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© Holdwater
tallarmeniantale.com/apologists.htm

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