Holocaust: Armenian Genocide?

During World War One, did the Turks commiy "genocide" against the Armenians?  Ghristopher Jones writes: Frankly, this discussion would have pleased the surrealists.  The entire Turkish population of Christian Armenians was deported and in a large part murdered. Women were raped, children separated from the mothers, etc.  What was it? "Ethnic cleansing?" Is "ethnic cleansing" different from "genocide?"  Or does "genocide" apply only to gassings?  [I know what to call pushing people without water into a desert by bayonet point -- murder]  Documents available from the Imperial German embassy make it perfectly clear what was happening and unfortunately the Germans, fearful of offending an ally did not intervene to stop it. Berlin was informed of the entire affair.  There have been many "genocides" in history, and to deny the use of the word is a bizarre comment on the mentality of Turks today.

Peter Orne writes: Good morning from Cambridge, Mass., where Governor Mitt Romney now promotes his reinstate-the-death-penalty campaign on our leading classical-music station (102.5)....

Just having coffee this morning next to Harvey A Silverglate, the First Amendment lawyer (Harvard Law '67; op-ed contributor to the Times, WSJ, etc.), so I asked him about the Armenian genocide. In his opinion, the first level of the debate is really how the U.N. defines genocide. Was it really a genocide? And the second level is, if you side with the Turks, a civil-society issue, and do you treat this as "hate speech." "So it’s many-layered,” he said. “But no one who is sane outright denies it didn't happen.” This seems in line with Veysi Ozcan: "No one is denying the atrocities that happened during that period. However, the Turkish thesis does not accept the charges of genocide."