Nor would I seek to downplay the full horror of what has happened.

The role of the Security Council could not be underestimated.

The challenges of this phase cannot be underestimated, as we have seen in the aftermath of the tsunami.

The need for financial guarantees to cover claims for compensation could not be overemphasized. Such guarantees might take the form of financial security deposits, insurance or bonds.

The first of these misbegotten assumptions is to underrate social intolerance as a threat to freedom.

The West s fundamental mistake has been consistently to underestimate the Assad regime s resilience.

To deny or minimize the Holocaust is a crime in 15 European countries and Israel.

To speak of a bilateral trust deficit might be an understatement.

Moreover, supporters of alternative energies systematically downplay their negative environmental impact.

And, as for the region s governments, it would be an understatement to say that they are not yet ready militarily to take their fate into their own hands.

Palestinians continued to trivialize Europe s contribution, and Israelis to loathe it for financing Palestinian terror.

I do not take an apocalyptic view of what recently happened tragic though it is for the bereaved families.

Germany, Japan, and other countries absorbed and mitigated the shock waves. So, instead of belittling German efforts, the world should show Germany a little more gratitude.

There was, however, good cooperation between the key human rights agencies, which helped to reduce the latter problem.

It is a question of recognizing and duly assessing the positive effects of the peace keeping effort there, which cannot be minimized.

The debt ceiling absolutists grossly underestimate the massive adjustment costs of a self imposed sudden stop in debt finance.

Mr. Muchemi (Kenya) said that transnational crime remained a major global threat whose negative effects could not be overstated.

People with strong support networks have a significantly better chance of recovery than those whose problems go undetected or are ignored or minimized.

Some famous macroeconomists, including Larry Summers, the current chief economic thinker of the Obama administration, have tried to play down the role of financial sector instability in causing depressions.

Most importantly, Americans have a remarkable tendency to reduce problems that others addressed through public policy to a matter of private choice and even personal psychology.

While India seeks to downplay such reports, one incident that did make it into the Indian press occurred inside the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on the western sector of the border at Demchok, in India s Ladakh district.

The man, now sitting next to me, explains with a bit of understatement, Of course I must continue to have faith in the Chinese legal system, although I must admit that this incident has somewhat dampened my optimism.

When then US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers tried to change the Bank s Decennial report on poverty to downgrade concerns about insecurity and empowerment and to focus more narrowly on income the Bank prevailed.

Why might a carbon tax be viable now, when it never has been before? The point is that, when people can visualize a problem, they are far less able to discount or ignore it.

Instead, in some cases, the element of internal conflict, while apparently present, was overemphasized and the element of aggression downplayed to the level which made action under Chapter VII inappropriate.

Turkey has taken a principled and strong stand against President Bashar al Assad s regime, and has generously taken in more than a million refugees. But the dangers posed by the ongoing conflict, particularly the strains on Turkey itself, should not be underestimated.

I do not take an apocalyptic view of what recently happened tragic though it is for the bereaved families. It is an anarchic spasm of violence by a tiny minority.