Seeing as this is the pit - fuck you. I’d prefer 100% hostage release, but I’m also a realist. But the phrase “dozens of bodies” suggests a bad result. If to be classified as ‘going badly’, all the hostages are dead, then I suppose you’d say it went well if only one of the children survived.
Secondly, it’s a heavy price that’s easy to pay when it’s not you/your kids.
Bosda - yeah. Events seemd to take over. I don’t think the Russian forces could have done anything else.
May I compliment your {b]Lord**-ship on how quickly you have become conversant with our simple native customs. 
BTW–in a hostage/storm-the-place situation, I’d guess that a 3/4 hostage survivor/unharmed rate is pretty good, if a large % of the remainder is merely wounded.
This in–some of the militants are holed up in a home near the school, & **main tank gun fire has been heard from that area! ** :eek: :eek: :eek:
They want their noggins, you bet!
Thanks. When in Rome and all that.
3/4 isn’t bad until the numbers start getting bigger. I suppose we’ll have to wait until decent information comes in, but it seems that hundreds injured (some of whom may not survice, and some may be pretty badly fucked up for the rest of their lives) and maybe a hundred killed isn’t so great.
I dunno, it’s just all so damned shitty, it really is.
So do I! They wouldn’t allow food and water to be brought for the children! They punished them if they even tried to drink the water from the toilets! They would beat them when they cried!
I’m usually anti-death penalty but I wish that we could kill these hostage-takers, zap them back to life, and kill them again. These people have set the cause of Chechyna back a thousand years.
What the fuck are you on?
Some news reports are currently saying that the death toll could exceed 150. How do you think this should be described? “All’s Well in Chechnya”? It seems to me that calling it a bad ending is fairly reasonable.
Admittedly, it’s not as bad as it could have been, but to go apeshit just because someone describes it as a bad ending seems pretty fucking over-the-top to me.
I’d like to think I speak for most people when I say that I find this statement utterly reprehensible.
Given that you just described an outcome in which 150 children appear to have died as “going very well”, I think I’d prefer it if you didn’t speak for me; thanks all the same.
Maybe so.
But here’s some food for thought: how many Chechen children have died unnecessarily, and will continue to die unnecessarily while this conflict remains unresolved?
Why exactly? It’s very easy to make statements about ‘paying prices’ when you’re extremely unlikely to be the one that pays. If my kid was in there, I’d not be very willing not sacrifice him/her for the ideal of standing up to terrorists - an ideal that doesn’t seem to have gotten through to terrorists of all sorts.
You may note that most of the hostages in Iraq, facing death, do not say ‘fuck you Mr Terrorist, I will not issuing a statment asking my government to change policy X’. Are you so fucking tough that you are willing to make such a stand?
I’ve worked with firemen - people who go into burning buildings to rescue people. They risk their lives for others. They know the risks. I have also expressed an interest at work in going to Iraq; I know the risks. One of my colleagues was in Afghanistan until recently.
I presume you mean, '“I’d not be very willing to sacrifice…”. Well in that case the terrorists have already beaten you.
Well they wouldn’t be shown if they were defiant, would they? I hope I never have to make the choice, but I know what I’ll say.
As Eva Luna also pointed out with a few details about the ongoing conflict, this was a political motivated action.
It is no surprize that the Russian want to drag outsiders into this. Putin jumped on the Bush wagon and hence wants to make it appear that every action undertaken by Chechens has ties to AQ or is “influence by” AQ.
They should have waited a bit though because it is not adding to credibility to make statements about “Arabs” in a situation where nobody even knows how many terrorist there were involved in this, how many children and how many adults there were in the school taken hostage, how many died and how many are wounded.
To come up with “Arab” ID’s in such a situation makes on me the same effect as the claim that a passport of one of the hijackers of the planes that flex in the WTC by soùme miracle landed on top of the rubble and by even as much as a miracle was found in the midts of that chaotic destruction.
On the other hand it can be possible that outsiders are involved. It is known that there is ongoing infiltration in the Chechnya conflict from radicalists among which there are people with AQ links or AQ connections. The radicalisation of the younger generation of Chechen rebels is partly due to this influence.
Yet in this case it is something I look at with unbelief because as far as I heard there were first of all none of these typical demands made as you hear when people call thesmselves “Islamic…this or that…”
And even when such would have been (or is) the case: To tie it then to AQ is making them switch tactics in a way I have never seen. This type of actions is not an AQ tactic at all.
What is the case is that hundreds of children and adults are dead bacause of a war Putin can’t (and does not permit himself to) loos while he can’t win it the way he handles the issue right now.
note to Liberal. If by some unexpected luck for you this “Arab” involvement would become proven beyond any doubt, I expect you to post a few commands in my direction in the same style as post 2 of this thread.
threemae thank you for the link about the book of Els De Temmerman. She is a very respected journalist with very much experience in Afrika. I didn’t know that she wrote a book. So now I know (and am going to order it).
Salaam. A
From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3625202.stm
“The youngest children were very frightened but they behaved with great discipline though they often asked to go to the toilet because of their fear,” she said.
“They were marched to the toilet and if the toddlers started to cry the fighters would fire blanks in the air and shout for them to keep quiet.”
From: http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=43383
First, two powerful explosions from inside the building rocked Beslan. Soon, scores of hostages started fleeing, some of them dodging gunfire from the guerrillas. “When the children ran, they began to shoot them in their backs,”
Late yesterday, they announced that ten of the dead guerrillas in the school siege were Arabs and state television showed video from inside the building showing several dead fighters who appeared to be foreign. A little-known group, the Islambouli Brigades, connected with al-Qaida had earlier this week claimed credit for carrying out the plane attacks and Moscow metro bombing.
From: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/838707.cms
BESLAN: Even as the eight-hour operation to free the over 1,500 hostages in a local school by the Russian troops drew to a bloody close, there are indications that the Chechen hostage-takers had al-Qaeda connections.
Of the 20 gunmen killed, 10 were Arabs. This adds credence to Russia’s contention that Chechen rebels are backed by foreign Islamic militants. The hostage-takers were believed to number about 40
There’s a logical fallacy in there somewhere…
250 dead, per the BBC. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
It most certainly does not. The identification of these 10 as Arabs came just a little too quickly to be taken as incontrovertible truth. The latest BBC online report is that 79 of the dead have been identified. This in a town where approximately 4% of the population was held captive. People know those parents and children who died. The terrorists were strangers. How could they have been identified as to ethnicity or country of origin within hours of this whole thing starting? The reports of “10 Arabs” came hours before the report that 3 hostage-takers (who could, presumably. identify their comrades) had been captured.
I hit Post too soon.
The cynic in me sees sees it as a way for Putin to deflect criticism as he goes in and stomps the Chechens, with no worries about the US response. After all, he’ll be fighting the good fight against Al Qaeda. Too fast and too convenient.
The seige of that school was reprehensible. The response should not be the same.
I’ve said nothing about Arabs.