DescentBB

Thatâ??s where President Putin is today, between the rock and the hard place.
Does he negotiate and make concessions to terrorist threats; which he has sworn publicly never to do?
Or, does he go for the hard line and accept the casualties, among them children?
This is one time when he and the responsible officials are going to have to earn every ruble and perk they earn.
The BBC now report that there are over 350 hostages inside the school, and some reports say that may even be many more. Also that the terrorists have come with a list of demands including:
1)Release of fighters from Ingushetia prisons
2)Withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya
3)Negotiations with top regional officials.
1 and 3 should be do-able, if compromise is to be the order of the day.
But there is no way that he is going to accept # 2.
So then the question is will the terrorists accept that?
They must have known Putinsâ?? track record in hostage situations. Hard line all the way. So they must have known that they were dead the minute they went into that school. But this time they played it smart and went for a soft target; a school full of children.
As I said the choice is going to be, the rock and the hard place for all the implicated.

I say go ultra hardline. Take a Chechen town hostage. It would be better if it was the town some of the terrorists are from (if that info can be found) but not necessary. Tell the terrorists that there will be no negotiations and they are to surrender immediately. Also let them know that if one hostage is killed, the town will be obliterated.

http://www.free-definition.com/Maalot-massacre.html

One of the guys who went in to attack the terrorists at Maalot is a close family friend, he saw horrific things that day but wouldn't change a thing regardless of the outcome. Like Ded said, they have to be hit hard, and learn that they won't gain anything from their actions.

Flabby Chick wrote:...they have to be hit hard, and learn that they won't gain anything from their actions.

Funny thing FC, it was one of the first things that came to mind when I first heard of this hostage taking, Maalot and the and the Israelâ??s response. After Maalot the terrorists didnâ??t play the hostage-taking-of-children card again. No point, and the resulting bad press by the international media made it a PR nightmare.

Deadman wrote:I say go ultra hardline.

There's a story around, regarding Russian handling of terrorists threats. Might be an Urban Legend, might not be knowing the rep., of the old KGB.
During the troubles in Lebanon, at the time of all the hostage takings, a terroist group capture som Russians to hold them hostage. A Russian hit team arrived, took captive a son of head of the terroist cell holding the Russians, together with a non-entity member of the group. The non-entity member was returned to the cell as ground chuck, with the implied message that the son would end up the same way.
Result: the Russian hostages were released unharmed, and no Russians were take hostage again.
Sometimes hardball is the only game in town!

very strange for them to take children hostage.

if they want results, they would have to take parliment hostage.

from what i hear from the wireless, Putin is politically invulnerable to this sort of thing. if he makes bad desisions, no-one really cares, everyone will shrug and say "meh, Putin screwed up, but so would have anyone else, go Putin!".
such is the pessimism of russians on their leaders. poor guys

Id go for a rebel friendly town. Surround it, paint it for firebombing, whatever.

There is really no way to win in this situation without creating some MASSIVE moral dillemas, So I'd go for the option that would force them to decide and hope they dont call you on your threat.

You can't force them to decide anything. They've allready decided, they will die and they will kill. This makes the decision much easier for the authorities, which is to go in and settle for percentages. It's terrible i know but there is no other alternative.

The pictures coming across from over there at the moment of the half naked kids covered in blood running for their lives cast any thoughts aside one may have about moral dillemas.

I think we have our answer.

http://www.comcast.net/News/INTERNATION ... c961e.html

Dedman wrote:I think we have our answer.

Yah...and what a lousy and horrific answer it's turning out to be!
Besides the utter horror contained in the pictures of those poor children and their families, one of the things that struck me is the utter, utter confusion!
One of the unfortunate and tragic consequences of ending up in a situation where the authorities have been forced into reacting rather then having the option of acting at a time of their own choosing.

edit.
Seeing those blood covered children, panic stricken and fleeing for their lives was, and is an utterly revolting experience. At the same time hearing commentators fill in with descriptions of how the captives had been kept in a single gymnasium without food or drink, without any chance to use the bathroom. How the captors had segrated them according to sex and age, and had constantly been beating and maltreating the men and older boys. That gymnasium must have been like a level in Dantes Inferno!
Nothing can justify or excuse neither such treatment nor the resulting bloodbath. Nothing!
Here in Denmark we had a resident Chechen political refugee; said to be an unofficial spokesman of the Chechen resistance, on television almost crying crocodile tears as he condemned the hostage taking of innocent children. Then in the next breath laying the blame on Putin and the Russian aggression in Chechnya, and also reminding us; by-the-way, that the pupils in the school were mainly ethnic Russians and the children of ranking members of the Russian community. As if that was any excuse! It must be said in all fairness that his comments were made just prior to the events at the school. But he was back again for comments as the events unfoldedâ?¦and again the crocodile tears were evident, together with comments that the Russian forces were somehow responsible for the debacle because they started shooting into the compound.
My God, what were the soldiers on the ground to do? Just stand by and permit the terrorists to shoot down the escaping children? That is one political refugee Iâ??d like to see handed over to the tender mercies of the Russian FBS.
So whatâ??s next?
Well letâ??s see!
The perpetrators both during and at the end of the siege, acted like savage beasts without the slightest sense of morality or pity. Like savage beast they went for the weak and the helpless. Like cunning savage beasts, once they have discovered a new easy prey, they tend to return to it.
So it doesnâ??t take a Cassandra to figure out weâ??ll se more of the same brand of attacks in the future.
How will we respond? Turn our schools, playgrounds and entertainment centres into armed camps? What an appalling legacy for our kids and grandkids!

CNN wrote:The storming was not planned, Russia said.

A local official from Russia's FSB intelligence service told Russian media the troops had been ready for a long siege.

However, the forces stormed the building around midday after Russian officials, under a cease-fire agreement with militants, tried to collect bodies lying outside the building.

There was an explosion, hostages fled, and hostage-takers opened fire on the children and rescue workers. One of the workers was killed and another was wounded.

Russian troops then opened fire at the rebels, and the battle began.

Ouch... with a situation like this, you at least hope to storm the place at a moment of your own choosing, with proper preparation and coordination.

Ugh... too many dead children... what can you say about people who would attack children like that?

What a bunch of cowardly, disgusting, stupid, sub-human a**holes.
Who did they possibly expect to win over to their cause with an action like this.
And I thought they were going to blow themselves up if attacked. Or did they lack the courage for even that pointless gesture?
I hardly think though that you can accuse the Russians of being soft on terrorists. That bunch in the movie theater didn't fare well either last year. And all of Chechnya has been punished regularly for every act of terroism but it hasn't stopped them yet.

Lothar wrote:... what can you say about people who would attack children like that?

That hopefully they are dead!

crap. just caught the 'catastrophe news' tonight.

i think it just made history. i heard soundbites like "biggest hostage disaster ever".

this is hitting hard.

mind you, i'm still waiting for someone on TV to properly educate me on what the whole political situation in Chetchnia actually is, these incidents keep taking us all by surprise.

roid wrote: ...mind you, i'm still waiting for someone on TV to properly educate me on what the whole political situation in Chetchnia actually is...

I'll give you what I know.
Chechnya like most of the Caucasian states was; pre-WW2, mainly Muslim. After WW2 Stalin deported large parts of the populations of these states east to Siberia, allegedly because they had been a bit too cosy with the German (Nazis) invaders. After which he moved in large numbers of ethnic Russians.
When the USSR imploded in the early '90s., a lot of these forced émigrés came back and joined up with native Chechen's who hadn't been re-settled, and demanded an independent state. Which lead to conflict with the ethnic Russians, most who were the remnants of Stalinâ??s re-settlement plans.
Which during the Jeltsin years lead to the first Chechen War.
Taking into consideration that the landscape is mostly mountainous and therefore perfect for guerrilla warfare, together with the fact that the Caucasians have always been a warrior people, and if not fighting the Russians, then each other, the war was quite bitter. After the Chechens had lost, some estimate between 500,000 â?? 1,000,000, a peace accord was signed giving the Chechens some semblance of self-rule.
In the late 90â??s a series of bombs were detonated in Moscow killing dozens of civilians and blame was laid on Chechen separatists, though rumours persist that Russians were to blame because Putin used the bombings to drum up support for himself, and for starting the 2nd. Chechen War, allegedly to sort out the Chechens once and for all. Heâ??s been trying ever since.
Right now thereâ??s a Russian; I guess you can call him a puppet, as official president of Chechnya. The resistance is made up of a variety of groups. Some nationalists, some local Islamic and some international Islamic that are said to have ties with el Queda, and while the nationalist have been fighting a mainly regular military guerrilla war, the more radical elements of the Islamic wing are given responsibility for the more extreme terrorist events that have been carried out during the last few years. Such as the hostage taking in the Moscow theatre, the bombings in Moscow, the bringing down of the two airliners last week and of course Breslan.

And once again Arabs where involved. I think its high time we stop holding back and put a real case of woopa$$ on them. Remove Iran and Syria from the picture next. Sooner or later they got to get the message to either behave or get wiped out. They set up all those charties here in the U.S. to help poor and helpless people and then use the money for weapons so they can cry louder that they are the master race and we are infidels who should submitt to there will - bah

Interesting response Cuda. Linking Syria and Iran to events they probably have no link to whatever (being allies of Russia) so that you can justify the U.S. attacking them. Do you make these kinds of posts as part of some guerilla anti-muslim organization that promotes pro-war industries through formenting unrest on the web or is that your honest opinion?

My honest opinion, I will abide by what my country says even if I disagree, but they really do belive they are the master's and everyone who is not muslim should be killed or be a servent to them.
As far as Syria and Iran being bystanders - They are huge supporters of terror against the U.S. and any nation who does not bow to there way of thinking.
Also there borders are not real. They where drawn up after the fall of the Odimin empire by Great Britian and the U.S. and others. That whole region was one huge country before that.