Don't mess with Russia

[VictorKaum]

Originally posted here by Tedob1
this was really a no win situation. use gas to minimze casualities, their wrong, do nothing and let the hostages be executed, it's why didn't they act. pull their troops out of Chechnya and everyone with what they think is a cause, will start taking hostages.

troops with no ties to anyone inside were told to rush a building rigged to blow. i think they did the right thing.

You are right when saying not to compromise when talking about terrorism. But was there really no other gas they could have used? If they knew what possible problems / deaths could occur with the gaz why did they not take precautions like antidotes, more medics?

On the otherhand if you see the ammount of explosives and the number of terrorists, you can imagine that they needed to use a very effective gaz. If the total number of killings was lower, i would say "well done!", but now...

The rumour goes this was a KGB operation (set up)

[ZeroOne]

I'm quite much with Tedob1 here. Remember that an overdose of anything is lethal, more if you haven't eaten or drunken in several days. Would any of you have come up with a better solution than gas? I wouldn't.

Btw, FYI VictorKaum, KGB doesn't exist anymore, it's called FSB ("Federal Security Service" in Russian) nowadays. I can see your smiley there but I'd still state that Russia would have definitely wanted to keep Chechenya out of the headlines, so it would have been stupid for FSB. However I might even accept that the two blocks of flats that blew up a couple of years ago were blown by the government just only to get an excuse to attack Chechenya. Which they did.

[NeoAcid5000]

I dont like war period so i think both sides have some blame toward it. Attacking each other period is wrong. Im against war, so sorry.

[VictorKaum]

Originally posted here by ZeroOne
Btw, FYI VictorKaum, KGB doesn't exist anymore, it's called FSB ("Federal Security Service" in Russian) nowadays. I can see your smiley there but I'd still state that Russia would have definitely wanted to keep Chechenya out of the headlines, so it would have been stupid for FSB.

thx for the correction I will try to remember FSB.

[ivi]

First of all, beaing russian, I am very surprised that no russians replyed to this thread, isn't there any? I am a new member, so can only reply now. I do disagree with most of your statements and agree with some, here are my comments:

Originally posted by mrcofee12 on 10-26-2002 05:46 PM

Russia can never be completely independandt because they can't grow enough food for their entire population. That and the fact that Russia doesn't really have that much money as a nation, which is evident by the US having to build half of the parts Russia promised for international space station.

Russia would be a valuable ally though, they're very resiliant.

In a modern world no country can be fully independent, but to your knoledge, Russia is an agricultural country with the population of 148m people and land area of over 17 000 000 sq km. Do you really think we can't grow enough food for ourself ??? We export alot more than produce. I don't think that lack of money was expressed correctly, but however you express it, I have to agree. Not sure about the weight of the space station argument.
For the last sentents, and everyone who posted similar ones: Don't think that the whole world is on the knees in front of US, this is not up to you to decide whether we will be your friends or not. Russia is a mature country, which have invested (in one or the other form) large ammounts of money in American and European banks and therefore helped your economy more than you will ever help Russia. We may not be as advance in technology as US, but there are numerous reasons for this including closed regime. The most important factor, IMHO, is the industrial decentrilasation. You can blame Micro$oft however you want, but you have to accept the fact that this company invested alot (not money though ) into technology. There is countless number of amazing american US companies - SUN, Apple, SGI, HP, IBM, Bell etc etc. In Russia, most of the companies tend to be very small and therefore uncapable of large scale projects. The only succesful company is 1C, which does accounting software. The long term investments not interesting yet dengerous to be considered as a serious business projects for russian companies. Software piracy is also one of the biggest enemies for technological advances; It is almost impossible to find licensed software anywhere in Russia apart from Moscow and St.Petersburg.

Originally posted by pr0active on 10-26-2002 06:53 PM

Irresponsible criticism? Come on, what the Russians are doing in Checheny cannot be excused. The reports coming from Checheny talks about whole people being oppressed, and because of the Twin Tower incident the whole world has forgotten about what's happening over there. The war in Checheny is a big disaster, a catastrophy, and the people living there is experiencing hell on earth.

Every responsible goverment should criticise Russia for their actions, but politics and positioning once again has left a whole people suffering under a super power.

I neither agree nor disagree with this post. Obviously, country like Russia can stop the whole thing in no time. Chechens do not represent any kind of serious enemy for Russia, as well as Taliban for America or any similar case. However, politics is dirty by nature, and bigger countries trying to take advatage of the war. WAR is the quickest and most efficient way billions and humans lifes do not concern certain individuals in Russia (PLEASE, do not confuse "People in Russia" with "Russians"). You may be right about expirience of chechens, but this is nothing, comparing to number feelings of mothers in Russia, who lost their sons in this war. The methods, russians used in war are very different from those imployed by chechens. Are familiar with Hospital capture in Budionovsk? Kidnapping?
About Chechen independency: chechens never really wanted to be part of Russia. They tryed to gain independency during Stalin's times, but he how to fight it, becides no commercial reasons were sought after. During socialism times, Russia could hold this country within the Union by providing it with all the best. While Russians were sharing flats between several families chechens were living in huge houses. When the idea of communism colapsed, noone, of course, wanted to keep supporting this and number of other countries. The reason, which prevented Russia to give full independency to Chechnia is OIL.
I, myself, is not a supporter of racism, but I hate most chechens and there are reasons for this.
There are many chechens in Russia. Most of them are criminals. They are the ones, who make up many of the Russian groups known as "Russian Mafia" - Totally different from "Mafia" though. They kill people in Russia. Many parts of russian cities are controlled by chechens. They are animals from nature, they can kill a human much easier than Russian or American. Having achived nothing for their history, they think they are the supirior nation and if allah is not your god you have to dye.
They do follow religion in their country and have respect for other people their, but I don't see anything but crime from them in my country.


My opinion about the Theatre.
We can only judge the outcome of one case. There may be many reasons for Russian govmnt to act as they did. Suggestions about different gas. This might have been the least dangerous gas, which would act fast enough might not be that inicent. Terrorists had explosions right on them, remember. What, in your opinion, would be priority: 100-200 hostages or All the hostage + everything else around in this situation? The sleeping gas suggestion is hard to fall on though.

[the_JinX]

Terrorism usualy has a reason.

I'm not defending terrorism, but I deffinately am not defending the "War on terrorism".
Most forms of terrorism happen out of year long suppression by the people they attack, take the palestines in israel, they were forced to move from their land (for over a 1000 years) about 50 years ago. No wonder their pissed.

Same thing about the chechens, they were forced (and still are) to obey to the russians.
Let them have their land.

I don't ever agree with terrorist attacks, but this whole war on terrorism is just as bad (IMHO).

[shockwaveX343]

"Russia is fighting our fight on another front, defending civilization
from a new evil, more deadly than the Nazi regime of world war two."

You aren't even close the Nazi regime controlled all of Europe except Britain Spain and
Switzerland they controlled the Atlantic ocean with there u-boats (they sunk lots of
Canadian ships) they nearly over ran Russia, they blitized the hell out england they came close to
extinguishing a race all within 5 years how can you even compare?