Where is the condemnation?

My understanding is the Russia was in bed with Iraq even after the first gulf war... illegal arms and oil shipments, etc. The generals present months before the second war, helping them with air defenses, etc. How about the destruction of the docs at the embassy, fleeing in diplomatic cars and not stopping for our roadblocks, the shootout with spcl forces right before the border... supplying them with SIGINT, high quality NVGs, that mystery RPG warhead that penetrated M1 Abrams armor like a wet bag?

yes, I think the Russians are much better than other groups

It's easy to undertand the desire for Chechnya to separate from Russia, however. While I support Russia's war against the terrorists, they also don't seem too worried about collateral damage... slaughtering the civilians, laying seige to and ultimately leveling Grozny and other cities. Shamil and his goons are clearly evil, but that doesn't make the other atrocities OK. It's a really tough situation, IMO way harder than Afghanistan (for them), our Vietnam, etc. There really isn't much that can be done to Chechens that hasn't been done for a long, long time.

Finally, if you look, CLEARLY there is condemnation world wide about the school incident. Didn't one of the main guys at Al Jazeera say that now the focus is clearly on Islamic terrorists and how this whole situation makes the religion look evil? To think that our left isn't condemning the situation is pure folly... I mean... one kid shot at school by an illegally possessed gun... and they want to ban them all! Imagine what they would do over there... ballistic fingerprinting for all, chemical tags in any explosives (incl gunpowder), registration... confiscation, etc. The difference is that the right is saying "see, we didn't kick them in the balls and now they do this terrible act!" and the left is saying "see, we didn't confiscate their weapons and this is what happens!"

I'd venture to say that 99% of the Muslims in the world see this as a hideous act. There is simply no justification of killing innocent kids, period. Even there was internal dissention among the HARDENED TERRORISTS. That's gotta say something.

I think that the FSB is going to double in size within a year and go back to harder KGB style tactics... as if they ever stopped. human intel is where it's at.

cheers

Krept,

You are right, a guy that works Al-J and some Muslim newspaper did say it was time to come clean. I applaud that man for his courage and when I wrote the above statement I had not see it yet or heard it.

My point is leaders of Saudia Arabia and their clerics, the Iranians, Jordanians, Palestians, and whoever could go a long way to say enough of the terror. The Europeans and other industrial countries can say they condem it all, but we have to see some of these "peace loving muslim regimes" getting invovled too.

I know the Russians are hard asses who have had a lot of collateral damage in Chechnya. I find fault with the way they fight and the fact they have done some bad things. I've never heard of them hodling school kids mostly naked with explosives strapped all over the place.

The story here is terror and who started using terror and who always uses terror. If the terrorist had gone after a soldiers barracks instead of a school I could even rationalize that as being military action.

What these people did was pure evil. This should be a great wake up call since it was chidlren. It's not though and all the innocent adults that have been killed aren't either.

BTW: Welcome to the board! Don't take me too hard since I am on a soapbox about this lately.

:thumbup1: thanks for the welcome

from the various 9mm x .45, AR vs AK, etc. debates I've got flame hardened skin and that wasn't even close to lighting things up but thanks for the explanation.

I'm pretty sure one reason for the lack of overt condemnation is because the people in power want to remain as quiet as possible. A decent (but perhaps weak) parallel I would make would be if Israel killed 10 kids in an attempt to destroy one of the Qassam factories. Unless I'm wrong, our government is usually silent about such matters while the Arabic television stations are screamnig bloody murder. Perhaps it's because we see and understand Israel's right to take preemptive action against terrorists and that their intention isn't to be baby killers.

Now, not to justify the terrorists actions at the school by any means, but I'm sure that a lot of Arab and Muslim governments are sympathetic to the Chechen cause because of the parallels they see in the plight of the Palestinians. This latest action is clearly the most heinous even when compared to the hospital seige, the apartment bombings, subway bombing, Moscow theatre, etc.

Perhaps these governments are not overtly condemning the action because they feel, in the case of the Moscow seige and the Beslan school incident that the loss of innocent lives might (strong might) have been diminished if the Russians had not been so aggressive. Yes, I absolutely understand that MORE lives may have been lost if they had not done so... I'm just trying to see things from their point of view.

It's truly hard for me to comprehend that any rational person doesn't find what happened at the school horrifying. That's why I'm trying to put these thoughts together. I wish I would have watched Mosaic as the events unfolded to see which newscasts used silly words like "martyr" to describe the actions of these homicidal terrorists.

Certainly everyone in the free world must agree that the situation was unacceptable regardless of the aim. Even if the chechens and arabs wanted a peaceful solution (riiiight) the fact that they put so many kids in harms way is deplorable.

I guess what I'm saying is that... I can kind of understand WHY the other governments are not decrying the actions of the terrorists but I certainly don't agree with it. Even in a situation as black and white as this, there may be a good reason why they aren't calling a spade a spade.

cheers,
Erik