Posted on 09/21/2004 8:24:29 PM PDT by GIJoel
Putin: Ally or Terrorist? by William F. Jasper
Counting Vladimir Putin as an ally against terrorism ignores his career in the murderous KGB/FSB and his ongoing support for terrorist regimes and organizations.
‘‘Lena Goncharuk, aged 38, said that she was the only one to survive out of a group of six who were ordered out of the cellar where they had been hiding and shot at point blank range. Resting in her hospital bed, her voice barely rising above a whisper, she said she had survived only by pretending to be dead." So reported Paul Wood from the Chechen border for The Independent of London on February 6, 2000, as "triumphant" Russian troops occupied Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. Wood’s article, entitled "Chechnya’s civilians put to the sword," continued with Mrs. Goncharuk’s story:
"They [the Russian soldiers] were asking for cigarettes, then they asked, ‘Do you have a radio,’ and they said, ‘Give it to us,’" she said, explaining that the four women and two men were sent back down into the cellar after handing over their valuables.
"We hadn’t even sat down," she went on, "then they began throwing grenades into the cellar and shooting. We all were crying and suffocating, the smell was unbearable. We were crying out, we could not see anything but they continued to shoot.
"We said, ‘Guys what are you doing? We are civilians.’ They stopped shooting and they said to come out of the cellar. Our legs and heads were wounded and we could hardly move but we got up, supporting each other.
"The first out were two Russian women, Luda and Natasha. We were standing inside the garage over the cellar and they started shooting at point blank range. The others were twisting in pain.... Natasha was lying dead already....
"There was one old man with us. His head was covered in blood.... Then they started firing again.
"If I had looked up I would have been shot. I opened my eye just a little bit, all I saw was the muzzles of their guns and their boots."
Putin’s "Liberation"
Two hospital beds down from Lena Goncharuk was another victim of the Russian "liberation." Unlike Goncharuk, Hedi Makhauri, a 40-year-old Chechen mother, had not been trapped inside besieged Grozny; along with tens of thousands of other refugees, she had fled to neighboring Ingushetia.
With Russian troops establishing themselves in the capital, and the Russian bombing and shelling apparently over, she had thought it safe to go back and check on her house. Paul Wood’s report briefly recounts her ordeal:
"They said it was a liberated area," she said, frail and thin, clutching her hospital sheet to her chin, telling us that when she got to her street, she and two other Chechen women saw Russian soldiers loading stolen goods from the houses into one of their armoured vehicles.
"They took us to the armoured vehicle and they said to go inside. We were afraid as they put blindfolds on us. We said, ‘Why, we are not criminals, we have just come to see our houses.’ They said it was orders.
"They said they would take us to the police headquarters, but they just took us around the corner. It was just ruins all around. Me and my neighbour were clutching each other’s hand. We said: ‘Why are you taking us here, there are no police here.’ They said: ‘Just wait, they will come.’
"The other woman said, ‘Take whatever you want, we have children, just don’t kill us.’ They made us go into one little room. They just shot her in the head. She didn’t even have time to say, ‘Let me go.’ They just shot her. Hedi said that the Russian soldiers were tugging at the gold ring on her finger.
"It slipped off just as they decided to get a knife to sever her finger and the ring along with it. They also took her ear-rings and her money, 400 roubles, about £8.
"Then they put an old mattress over her body, poured petrol on, and lit it. The mattress was wet and did not catch light, only smouldered as they walked away. If I cried they would have killed me," she said.
"They said it was a liberated area"? Where did Hedi Makhauri and many others less fortunate than her get such calamitous disinformation? Why, from no less an authority than Vladimir Putin, then the acting president of Russia. Mr. Putin appeared on Russian national television on Sunday, February 6, 2000, to announce that the last stronghold of the Chechen "terrorists" in Grozny had been taken and the Russian flag had been hoisted over the smoldering ruins of the capital. "Thus, we can say that the operation to liberate Grozny is over," declared Putin.
The seven-year campaign of genocide against Chechnya has been largely invisible to the outside world. The Russian armed forces and security services have successfully kept most of the Western media and humanitarian-aid organizations out, while, at the same time, preventing refugees from escaping with eye-witness details of the brutal subjugation. "Let us call it by its real name," wrote Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby on October 28, 1999. "What Russia is committing in Chechnya is the mass murder of civilians.... And not only is the West failing to rise up against his [Putin’s] bloodbath, it is actively helping to finance it," directly through U.S. foreign aid to the Russian government, as well as indirectly via the U.S. taxpayer-funded International Monetary Fund.
Convergence Choir
Tragically, far too few of Mr. Jacoby’s colleagues in the Western media have shared his outrage over the ongoing slaughter in Chechnya; the coverage of Putin’s campaign of terror against Chechen civilians has been sporadic and the condemnations tepid. Since the September 11th terrorist attacks, criticism of the Chechen pogrom has all but evaporated, as the Bush administration has rushed to embrace Russia as our valued "ally" in the war on terrorism.
New York Times correspondent Bill Keller typified this response in an October 6th article, in which he stated: "We need the Russians now, as we needed Stalin once, and if that means our president pulls a punch on the subject of the indiscriminate civil carnage in Chechnya, I can live with that; the punch had no muscle behind it anyway." Mr. Keller and other pragmatists of his ilk can apparently "live with" patently immoral policies like genocide, turning a blind eye to the unpleasant bloodletting as long as the perpetrator advances the globalist agenda of East-West convergence.
On November 23rd, the Times offered an even more startling re-evaluation of Russia as NATO’s new partner in the war on terrorism. Aleksandr Rahr, a scholar at the German Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Berlin, told the Times: "What changed radically on September 11th was the complete disappearance of Russia as a threat to Europe. It’s completely gone." The German CFR is a sister to the American CFR, this country’s "ruling establishment," and Mr. Rahr was trilling the same convergence theme as his U.S. counterparts. Mr. Rahr, along with other European and American CFR one-worlders, advocates a full, lusty embrace of Russia against our new common enemy.
One of the most enthusiastic advocates of this policy of NATO-Russia embrace is none other than Lord Robertson, the current NATO chief. "We sense very strong indications from President Putin in recent weeks that he wants to change the way that Russia does business," the November 23rd New York Times quoted Robertson as saying. "We take that at face value and we will work on that basis," he continued. "The Russian response to the terrible attacks on the United States," he said, "has … been the reaction of a real and genuine friend." "In the past," said Robertson, "we were divided by walls and fences and by ideology and by armies. Today the threats to the Russian people are very similar, if not exactly the same as, the threats to the people in the NATO countries and the West."
Does Lord Robertson, the head of the West’s military alliance, truly buy the Kremlin line that the pounding of Chechen cities and villages into rubble, the rampant slaughter of civilians, and the driving of hundreds of thousands of refugees into camps, neighboring provinces, and foreign exile are the same as fighting terrorists who carry out acts like the 9-11 Black Tuesday attack? Whether or not he truly believes it, Robertson is definitely retailing that line with a passion. "To utter such nonsense, a top Western official has to be either a closet Communist or one of Lenin’s ‘useful idiots,’" says Christopher Story, editor and publisher of the authoritative London-based Soviet Analyst.
One of the most reliable analysts of Russian affairs and a keen observer of British power politics, Mr. Story clearly believes Robertson to be of the former category. "Look, Robertson was well known in Britain as a former Communist trade union agitator when Tony Blair picked him to be secretary of state for defense," Story told The New American. "Blair is to the left of Clinton and has been clear over in the Kremlin camp all along. The September 11th attacks have given him the opportunity to advance his pro-Moscow agenda while appearing to be pro-military, pro-American, and anti-terrorist." Story points out that when a member of parliament queried the British Fabian Socialist Society concerning charges that certain members of the Blair cabinet were members of the socialist group, the secretary of the Fabian Society publicly confirmed that 20 of Blair’s 23 cabinet officials were indeed members in good standing with the organization. For over a century, notes Story, the Fabians have played a crucial role in implementing Marxist-Leninist policies in the British Commonwealth.
"Lord Robertson the former Communist is quite obviously a continuing covert Communist who is enthusiastically implementing the continuing Soviet strategy against the West — from the highest office in NATO, no less," warns Story. "What makes this even more troubling is that Robertson was appointed NATO secretary-general following Javier Solana, a ‘former’ Spanish Communist, who shared the same love affair with Moscow. Solana has now been transferred to a key position within the European Commission of the EU [European Union], where he and his fellow radicals are working in concert with Robertson, Blair, Germany’s Joschka Fischer, Italy’s Romano Prodi, and other subversives to convert NATO and the EU completely into an oppressive Soviet collective."
The Russians have always been master chess players, reminds Story, and they have been playing the terrorist gambit very successfully. "If the people of the West do not wake up soon to this fact, we will soon be in checkmate," he warns.
Covert Strategy, Deadly Deception
The Russian war against Chechnya is, of course, central to the current U.S.-Russian embrace as allies in the war against terrorism. For the Russians and their CFR apologists in the U.S., it provides an important test of the American public’s gullibility: Can the slaughter in Chechnya credibly be equated to our current war against Osama bin Laden? After all, as the CFR’s Mr. Rahr claims, the Russian threat is "completely gone," and we’re both fighting against Islamic extremists, right? Or as Lord Robertson put it, we both face "very similar, if not exactly the same" threats.
The chess pieces were being positioned to produce American acceptance of this preposterous notion long before the suicide attacks of September 11, 2001. In December 1994, Boris Yeltsin ordered Russian troops, tanks, and air power into Chechnya to fight what he claimed were "terrorists" and "bandits." Soon the term "Islamic extremist" was also being applied to the Chechen opponents. For months the Russian army appeared pathetically inept, demoralized, barbaric, and incapable of subduing the Chechens. However, after grinding much of Chechnya under its tank tracks and killing 100,000 civilians, the Yeltsin regime negotiated an accord to withdraw Russian forces, while negotiations would continue toward a settlement of Chechnya’s status by the end of 2001.
The most penetrating (and what has also proven the most prophetic) analysis of the 1994-96 Russian-Chechnyan War was written in February 1995 as a memo from Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn to CIA Acting Director William O. Studeman. Published in the 1995 edition of Golitsyn’s book The Perestroika Deception, the memo marshaled important evidence and observations supporting the contention that the Chechnyan War was being "deliberately staged largely for Western consumption by the Kremlin strategists in the pursuit of their objectives."
What hidden objectives could the Kremlin strategists advance by a controlled operation that showed the Russian military performing so poorly and the Russian military leaders quarreling amongst themselves? Mr. Golitsyn, himself a former elite KGB operative amongst the Kremlin strategists, listed many important objectives, including:
• The Russian military bungling was intended to "demonstrate that it can be discounted as a serious military adversary for the foreseeable future."
• This message was "intended to influence US Congressional debate on the subject of Russia’s military potential and the size of US forces required to maintain a balance with it."
• The message could "also be used as a pretext for deepening the partnership between the US and Russian armed forces by seeking American advice and help in ‘reforming,’ reorganizing and retraining the Russian army in order to enable it to serve a ‘democratic’ system."
• The Chechnyan events also "enabled the Russians to play especially on European fears of destabilization in Russia" and "injected a further boost to the European desire for partnership with the ‘democratic forces’ in Russia."
• This partnership would lead to "entry into European institutions" and then "East European and eventually Russian involvement in NATO."
As usual, Mr. Golitsyn’s cogent analysis has proven prescient as well; all of the above objectives, and others he mentioned, have been advanced on the Russian chessboard — to a frightful degree. And, as usual, Golitsyn’s warnings and analyses have been ignored and supressed by the CFR insiders dominating U.S. policy-making positions, Establishment think tanks, and the press. (See the sidebar.)
Russia’s New Front Man
Mr. Golitsyn suggested that the Chechnyan "crisis" might be "a possible planned prelude to a change of government," replacing the spent Yeltsin team with a new set of rotating faces. "Since an outright military or nationalist government [in Russia] might prejudice the flow of Western aid and the continued ‘cooperation’ with the West which furthers the strategists’ interests," he said, it is likely that the Kremlin strategists wielding the real power behind the scenes would replace Yeltsin with a team comprised of a tough new president and a "reformist" prime minister. "The President would be presented as a guarantee of Russian stability while the Prime Minister’s task would be to ensure the continued flow of Western aid and the continuation of cooperative operations."
Enter Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the Russian "hero" of the Chechnyan pogrom. President Putin, the current player sitting in the Kremlin’s big chair, may seem in charge of moving the Russian pieces around the board, says Christopher Story, but he is merely the current front man for the covert Communist leadership collective that has continued to rule Russia since the Soviet Union’s supposed collapse. Mr. Story is perhaps the world’s leading proponent of Golitsyn’s thesis that the "Soviet collapse" was a controlled deception, planned many years in advance, for long-range strategic purposes.
Mr. Story, whose publications have closely tracked developments in Chechnya as well as the rise of Putin’s star, derides the government and media experts for falling all over themselves to come up with explanations for Putin’s meteoric rise. "Vladimir Putin has been a lifelong Communist and asset of Soviet intelligence," first of the KGB, and then of the GRU, Soviet military intelligence, he told The New American. "And the Chechnyan ‘crisis’ that raised him to the national and world stages has been completely an operation of the successor Russian intelligence services. If you follow the Russian-Chechnyan events and Putin’s career it’s very clear that he was hand-picked by the Kremlin strategists for his current role."
Shooting Putin to prominence was a spectacular string of 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities that left hundreds dead. Yeltsin had appointed Putin prime minister, after serving a stint as head of the FSB, the current acronym for the KGB. Putin then strode on the scene vowing to bring the terrorists to justice. He quickly identified the perpetrators as Islamic extremists from Chechnya and soon launched a new massive invasion reducing Grozny to ashes and corpses. Heralded by the KGB/FSB-directed government organs and media as the strong man who had redeemed Russia’s honor from the ignominy of the 1994-1996 Chechnyan War and ended the terror bombings, Putin was elected "president" in March 2000.
USA Today reported on March 27, 2000 that Putin’s win "capped an incredible rise to power by a man who had never before stood for election." The Los Angeles Times reported that prior to his victory over the Chechens, "few thought the mousy, soft-spoken former spy could convince a majority of voters to elect him president."
Christopher Story has pointed out that Putin was able to solve the terrorist bombings "because they were very simply provocations perpetrated by covert Soviet intelligence operatives to provide Moscow with a pretext for an official re-entry into Chechnya. I say ‘official’ because Russia never really relinquished control when it supposedly left in 1996." Other analysts, investigators, and reporters around the world have reached some of the same conclusions. Many major mainstream media organs have acknowledged that the Putin regime has produced no evidence substantiating that Chechens were behind the Moscow bombings. Moreover, it has been fairly widely reported that strong evidence indicates that the FSB actually perpetrated the bombings. Many news groups have reported that after the fourth major bombing in September 1999, local police foiled a fifth bombing when they arrested terrorists planting explosives in another apartment complex. The terrorists turned out to be FSB agents.
According to Soviet Analyst, the Russians did not merely seize an opportunity (the 9-11 attacks) that happened to coincide with their long-range objectives; Putin and associates actually planned and carried out the terrorist deed using assets connected to bin Laden in Chechnya. The publication, which, like Anatoliy Golitsyn, can boast an uncanny accuracy on major Russian developments unmatched by the media-anointed Russian experts, has pointed out a number of important facts that support this theory. Among them:
• Land-locked Chechnya has long been one of the most completely controlled areas of the former Soviet Union, surrounded by Russia and Georgia, run by the faithful Communist Edward Shevardnadze. It is thus one of the safest venues to carry out a false Islamic revolt.
• The huge Soviet strategic military base and air base at Mozdok near Ingushetia has been using Chechnya as a "live warfare" laboratory and training ground, preparing for further strategic warfare in the region.
• The Chechen opposition has been completely controlled and compromised with false leadership, notably, with the likes of Djokhar Dudayev, a former Soviet air force general, accepted by Moscow as the representative voice of Chechen independence.
• The Russian armed forces and security services repeatedly released their controlled Chechen opposition, or allowed them to escape, to carry out repeated provocations.
• During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, an estimated 50,000 young Afghan males were removed from Afghanistan and transferred to terrorist training camps in Chechnya, Tajikistan, and elsewhere — to be filtered back in subsequent years as fighters in the ranks of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Northern Alliance.
• Utilizing its client regimes in Iran, Sudan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East, Russia has supported the "Islamic" terror network while making it appear that it is itself under assault from "Muslim extremists."
As usual, says Christopher Story, the Communist strategists in Moscow have used the "principle of reversal," lying audaciously about the true situation in Chechnya. "Putin’s claims that Russia is under attack from bin Laden’s forces, just like the U.S., is a complete reversal of the truth," he says. In reality, he notes, "the evidence is far more persuasive that his al-Qaeda contacts in Chechnya and neighboring areas have been used to coordinate provocations that will provide the image of a common enemy." If this analysis is correct, and it appears to be, then the United States and the West have embraced as allies in the war on terrorism the engineers and perpetrators of the global terror offensive.
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Predictions of an Ex-KGB Agent by William F. Jasper
Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn predicted the rise of a false Soviet reformer like Gorbachev, the removal of the Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany, and the restructuring of NATO.
In 1961, in a dramatic escape under cover of a blinding snow storm, a major in the Soviet KGB defected to the United States. He was no ordinary KGB agent; he was an elite officer working within the "inner KGB" — a super-secret strategic planning department that plotted long-term Soviet strategy against the West. He is probably the most important Soviet defector ever to have reached the West. His name is Anatoliy Golitsyn.
Golitsyn warned that KGB moles had penetrated the CIA and virtually all other Western intelligence services and that many defectors were actually double agents feeding strategic disinformation to the West. For more than four decades, Golitsyn has been providing methodical analysis of developments in the Soviet Union and of Russian initiatives and operations throughout the world that has proven uniquely accurate. He has been explaining patiently that the Communist strategists who ran the Soviet Union continue to run Russia today. Following Leninist strategic principles, they are engaged in a deadly long-term war against the West. Foremost among their objectives is to convince Western leaders that Soviet Communism has collapsed and represents no further threat to the world.
Golitsyn’s amazingly prophetic book, New Lies for Old, was published in 1984. His main predictions included details of the forthcoming false liberalization of the whole of Eastern Europe, followed by similar developments in the Soviet Union. He predicted the rise of a false Soviet reformer like Gorbachev, the removal of the Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany, and the restructuring (if not abolition) of NATO. He even went so far as to specify that a "Break with the Past" process would start in East Germany, with the opening of its borders — as it turned out, to neighboring Communist countries. That was very remarkable: Golitsyn knew that the process would start in East Germany, and it did.
Author Mark Riebling, in his important 1994 book entitled Wedge: The Secret War between the FBI and CIA, conducted a careful analysis of Golitsyn’s predictions in New Lies for Old. He found that out of a total of 148 predictions, 139 had been verified by 1993 — "an accuracy rating of 94%." No other Soviet expert even comes close. Golitsyn’s 1995 book, The Perestroika Deception, continuing in the same tradition, offers unparalleled information and insight. Our leaders continue ignoring his proven wisdom to our own great peril.
Ahh so you now agree that America and Russia were friends and allies in the past, unlike your previous statement.....well I'm glad to see that there is progress being made in our therapy.
A. Pole wrote:
"Because they were not defeated in the war or revolution. They gave up their power without bloodshed and most of the crimes were committed several decades ago."
By your standards: 1. apartide must still rule in S.Africa, since there were no trials, etc, and 2. Pinoche must still be a dictator of Chile. For that matter, Facists still rule Spain and in all those monarchies of Europe, the kings are still fully in charge. After all there were no revolutions and since governments can only change with violence and blood, there is no other way. What about Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia? All EU/NATO members and yet not in one was there a general revolution. The participating states of the Soviet Union simply decided they no longer wanted to be part of it and the military backed down during the coup from supporting the Politburo. It was actually Russia and Ukraine, the two key states who first declared independence. The rest followed shortly.
There are plenty of sites in Russia for mourning and meusums to victems. But whom will you prosecute? If Stalin's purges ended in 1949, let us say the youngest soldier who might have had something to do with that was: 17 years old then, he would now be: 71 years old.
Prosecuting a bunch of old men, if nothing else, gives them sympathy. They are dieing off seeing everything they worked to accomplish thrown out and forgotten, that is punishment and soon they will have God's punishment.
As for criminals, Stalin's daughter and Kruschov's son are US citizens. Gorbachov makes his millions in the US. Several KGB generals are now US residents or citizens. Shevernadze and Alli of Azerbajan were KGB generals and were closest of US allies. If you want to find these criminals, luckily for you, you do not have to go far, most are either here or Canada or England, having been persuaded to leave Russia by the less then grateful public there.
Have at it, prosecute.
God, I need to check my spelling, that last post was horrible.
He posed the question, and I answered it.
He wanted to know who got blamed for the mission going to s$%t, and the answer was that we blamed Carter; it cost him the Presidency.
Putin's two hostage rescue attempts have netted less than sixty terrorists, and over 500 civilian deaths...Putin is incompetent just like Carter was incompetent.
In contrast, the Israelis rescued the hostages at Entebbe, killed all terrorists, and lost only three hostages.
Yeah, blame the terrorists for taking the hostages, and they should all die for targeting defenseless civilians, but for crying out loud, quit carrying water for a communist dictator wannabe who's been slaughtering civilians by the thousands for years in Chechnya, and now wants to claim moral equivalency between 9/11, and Beslan.
We committed no atrocities which led to the attacks on 9/11, but the undeniable truth is that Russia's atrocities in Chechnya have led to the current situation there.
Russians kill Chechen civilians, Chechens kill Russian civilians. People in this forum have justified the bombing of Chechen population centers as just being part of war...civilians die. Yet, they turn around and condemn the Chechens for waging war back at the people waging war on them because they killed civilians!
Well, the Russian bombs that fell on Grozny for months on end weren't designed to avoid children.
And for the record Putin=Andropov.
It rocks.
"Therapy"?
You pompous $^%#%$$.
Your best effort is one incident over 143 years ago.
You need therapy.
Chechens will never get any sympathy as long as they're cozying up to al-Qaeda. That's a fact.
1. S. Africa is now run by the Communist ANC. 2. Pinochet was an anti-Communist and voluntarily relinquished power, leaving the country in the best shape it had ever been in (although, the Communists are beginning to regain power in Chile as evidenced by the growing domestic and foreign effort to charge Pinochet with war crimes). AS for the EU/NATO members, like I said, these bloodless revolutions were planned and implemented FROM THE TOP. If these kindler, gentler revolutions had been for real, blood would have been flowing in the streets, and large numbers of Communists would have been executed and/or given long prison terms.
Again, it was a list of incidents, not one and even one is more then you claimed. As for cursing, I have done you the honor of not acting like a small jilted child, if you can't do the same, maybe you need a time out and learn to count to 10?
I do not deny any of that, but by your standards none of that is a reality, because like in the Soviet Union, the previous rulers left without blood shed, that is unless you are using a blatently double standard. Are you?
Thanks, need a spell checker, personal weakness.
To clarify a little. The spontaneous grass root democracy was finished in Russia at the request of Western free marketeers with the massacre of Parliament by Yeltsin in 1993.
The Duma led by a Chechen - Ruslan Khasbulatov was resisting the rapid fire sale "privatisation" which led to the dispossesion of Russian people. This was the real beginning of Chechen revolt, before Wahabi missionaries came from Saudi Arabia and confused the situation.
Putin who is very popular with Russians (about 70% as opposed to the %7 for Yelstin in the last years of his rule) is restoring Russian democracy on a strong presidency model - similar to the France.
If Germany did NOT lose the war and Nazis stepped down voluntarily the Nurenberg trial would not take place. Just accept the obvious, PLEASE!
Jb6 wtote: "If Stalin's purges ended in 1949, let us say the youngest soldier who might have had something to do with that was: 17 years old then, he would now be: 71 years old."
Jb6 Wrote: "I do not deny any of that, but by your standards none of that is a reality, because like in the Soviet Union, the previous rulers left without blood shed, that is unless you are using a blatently double standard. Are you?"
NOPE, I AM APPLYING THE SAME STANDARD TO BOTH--THE TRUTH.
Fine, why don't you initiate the prosecution of former NKWD/KGB/UB (UB - Stalin's era secret police in Poland) officials living in the West. Good luck!
A. Pole,
I said, 7 million were murdered during the POST, POST, POST-Stalin period. POST-STALIN, POST-STALIN, POST, POST, POST-STALIN period. Did I mention that 7 million were murdered during the POST-STALIN period???
The Russian military is a relatively weak instrument in the best of times for this stuff; it is a bludgeon, not a scalpel. This ain't the best of times for them. That is, for example, why they used the gas in Moscow--because they needed every tactical edge they could get.
Just out of idle curiousity...
Let's suppose you're Vladimir Putin's replacement, as of today. Another Beslan attack goes down.
Given the very weak state of the Russian armed forces, how would you handle the crisis? Use armed force (and probably kill a bunch of civilians)? Give the terrorists what they want (and encourage more of the same)? Do nothing, let the terrorists kill their hostages?
Chechnya can thank their Moon God that I'm not the guy in the Kremlin, because I would've glassed the entire place by now.
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