Posted on 09/21/2004 8:24:29 PM PDT by GIJoel
Mississippi wrote:
"I was wondering why those Like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria Lebanon Libya. I mean some of them have been around for thousands of years even before the soviets yet the majority of their people live in poverty and have lived in poverty for hundreds of years."
Lost me on Islam is and Islam ain't . Later.
Now you're talking. Sorry, I couldn't read all of the comments or my head would explode ;-)
So... let me get this straight. A tragedy occurs, a great big hole is opened in the souls of the masses, and a politician "feels their pain" and promises to do something about it. To the best of his ability.
President Clinton at Oklahoma City, President Bush at Ground Zero, President Putin at Beslan. Where's the problem?
Personally I don't think Chechnya will ever get solved. Russia gave it de facto independence and Chechnya sank into barbarity, Chechnyan gangsters/terrorists/jihadists kidnapped and murdered, invaded the neighboring republics in order to incite mass civil war (just like in Beslan). Russia takes Chechnya back, and the same old same old continues.
A good Russian word for the situation: tupik. Dead end. Can't win, can't leave it be. Bloodshed until the end of time.
Reminds me of a song by the Russian Jim Morrison (Viktor Tsoy)
=== And it is all risk with no gain.
How come this logic is not applied to the Muslim fundies who lose everytime every time a Victim Nation gains carte blanche to prosecute as they please the (Holy) War on (Islamic) Terror?
What, exactly, in the history of the FSB since its inception leads you to believe they are somehow beyond slaughtering children?
After all, we're talking about "civilized" nations who yet sanction the dismembering and scalding of children alive in the womb ... however earnest is their propaganda that abortions be "reduced" in nations like the US where it is the most common elective surgical procedure in the land.
Do you find it at all possible or within the realm of possibility that Golitsyn is a double agent, and has been this whole time, setting us up over decades for the final dagger?
All those anguished pictures of those poor people crying over their murdered children make me hate Communists like Putin even more.
I wish we had more articles following the fairly consistent offing of writers and publishers in the former Soviet Union. Even the Forbes editor's death just sorta faded away.
The answer to your question is no. Golitsyn predicted virtually all the changes that occured in the Soviet Union and its satilites 10 years before the events themselves. He is legit.
=== Do you find it at all possible or within the realm of possibility that Golitsyn is a double agent, and has been this whole time, setting us up over decades for the final dagger?
The singular nature of Golitsyn's treatment by our agencies and State Department (in contrast to that accorded Prize defectors, mainsteam media darlings and the far more likely double-agents) as well as the utterly consistent and straightforward substance of Golitsyn's work render that prospect highly unlikely.
Here are some reviews of the book "Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within - Acts of Terror, Abductions & Contract Killings Organized by Russia's Federal Security Services"
Haven't read it, but I'm definately going to buy it.
Here's the review:
Alexander Litvinenko served in the Russian military for more than 20 years achieving the ranks of Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1988 he served in the counterintelligence agencies of the Soviet KGB and from 1991 in the Central Staff of the MB-FSK-FSB, specializing in counter-terrorist activities and organized crime.
He worked in the most secret areas of the KGB, the Department for the Analysis of Criminal Organizations, as a senior operational officer and deputy head of the Seventh Section.
In 1988, at a Moscow press conference, he publicly criticized the leadership of the FSB and disclosed a number if illegal orders which he had received. In 1999 he was arrested on trumped-up charges and imprisoned. After winning his case, he was arrested again and charged with added crimes against the state.
He escaped from Russia, and now lives with his family in Great Britain, where he was granted political asylum in May 2001.
If you mean FSB, they've been at it less than BATF have. If you mean Ch.K./NKVD/MGB/KGB, I've read Suvorov's Akvarium, and know their bloody history, and agree that it's a crying shame that there wasn't a Nuremberg trial of apparatchiki after the Soviet Union fell.
Are you saying that nothing has changed?
I've gone drinking with a two FSB (one retired from KGB), and an SBU (Ukrainian version). They struck me as unmotivated, plodding plainclothes cops. In Kyiv, the "secret service" lieutenant I was with couldn't even get us into a cabaret.
Now ATF or WOD types, they scare the bejeezus outta me.
FSB=KGB. These guys just kept doing their respective jobs under a new acronym. "New boss same as the old boss" if you know what I mean.
" What, exactly, in the history of the FSB since its inception leads you to believe they are somehow beyond slaughtering children? "
What in the history of the moslems leads you to believe that they are above it?
actually...
they have eyes that are bereft of a human soul.
dead eyes.
empty souls.
the religion of peace has dehumanized so many of us in their eyes, that life itself has departed from their vision and focusing ability.
they are looking very much like the fathers of the damned.. mesmerized by their own damnation.
Heh
how many are still in the hostpitals MM?
Who is Robert Novak ?
Secrets of the Central Committee
Vladimir Bukovsky
BEFORE ME on my desk is an enormous pile of papers, some 3,000 pages marked "top secret," "special file," "exceptional importance," and "personal." At first glance, they all look the same. In the top right-hand corner is the slogan, "Workers of the world, unite!" On the left side-a severe warning: "To be returned to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (General Department, Section I) within 24 hours." On some, the restrictions are less stringent-the document may be retained for three days or seven, or, not quite so frequently, for two months.
Lower down, in large letters across the page, are the words: "The Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Central Committee" (CC CPSU). Farther below are codes, reference numbers, a date, a list of those who have initialed the document, those who voted for the decision it contains, and those charged with its implementation. The implementers are not, in all cases, entitled to see the entire thing. Instead, they receive an "abstract from the minutes," the contents of which they are forbidden to publicize; a reminder of this appears in fine print in the left margin of the page.* And the rules governing the use of top-secret documents from the Politburo, the Central Committee’s executive committee and the most powerful decision-making body of the Soviet Union, are even stricter:
ATTENTION
A comrade in receipt of top-secret documents of the CC CPSU may not pass them into other hands nor acquaint anyone with their contents without special permission from the CC. Photocopying or making extracts from the documents in question is categorically forbidden. The comrade to whom the document is addressed must sign and date it after he has studied the contents.
This was how the Soviet Communist party ruled: secretly, leaving no traces, and at times even no witnesses.
MEMO TO CIA FROM KGB DEFECTOR, ANATOLY GOLITSYN, 1 FEBRUARY 1995 (Taken from his book, Perestroika Deception, Edward Harle Limited, 1998, ISBN 1-899798-03-X).
Excerpt (footnotes removed):
THE EVENTS IN CHECHNYA EXPLAINED IN TERMS OF RUSSIAN STRATEGY
The conduct of the Chechnyan operation raises a number of questions. For instance: why, given the vast military and secret police experience at their disposal, did the Russians choose to dispatch in to Chechnya in the first place, inexperienced young Soviet army draftees who put up a poor performance in front of Western television cameras? Why were the Russian special forces who, for example, captured General Pal Maleter during the Hungarian upheaval of 1956, too inept to capture any of the Chechen leaders? How did the Chechen Fighters come to be so well armed? Why did the army and Ministry of the Interior troops not take immediate action to surround the city of Grozny and cut off the one route which remained available for the movement of Chechen Fighters and supplies in and out of the city centre?
Why, with their huge preponderance of firepower, did it take the Russians so long to capture the Presidential Palace, the symbolic centre of Chechen resistance? Why, before the Palace fell, were its Chechen defenders, according to their own accounts, allowed to leave, taking their Russian prisoners with them, so that they were free to continue the struggle elsewhere? Why was the bombardment of buildings in the centre of Grozny conducted with what Chancellor Kohl described as ‘senseless madness’? And why, as the Chechen fighters ‘took to the hills’, was a local guerrilla leader willing to receive a Western journalist in his own home in a mountain village without disguise, providing his full name and a history of his family? [The New York Times, 20 January 1995].
I am skeptical about much of the Western press and television coverage of Chechnya. In the first place, coverage was restricted by various factors. For example, Western access to Russian troops engaged in the operation was severely limited according to John Dancey, the NBC News correspondent in Moscow, speaking on the Donahue-Pozner Program on 12 January 1995. The bombardment itself was a powerful disincentive to intrusive journalism, and reporters obviously cannot be blamed for their inability to provide a coherent account of the fighting which took place in the centre of Grozny.
The important general point is the Western press and TV representatives reported the events as Westerners observing what they took to be a real conflict in a free society. It is not their fault that they were not briefed concerning the possibilities of provocation along Communist lines. Hence they were not looking for evidence of mock confrontations, faked casualties of planted information. The prominent Western reporters themselves, though courageous, appeared young and lacking in experience as war correspondents.
Nevertheless, some revealing items surfaced in the coverage. For example, the New York Times reported on 15 January that ‘some of the least serious’ of the Chechen fighters ‘would parade before the cameras’ at the Minutka traffic circle. That report prompted questions as to how many serious Chechen fighters were actually involved in action against Russian troops. Another report insisted that ‘ the last Western reporters’ had left the area of the Presidential Palace, where the ‘murderous fighting’ was concentrated and that Chechen fighters were no longer able to move easily to the south of the city in order to brief journalists about what was happening. It seems therefore that there were no Western eyewitnesses of the ‘final battle’ for the Palace, and that much of the evidence on the fighting was derived from Chechen fighters, whose reliability the reporters were no position to assess.
Two Western reporters were killed during these events. Though these deaths were reported as accidental, the fact is that the Russians would have no compunction about eliminating Western journalists if they thought they might be liable to expose their provocation. It was no coincidence that 40 Russian rockets were targeted at, and hit, Minutka Circle—which up to that moment had been favoured for meetings between journalists and fighters. Almost certainly, Russian officers who told journalists that they had arrived in Grozny without maps were briefed to tell this tall story. A Russian General who was shown on television going through photographs taken by reporters, said the pictures they had taken were useful because they helped him to assess what was going on in Grozny. In all likelihood, he was checking to make sure that the photographs taken by the reporters conveyed the images the Russian wanted conveyed for international public consumption.
The spectacular and continuous bombardment of buildings in the centre of Grozny, many of them probably empty, struck me as deliberately designed to monopolise television cameras, replicating in many ways the ‘Reichstag Fire’ bombardment of the ‘White House’ in Moscow in October 1993.
Inevitably, the detonation of so much high explosive was accompanied by casualties. But the actual number of casualties was probably limited by the departure of many inhabitants of the centre of Grozny before the bombardment started in earnest. As early as 7 January 1995, the Red Cross reported that 350,000 people had fled from the fighting, a figure equivalent to over 80% of the population of Grozny. It would be interesting to know to what extent the authorities encouraged or arranged the evacuation of central Grozny before the bombardment began.
Verification of casualty number is the most difficult problem. According to Dudayev, cited in The New York Times of 12 January, 18,000 Chechens had already died, a figure which the reporter said ‘seems exaggerated’. Casualty figures for the Russian army quoted in The New York Times of 17 January varied from 400 to 800 killed. Again there is no knowing whether these figures were exaggerated or minimized. The Russian authorities are reported to have delayed the admission of European observers interested in verifying numbers. Even if they were eventually to arrive on the scene, such observers would be unlikely to be able to check the numbers allegedly buried in mass graves. Total casualties will probably never be known with any certainty. From the Kremlin strategists’ point of view, casualties are inevitable during this kind of operation and a necessary price to pay of the attainment of defined strategic objectives.
THE KREMLIN’S OBJECTIVES AND THE CHECHNYA CRISIS
The timing of the Chechnyan crisis is an essential key to understanding the strategic objectives which underlie it. The crisis followed closely on the Republican Congressional victory, with its possible consequence of a reversal in the US military rundown. Contrived and televised Russian military bungling during the Chechnyan campaign has sent a strong message to the West that Russian military leaders are divided amongst themselves and that there is widespread incompetence and low morale in the army—factors which demonstrate that it can be discounted as a serious military adversary for the foreseeable future.
This message is 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 can 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 as a ‘democratic’ system.
The events in Chechnya have enabled the Russians to play especially on European fears of destabilization in Russia and the development there of an internal ‘Bosnian situation’. These fears have injected a further boost to the European desire for partnership with the ‘democratic forces’ in Russia in developing democratic solutions to Russian problems. European hopes of promoting real democracy in Russian will of course prove illusory. The Russians will use the partnership to ease their entry into European institutions as a rightful member of the ‘European house’, a house which over the longer term they intend to dominate.
Given continuing Russian influence and leverage in Eastern Europe, East European and eventually Russian involvement in NATO are in the long term Russian strategic interest in accordance with Sun Tzu’s principle of ‘entering the enemy’s camp unopposed’. Though for different reasons, I share the view expressed by a writer in The New York Times of 11 January 1995 that East European membership would mean the ruin of NATO. The ruin of NATO is a long-term Russian objective, towards the achievement of which much progress has already been made. The televised spectacle of Russian barbarity in Chechnya has aroused apprehension in neighboring states of comparable Russian military operations against themselves, thereby strengthening the argument that former members of the Warsaw Pact should be admitted to membership of NATO. Yeltsin’s firmly expressed opposition to their membership and his Foreign Minister’s ambivalence (see, for instance, The New York Times of 20 January 1995) can be read as possible preludes to dramatic ‘change’ in Russian policy, perhaps under a new government.
Furthermore, the reassertion of Kremlin control over Chechnya through massive military intervention (which, despite the calculated impression of bungling, achieved its objective, thereby itself revealing the contrived nature of the televised ‘bungling’), the spectacular, televised destruction of buildings in Gozny and the publicity surrounding the level of casualties, have sent the strongest possible signals to genuine would-be Muslim and non-Muslim secessionists in Chechnya and other Republics that secessionism is a very dangerous game. The strategists may well have chosen Chechnya for their demonstration of force specifically because real secessionism can be more easily contained in that territory than in others.
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