[A. Pole]

The Russian military is a relatively weak instrument in the best of times for this stuff; it is a bludgeon, not a scalpel.

This is a universal problem. What was the ratio of the rescued in Waco to the dead? Better than in Moscow theatre or Beslan?

[Poohbah]

This is a universal problem. What was the ratio of the rescued in Waco to the dead? Better than in Moscow theatre or Beslan?

Waco wasn't intended, IMNHO, to be a rescue.

However, successful rescues HAVE been accomplished. The Iranian embassy in London, 1980 (fictionalized as "The Final Option," an otherwise forgettable movie that is, according to those in the biz, spot-on in depicting a hostage rescue), the Israelis at Entebbe, and the German GSG-9 pulled one off in Somalia in the 1970s.

[GIJoel]

A. Pole wrote: The Russian military is a relatively weak instrument in the best of times for this stuff; it is a bludgeon, not a scalpel.

This is a universal problem. What was the ratio of the rescued in Waco to the dead? Better than in Moscow theatre or Beslan?

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I think Putin's Beslan/Moscow theatre provocation and the Clinton administration's massacre at Waco is an unfair comparison. Putin's massacre was an intentional provocation, whereas Waco was due to the heavy-handed tactics of an anti-Relious zealot named Janet Reno (but not intentional, IMO).