Thank you MarMema. Lois Gonzales, CWOJackson, and FreeReign may be busy installing themselves as human shields in Grozny's daycare centers, but *I* am going to sit back and watch the fireworks as Putin flattens Chechnya.
I will bring the popcorn. I first learned of the chechens while in Russia adopting a child. The news was filled with the video taken by chechen kidnappers of a six year old daughter of a wealthy Muscovite who had been taken from her bedroom in Moscow in the middle of the night.
The videos were of them removing her fingers, with a not very sharp knife.
She made it home, btw, though with a few less fingers.
After that I worked with resident freeper johnathonrgalt by monitoring chechen websites, my assignment. I read Russian pretty well back then and learned a great deal about the chechens firsthand from their own lists and sites, many of which are now unavailable.
I have tried to post the truth here since that time.
Robert Fisk believes the chechens taught the Iraqui rebels about kidnapping and beheading, and I do as well. I saw those videos way before they were ever created in Iraq, and not just beheadings, but castrations, burning children, and there was one going around I never could make myself watch - of an infant being disemboweled by a chechen.
A lot of it is no longer there, since the Nord-Ost attack. But I speak the truth about these people, they are barbaric enough to make the word seem meaningless. And that goes for many of them, not just a few.