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2003-09-21 Caucasus

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Posted by Anonymous 2003-09-21 7:00:29 AM|| || Front Page|| [2 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Newsflash: Grozy was leveled by Russian artillery in late 1999 or early 2000. If the presidential palace is unscathed, then it must be a new one, because the old one was severely damaged.

The Chechens are probably the meanest people on earth, who (when they are not shooting Russians) make their money by stealing cars, running drugs and kidnapping people.

Finally, Russian has had 100,000 troops chasing 2000-3000 rebels for over three years now, and they still haven't caught them.

Posted by Douglas De Bono 2003-9-21 7:24:52 AM|| [http://www.douglasdebono.com] 2003-9-21 7:24:52 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 They're also fond of cutting off heads. And filming it. And sending the tape to the family. But I guess this "writer" didn't get a chance yet to see this side of the story: Chechen brutality.

Posted by Rafael 2003-9-21 7:43:38 AM|| 2003-9-21 7:43:38 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 The Russian Army is just as brutal as any Chechen bandit, made up of brutalised drug addicted conscripts too poor to buy their way out, lead by incompetant psychopaths who beat hundreds of their own subordinates to death each year.

Posted by Paul Moloney 2003-9-21 8:05:31 AM|| 2003-9-21 8:05:31 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 2000 to 3000 rebels? We know there are 100,000 troops in Chechnya, but what about the rebels? How certain is anyone as to the actual number of rebels? Is that the constant number being maintained over the years with numbers amounting to several thousands being killed, captured or left/quit/rotated out? Inquiring minds wanna know.

The short answer is you don't know; not even the Russian Army knows.

True, the Russian Army leveled Grozny; no one can dispute that. Russian command didn't want to see a repeat of the New Years Eve debacle in 1994-1995, and I frankly do not blame them. The Russian Army used the strength of their army, in artillery, in fighting the Chechens. Was it antiseptic, the standard to which the US holds it commanders? Of course, not, but I seriously doubt given similar circumstances, the US Army would hold back its ordnance fighting rebels on our own soil, especially after an engagement like the First Battle of Grozny.

Posted by badanov 2003-9-21 8:51:29 AM|| [http://www.rkka.org] 2003-9-21 8:51:29 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 The writer demonstrates all the superficial excitement without insight that is charecteristic of a college senior ready to save the world. Maybe she should take a guilded tour of the prisons of Iraq and some of the mass graves, make a stop at the killing fields and swing through the Juche capital. Might kind of knock some of the edges off her little recess from journalism school.

Posted by Super Hose 2003-9-21 11:55:01 AM|| 2003-9-21 11:55:01 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 I just finished Robert Young Pelton's book The Hunter, the Hammer, and Heaven : Journeys to Three Worlds Gone Mad on Sierra Leone, Chechnya, and Bouganville. He goes into the history of Chechnya. It is pretty brutal. The relations between Russia and Chechnya for the last 300 years have been real bad. Now the Russians are fed up with the Jihadi Nutcase Chechen fighters, so there are massive artillery, rocket, missile and bombings of anything there, and the Chechen fighters respond with attacks on convoys, HQs and anything else Russian they can harass and destroy. Oh, and by the way, journalists are fair game for killing and ransoms. One is an absolute fool to go to that shithole.

After reading about the three areas gone mad, I make the following conclusions:
Sierra Leone: some reason to hope for better times.
Bouganville: quite a bit of hope that things will improve
Chechnya: abandon all hope for this place.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2003-9-21 4:30:15 PM|| 2003-9-21 4:30:15 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 The writer should not qualify as a jounalist. She doesn't appear to have entered the country in a search for facts (jounalism.) Instead she has entered the country because she studied it in school and though an actual trip inside would be cool. She must have missed out on the motocross holiday through the Sudan, or all the other morons adreniline junkies left while she was finishing up her term paper. She has a fututre with any of the three major networks in the US.

Posted by Super Hose 2003-9-21 8:41:26 PM|| 2003-9-21 8:41:26 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 When is a war of liberation acceptable and when isn't it? Isn't the occupation of Chechenya by the Russian akin to the occupasion of Tibet by the Chinese and about as brutal, if not more so?

If Russia lays claim to Chechenya as her own soil then the welfare of Chechen cities should be protected as much as the welfare of any other city in Russia -- isn't then leveling Grozny something like saying "the operation was a success, the patient is dead"?

It seems to me that by levelling Grozny Russia lost all moral claim to the place; Russia treated it as an *enemy* city, not just a city to be rescued from the hands of the rebels.

If Chechenya needs to be levelled to the ground in order to be "saved" from the rebels, wouldn't it be much better to let it go independent? After all this isn't like Kosovo for the Serbs, or Kurdistan for Turkey -- unlike those two cases, Chechenya is but a tiny part of the Russian federation in either population or area...

Posted by Aris Katsaris 2003-9-21 9:00:04 PM|| 2003-9-21 9:00:04 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Isn't the occupation of Chechenya by the Russian akin to the occupasion of Tibet by the Chinese and about as brutal, if not more so?

No.

Posted by Rafael 2003-9-21 10:14:10 PM|| 2003-9-21 10:14:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 They had de facto independence from 1996 onwards. The place turned into a terrorist haven that eventually sought to export its poison outwards when al-Qaeda leader Khattab invaded Dagestan with his al-Ghamdi buddy and their Arab playmates.

Posted by Dan Darling 2003-9-21 10:27:43 PM|| [http://www.regnumcrucis.blogspot.com] 2003-9-21 10:27:43 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Anybody else notice this woman writes like a 7th grader doing a 'what I did this summer' essay?

She claims to be a graduate student?

Posted by DANEgerus 2003-9-21 11:46:12 PM|| [http://www.danegerus.com/weblog] 2003-9-21 11:46:12 PM|| Front Page Top

08:39 Anonymous
00:03 Dr. Jal Hampson
00:03 Alaska Paul
23:49 Bomb-a-rama
23:46 DANEgerus
23:14 typical lefty
23:11 Fred
22:27 Dan Darling
22:14 Rafael
21:40 Frank G
21:24 Aris Katsaris
21:17 Ptah
21:10 Steve White
21:06 Ptah
21:06 Aris Katsaris
21:01 Matt
21:00 Aris Katsaris
20:58 Anonymous
20:44 Super Hose
20:44 Old Patriot
20:41 Super Hose
20:36 Old Patriot
20:27 Bomb-a-rama
20:24 Bomb-a-rama