"To do so here under this topic I think degrades your points completely and is only done to aggitate and anger"

There is more than enough aggitation and anger flowing in this thread.
my input is not to encourage that anger, but to slow that momentum.( all downhill IMHO)

reality check it if you will.
blind rage gets you now where.
reason and history does.

We do want to win this war, right?
Ain't gonna do that with fear and blind anger. Again JMHO

Chris

Quoted: sobering post balzac, thank you. President Bush made it perfectly clear, you are with the civilized world, or you are against us. Those that harbor, aid, or associate with these animals deserve death just as much as the terrorists themselves.

why do you turn everything into a campaign rally?

Quoted: "To do so here under this topic I think degrades your points completely and is only done to aggitate and anger" There is more than enough aggitation and anger flowing in this thread. my input is not to encourage that anger, but to slow that momentum.( all downhill IMHO) reality check it if you will. blind rage gets you now where. reason and history does. We do want to win this war, right? Ain't gonna do that with fear and blind anger. Again JMHO Chris

So multiple people have asked you to start a separate thread - and it's CLEAR that your postings are NOT "slowing" or reducing the anger, but rather increasing it.

And yet you REFUSE to start a separate thread to discuss what may be legitmiate (but tangential) questions.


Yeah - I'd say it's pretty clear what you're trying to do, and it's not helpful.  

Hopeful is exactly what it is.

Chris

PS: it has seemed to slow the momentum, has it not?

Chris

Quoted: Hopeful is exactly what it is. Chris PS: it has seemed to slow the momentum, has it not? Chris

Actually, I think you simply polarized the issue further. You on one side, everyone else on the other. I think DK-Prof and I are the only two that haven't left with the masses. I don't think you or your issues helped slow any momentum. I think you were simply abondoned and just don't know it because you are too busy congratulating youself on a non-existant job well done.

People got the point of the thread that Balzac72 intended. That Chechen (Muslim) terrorists delibaeratley targeted innocent children. Period. Their intended goal was to make their targets suffer (no food, no water, etc) and to terrorize them mentally and physically. People here worry that other (Muslim) extremists will take note, follow suit, and begin targeting children here in the US.

Your arguments may indeed have valid points. But not here. Again, if you want an honest debate on your arguments, take it to another thread where it can be openly and honestly discussed on its (own) merits. This is not the place however. The point of this thread is what it is. I don't think your "US History in the Middle East" rant even applies here. I also think most people would agree with that statement as well. Your 'argument' was off topic and beyond the scope of this thread. It did nothing but anger people. I don't know why you don't see that.  I really don't see how you think US policy applies and somehow helped cause Chechens to target Russian children.

Quoted: and, PS: bush is who used the word "crusade" and the phrase " god told me to go into........" so don't even attempt to say this isn't religious war Chris

Get off my thread personal attack removed.  Who brought the war onto US soil by bombing the WTC in the early 90's?  Who then flew two more planes into both towers destroying both and killing 3000 people?  Who has taken it upon themselves to bomb embassies, foreign offices, churches, synogogues, bars and clubs?  

personal attack removed.

Good job Balzac!

Again, my thread is not going to be HIJACKED by a radical muslim sympathizer.  Virginia, you can go personal attack removedstart your own thread.  This TRIBUTE thread isn't yours.

Quoted: proactive is what got us to this point.

Liar.

Quoted: speaking of bullshit.

You always seem to be.

Quoted: ain't but one who can't help but spout BS to my post.

Since your posts are, without exception, lying BS I guess you shouldn't expect anything else.

Quoted: I know ,, waaaaaa, that site. bla bla bla. get over it, the dates and our involvement is well docmented ( what is availible and not still "secret" anyway) Chris Link A Brief History of US Interventions in the Middle East 1949-2002 By Ty Moore 1979-92: US gives over $3 billion in arms and aid to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. CIA sets up training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan - some of the same "terrorist training camps" the US will bomb in 2001. Osama bin Laden and many other of today's Islamic Fundamentalist terrorist leaders are direct recipients of US aid and training. By 1992, more than a million Afghan people will have died, three million disabled, and five million made refugees, in total about half the population. The civil war continues to this day.

Outright lie.  The mujahadeen did NOT become Al Quaeda or the Taliban.  SOME few foreign fighters from the mujahadeen gravitated to leaders like Bin Laden, but it was NOT a direct outgrowth of the anti-Soviet forces.  And even if you could make the argument that the US helped train some of the people who wound up being Al Quaeda, so the fuck what?  We were facing an enemy whose ideology included world conquest and who was armed with thousands of nuclear weapons and we fought them any way we could.  To do otherwise would have been fatally stupid.

1991: After Iraq invades Kuwait in 1990, US launches Operation Desert Storm - the most aggressive, high-tech military campaign in the history of warfare.

Idiotic hyperbole.  "Most agressive?"  Moronic.  The Nazi Blitzkrieg that conquered half of Europe might have a claim on that.  

Dropping more bomb tonnage than in all of Vietnam or World War Two, the 43 day air campaign kills between 100,000 and 200,000 Iraqis and destroys civilian infrastructure.

Guess they shouldn't have invaded one of our allies, huh?  Tough shit.

Fearing a popular revolt and the destabilization of the region, the US refuses to aid previously encouraged uprisings by Kurds and Shi'as in the weeks after the war. US denies the rebels access to captured Iraqi weapons, and allows Iraqi helicopters use of "No-fly Zone" airspace to crush the uprising.

Also a lie.  The US allowed the use of helicopters by the Iraqi government to allow them some means of transportation since the bridges were out.  Once the US realized what they were doing with the helicopters, we had already withdrawn our troops from Iraq and everyone was very hesitant to initiate further military actions.  Beurocratic inertia delayed action, which was a bad thing, but it was not done to allow Iraq to destroy the uprising.

1990-now: Severe economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN. By UN estimates, the sanctions have cost over a million lives, half of them children. About 5,000 children die each month, mostly from malnutrition and treatable diseases. From the most economically advanced country in the region before the US attack, Iraq today is among the most destitute.

And yet another lie.  The sanctions made exceptions to allow Iraq to sell oil to feed and buy medicine for its people.  Instead, Saddam used the money to build palaces.  Of course, people like you who want to blame America for all the ills of the world don't usually care much about facts.

1998: Renewed US and British bombing campaign - called Operation Desert Fox - against Iraq after it exposes US spies among UN weapons inspectors (later admitted by US officials). The UN pulls out inspectors before bombings, which continue to the present on average every other day.

Yet another lie.  You ASSume that the weapons inspectors were spies, you believe propoganda from Saddam Hussein with absolutely no proof.

2001: Following the September 11th terrorist attacks, the US launches a war on Afghanistan, killing over 3,500 people. US led UN occupation of the country props up US puppet regime of Karzai.

Total propagandistic bullshit.  You should be ashamed to repost crap like this, but it's pretty obvious you have no shame.

Quoted: Google search it. not the only source, just lazy this Am.

And stupid.

Quoted: There is more than enough aggitation and anger flowing in this thread.

And all of it is from you.

Wow, I read the first page and then the last. I was going to make a comment on the Russian children, but instead feel like saying "Virginia22, get the hell out of this thread of tribute!". Take it to the DU!

Quoted: Quoted: Google search it. not the only source, just lazy this Am. And stupid.

 Not just stupid, simple minded too and a fucking idiot at that. I cannot belive the shit he is posting on this thread . Go back to DU to play your little games

Quoted: Virginia22 has been locked by me for the time being. Now let's get back on track here.

Thank you.
CH

Quoted: Virginia22 has been locked by me for the time being. Now let's get back on track here.

Thank you Wave -

Quoted: Virginia22 has been locked by me for the time being. Now let's get back on track here.

Can everyone please listen to him?

Quoted: proactive is what got us to this point. there are just as many pictures of murdered men, women and children from our own bombs too. Violence begets violence, and when we attack countries to arrest/kill individuals that attack us, it'll just get worse. I feel for the victims in russia, but don't forget who trained these terrorists, who paid them, and who armed them. That's right, it was Us. this isn't the first time we've done it, and at this rate, we'll be doing it again real soon.

Holee Buckets of Batshit.

Good job Wave [golfclap]

.

Quoted: and, PS: bush is who used the word "crusade" and the phrase " god told me to go into........" so don't even attempt to say this isn't religious war

Ummm, maybe you need to freshen up on your history and current events.

He said all that while looking at 3,000 charred American bodies. I guess if he never would have said that, it wouldn't have happened in the first place...or it wouldn't have been a "religious" conflict?"

You are so owned on this one.

BACK ON TRACK:




Quoted:

Survivor recounts horror in Russian school
Captors laugh as children, elderly faint
Friday, September 3, 2004 Posted: 5:27 PM EDT (2127 GMT)


An injured boy is rushed away from the siege school Friday.


Chechen MUSLIM rebels are blamed for dozens of attacks in recent years.


BESLAN, Russia (AP) -- Holding up the corpse of a man just shot dead in front of hundreds of hostages at a Russian school, the rebel -- his pockets stuffed with ammunition and grenades -- warned: "If a child utters even a sound, we'll kill another one."

When children fainted from lack of sleep, food and water, their masked and camouflaged captors simply sneered. In the intolerable heat of the gym, adults implored children to drink their own urine.

Hours after escaping alive, a woman who had been taken hostage with her 7-year-old son and her mother spoke of three days of unspeakable horror -- of children so wired with fear they couldn't sleep, of captors coolly threatening to kill off hostages one by one, of a gymnasium so cramped there was hardly room to move.

"We were in complete fear," said Alla Gadieyeva, 24, who spoke to an Associated Press reporter as she lay in a stretcher outside a hospital. "People were praying all the time and those that didn't know how to pray -- we taught them."

The woman told her tale after commandos stormed the school in this southern Russian town, bringing the nation's worst hostage crisis to a head Friday. The carnage left more than 200 people dead and more than 700 people wounded, according to officials.  Most of them were women and children.

Children faint, captors laugh
Alla and her mother Irina were in the school courtyard seeing off her son Zaur for his first day of school when they heard sounds like "balloons popping."

She thought the noise was part of school festivities.

It wasn't.

Five rebels suddenly burst into the courtyard, shooting in the air and ordering people to get inside the school. Children, parents, and teachers -- Alla estimated there were about 1,000 in all -- were corralled into a corner on the ground floor and then pushed into the gymnasium.

Alla said children whimpered in fear, and all around there was screaming and crying. The hostages were forced to crouch, their hands folded over their heads.

For the rebels, the first order of business was confiscating cell phones. They smashed the phones and made the following threat: "If we find any mobile phones, we will shoot 20 people all around you."

On Day 1, people got a tiny bit of water to drink, but no food. From Day 2, Alla said, nothing.

When she asked the rebels for water for her mother, they laughed at her.

"My mother was terrified, and I thought she was having a heart attack. When I saw my son, my mother ... go unconscious, so tired, so thirsty, I wanted it all to come to an end," she said.

"When children began to faint, they laughed," Alla said. "They were totally indifferent."

During the ordeal, Zaur became so traumatized that he would flinch whenever someone would touch him, or even brush by him. Like other children, his only spells of sleep were the times he fell unconscious from thirst and exhaustion.

When asked how her son would remember the ordeal, Alla replied: "How can a person ever forget it? Would you ever forget it?"

Bombs hung from ceiling
As Alla spoke under a grove of spruce trees, she had not yet been reunited with her mother or son, although authorities confirmed to her that they were alive.

She recounted how the hostage-takers eventually took off their masks. They had beards, long hair, and spoke with Chechen accents, she said.

When children started to faint from thirst, the adults urged them to urinate. It was so they could drink their own urine, Alla said.

We'll shoot until our guns stop. And when our guns stop, we'll blow up the building.
-- Captor in Russian school  

The gymnasium was quickly transformed into an arsenal of explosives -- bombs dangling from the ceiling, set on the floor, strung up on walls. She said they seemed to be homemade, primitive packages containing bolts and nails.

"They're not human beings," Alla said. "What they did to us, I can't understand."

On Day 3, early in the afternoon, the explosions erupted, under circumstances that still remain somewhat unclear.

What is known is that emergency workers had arrived at the time -- apparently with the militants' permission -- to collect the bodies of those who had been executed. Russian authorities insist they did not plan a raid.



Suddenly, there were blasts inside and outside the gym, Alla said. In the chaos, she couldn't figure out how they were set off. Gunfire followed. As the fight intensified, the rebels betrayed agitation for the first time.

"We'll shoot until our guns stop," a rebel announced to the crowd. "And when our guns stop, we'll blow up the building."

Making an escape
The hostage-takers began pushing people out of the gym and into the basement. That created an opening for the hostages: They began breaking windows and fleeing. Some captives literally started pushing children outside.

Alla said she helped her son and mother out of a window. She didn't manage to get out.


For some reason, a six-year-old boy -- whom she didn't know -- was drawn to Alla. She held him in her arms. He clung to her, she said, "as if he would never let go."



A group of hostages, including Alla and the boy, then made a rush for a set of doors in the gymnasium. As they fled, she noticed the bodies of captives strewn on the floor -- shot by the rebels, it seemed, as they battled Russian security forces who swarmed the area.


Some Russian soldiers appeared as they reached the doors. "At first I didn't believe it," she said. "I thought they were Chechens."



Her doubts soon vanished.

It's OK, the soldiers told her. "You're home now."


As Alla told her tale, townspeople kept coming up to her, asking her about the fate of their loved-ones.

A man, around 20, asked Alla if she knew what had happened to one of the captives, a woman.

She's dead, Alla replied.

The man bit his lip. He nodded.

And then he turned away.



Rest in Peace:

Rest in Peace:

Rest in Peace:





A video image shows anxious women checking the identification of a dead child being carried on a stretcher

Rest in Peace:

Rest in Peace:

Mom isn't coming home anymore, the religion of peace took her away.



Bodies of schoolchildren and hostages killed in a school seizure seen in a hospital morgue in Beslan, North Ossetia, Friday, Sept. 3, 2004.
Rest in Peace:

Rest in Peace:

Rest in Peace:

Rest in Peace:

Rest in Peace:

Rest in Peace:



May God bless them and hold the victims close for eternity.  May the victims families take solice in knowing that their sons, daughters and wives will sit on the right hand of our Father away from the evils of this world.




Reposting because people here have their panties in a bunch for calling a spade a spade.

Quoted: Virginia22 has been locked by me for the time being. Now let's get back on track here.

Thank you Wave.

It don't matter to me that they are Russian children they are all innocent in the eye's of God.  The

animals need to be stopped NOW!

More pics of children and a video of the intensity of fighting and of the victims.

I didn't want to try and link to Ogrish pictures, since they turn into disgusting images, so there is the link.  Do not link their pics to this site.

Here's the link to their video:

VIDEO

This one really gets me

Balzac,

Thanks for keeping this going.  This attack is the most vile thing I can imagine.  The fact that it happened to Russians rather than Americans makes no difference.

This needs to be a wake-up call.  It could happen anywhere.

Thanks again.

Quoted: us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20040903/capt.mosb12609031702.russia_school_seizure_mosb126.jpg This one really gets me

Tears me up too…

A child turning to her God to help her in her hour of need…  hopefully God was listening

ANdy

I can't hold 'em back when I see this photo. Just can't.

The child looks like my neice. I could not imagine what I'd do if something like this was done to her. It's a thought nobody wants to have. But these people are living it. Their children deliberately targeted by madmen.

God, please help these people.

Any man who deliberately targets innocent children, loses all right to grievance. He renounces his humanity, and serves notice on society that he is to put down like an animal.

I just told my buddy about two months ago that they would strike us were it would hurt.  What is more

important to us than our children.......  NOTHING!!!!  May they all burn in hell! This is not just a attack

on the Russians it is a attack on humanity!

Russian Troops Storm School; More Than 100 Killed Includes Video And Images


Sept. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Russian troops stormed a school in the southern town of Beslan, killing terrorists and freeing hundreds of hostages, many of them children, after a three-day siege. More than 100 of the captives died.

Aslanbek Aslakhanov, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin, told Interfax that the death toll may be ``much higher'' than 150. Of 20 terrorists killed, 10 came from Arab states, the Russian news service said, citing government officials. The armed group took as many as 1,000 hostages on Wednesday, demanding Russia grant independence to Chechnya.

``We were keeping a dialogue to avoid bloodshed,'' Aslakhanov said. ``We didn't expect this.'' Officials told Interfax the decision to storm the school was taken when terrorists began firing on hostages escaping from the gymnasium.

Chechen rebels have attacked Russia three times in 10 days. Two passenger planes crashed Aug. 24 when explosives went off, killing 89 people, and 10 died Monday in a suicide bombing near a Moscow subway station. A group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades, linked by Putin to al-Qaeda, took responsibility for both attacks.

A group of 40 children broke out of the school. Terrorists started firing at them, and armed bystanders in turn shot at the hostage-takers, he said. The terrorists responded by detonating a bomb that partly destroyed the roof of the school.

Russian soldiers then opened fire at rebels who tried to flee by mingling with the hostages, Andreev told Rossiya television. Some special forces troops also were killed, he said. Three of the terrorists were captured, Sky News reported.

More than 60 bodies were identified by relatives, Andreev told Interfax. He declined to comment on the total dead and wounded. More than 640 people were in hospitals as of 9:00 p.m. Moscow time, Pervyi Kanal television reported, many of them wounded by shots in the back.

Russia has about 80,000 soldiers in Chechnya, whose separatist movement fell under the influence of Muslim fundamentalists amid Russian brutality toward civilians in a war from 1994 to 1996, when Arab mercenaries joined the conflict. The republic last Sunday elected Alu Alkhanov president in a vote organized by the pro-Putin government to replace Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in May.

Although I suspected it, this is the first that I have heard that some of the 'terrorists' were Arab.

Quoted: Although I suspected it, this is the first that I have heard that some of the 'terrorists' were Arab.

Big surprise huh?  I dunno if the Chechans would do this alone.  It took an Al Qeada mentality to stoop this low.

Good thread Balzac. This needs to be seen over and over and over again. May God bless the victims and their families.

his

I vow to you all:

I will never forget about these wolves,
I will never forgive what they have done to you or us,
I will stand vigilant my post protecting our freedoms,
I will serve until the day I die,
I will fight your criticism, and seek to educate you,
I will make you understand that freedom is not free, and
I will kill without mercy, all those who stand in the way of freedom
This is what I am, and this is what I was born to do.
Death to Tyrants

IO1

These POSs will wish to Hell that they were at Al Ghraib Prison for certain!

I expect the Russians may treat them 'harshly' …not panties on their heads for them…

ANdy

Ind: Ive been thinking about enlisting heavily, and this incident has cinched my decision for me. Im gonna go talk to the recruiter and enlist at the end of the semester and go fight this enemy, and may the Lord steady my hand on my shots.

John

.

I think the latest death toll is about 320.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3627030.stm

The plight of a mom:

"I've been to the morgue to look for him," she said. "There were so many bodies - so many small children. I saw one woman sitting there stroking the heads of two children, she didn't even have the strength left to cry."

Just in case ANYONE here missed the point, these were mostly CHILDREN who were DELIBERATELY TARGETED; famished, thirsted and tormented and threatened with their lives for 3 days, then killed or wounded.

Edited for personal attack due to a complete misunderstanding.

Quoted: I think the latest death toll is about 320.

That's what I heard.  Jesus, those poor kids.  How can ANYONE stand there and shoot kids in the back?  How can anyone be evil enough to do that?