Hi. Steve here again. This is to be the destination of my first hyperlink. I have a short rant for the occasion:

This business about condemnation of the Russians and the gas or agent that they used to subdue the Chechens who had occupied a theater filled with 800 or so attendees to a popular musical theatrical production is puzzling.

I presume the reader is familiar with the case. As I write it's basically like this: A group of at least 50 but probably many more Chechen fighters kidnapped 800 or 900 Russian and other civilian hostages, released some of the others but kept 600 or so hostages arranged for sure death virtually at the flick of a switch or the issuance of a command or to the discretion of a dozen or more suicide-bomb-belt wearers who's immediate step at the start of action was to disperse strategically among the crowd of hostages as to kill as many as possible, probably all of them, with the bomb belts taking them to heaven. 

This was all in a theater building in Moscow that the Chechens had rigged for explosive collapse in addition to having placed mines at the entrances. Between the body bombers, the mined entrances and the collapse of the building, it would have been tough to survive in there. It would have been bigger than any other building bombing except for the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 (that I know of anyway) short of all out warfare.

So now the Russians have, faced with either 

1) letting the Chechens kill everyone one by one trying to extort the Russians into ceasing operations in and then leaving Chechnya, or 

2) letting the Chechens kill everyone in a huge set of explosions killing almost everyone, directly or in the building collapse likely to follow, 

and facing sudden indications that the Chechens started carrying out planed killings of hostages, indictions such as

a) shooting from inside and the deaths of one or more hostages and

b) inadvertent detonation of one or more entrance or window mines by rebelling hostages,

the Russians used a narcotic or chemical agent to quickly subdue people in the building. This dominance came quickly enough to prevent the deadly explosions that were supposed to come. Five hundred lives, or more, were saved by the act of using this airborne agent, whatever it was. 

I hope the survivors don't suffer any lasting effects, and it is terrible that so many hostages died from use of the gas. I'm sure that if this tactic is used again, that better rescue work afterwards will be coordinated, and that may more lives will be saved by timely administration of antidotes and other treatments.

In this instance, about three times more lives were saved by the use of this weapon than were lost, plus the lives of Russian commandos that were spared. I think this statement is almost certainly true given what would most likely have happened if the gas had not been used. 

Certainly there is a lot more to know about what happed at the theater with the gas, but it seems so logical and moral to take the measure most likely to result in the least loss of life. No? 

I don't understand condemnation of the use of this gas, as if it were Zyklon_B at Auschwitz or something. Rather, I think the people who decided on it and pulled off the rescue ought to be patted on the back for a job well done, and then allowed to go about their profession of seeing how the job can be done better next time. This is new ground. It never happened before. Give them a break and let them think ahead and train hard while they learn from mistakes.

I've been wondering for years how come this sort of tactic (debilitating gas used to help dominate a building or area) wasn't used in situations like this. But now that I think about it, I think the Russians have used this stuff for decades and that it's not easy to mask it off. Speznaz troops have apparently pulled off some amazingly audacious missions, and it's only natural that we would not have learned all the details of how Speznaz accomplished their missions. I think they mastered this stuff a long time ago (although how they were able to keep it secret for this long is a problem for my argument).

But how anybody could just come out and condemn the use of gas, and those who decided to use it, is beyond me.

But what do I know? I stand for correction. Steve Sturgill Oct 29 2002