Moscow theater, best move?

[Dinger]

It's not "Either negotiate with terrorists or kill the hostages yourself;" it should be "deny the terrorists both their terms and their threat".

yeah, well tupac amaru had the japanese embassy wired with explosives too.  HRTs are called upon to do impossible things.  When they don't succeed, we can say that failure was inevitable, but we can't call failure success.

Finally, in a time when some countries are using the suspicion of chemical weapons as an excuse to go to war, here's Russia using them on its own citizens and guests, then forcing the doctors to play antidote roulette until they find something that works.

Sorry, they'd have been better off politically letting the terrorists slaughter those innocent people than "doing what they had to do" and killing them themselves.

[Vulcan]

Dinger, at least 37 terrorists were in there, and did YOU SEE the news footage of the explosives? These guys had stuff around the size of a large gas cylinder, all around the theatre. At the very least the entire block would have gone, not just the theatre.

Given they were Muslim extemists, and they had stated they were willing to take their own lives, and they way they were wired up... I'm 100% sure any breach attempt by the Russians would have resulted in a catastrophic explosion.

There are a toejamload of survivors who would disagree with you.

Sadly, I expect there will be plenty more oppotunities to test our theories over the coming years

[Pongo]

Yes you can call it success. Its not rainbow 6. You cant keep trying till you get all the bad guys befor they go boom.
to the russian leader. I know no Canadian leader would have had the balls to save those peoples lives and dam few US leaders.

[Nash]

I'm just not sure they coulda "denied the terrorists their threat" in this case Dinger... without doing what they did of course. At least I'm at a loss... short of gassin' the place... what else they coulda done.

Maybe the dossage on the gas was too high... maybe it didn't account for the weakened state of the hostages... but that's kinda second guessing things. If the dossage was was only enough to cause a slight headache, that woulda been quite the oops. And alotta dead people. Folks made a judgement call with the best interests of the hostages in mind, and it worked out for the majority of them. Coulda been far worse.

I reckon this: The Russians don't wanna give the gas ingredients to the media et al because they aint partial to the idea of the terrorists revisiting the whole issue on them next month with the home brew version. I reckon there may be no antidote, thus no need for the docs to know. I belive this because if there were an antidote, military medics could go room to room providing it to the patients. Unless you think Putin actually *wants* the the results from this operation to be as high a death toll as possible.

lovely situation... but under the circumstances the outcome seems reasonable to me.

[Tuomio]

So Dinger, mission is success if theres no casualties, therefor 1 casualty is mission failure?
Then the mission was a failure when the first hostage was shot.

Its always fun to speculate afterwards, when we know exactly where the terrorists were, how many explosives, were they really gonna blow themselves up, what brand of cigarettes was the leader smoking at different times etc..Its exactly the same as you have to play the Rainbow 6 map 100 times over so you remember where everybody is and how everybody is going to react. ONLY after that practicing you MAYBE can get 0 casualty mission, but usually still dont.

But when you play the map first time, all you know is "Theres terrorists inside with explosives and toejamload of hostages, go get em'". You always fail the first time..Russians did not fail and i salute them for that.
12% casualties is not a brilliant success, but still a success. Im sure the rest 88% of hostages agree with me.

Im pretty sure the gas was essential for not to get a big crater on the place where used to be a theater and 700 spectators.

Imagine, man has 2 wires on his hands which separates this event from "all dead" or "some dead". With this gas man did not have enough time to connect those two wires. So they used it. If you just come inside with flasbangs and guns blazing, this guy would have enough time to cook some Cafe Latté before connecting the wires. Do you Dinger suggest that this wouldve been the right way to go?

[Dinger]

I stand by what I wrote.

This isn't a videogame; sometimes the best you can do is concede defeat and do damage control.  That should not be confused with success.

Vulcan, according to your logic, HR mission is a success if there are 600 casualties, and one survivor.

Success or failure isn't a matter of bodies along the lines of "Well, 115 is a success, but 200 would be failure".  Success is quite simply eliminating the effectiveness of hostage-taking, so the state emerges with a strong public image, and future hostage-takers are deterred.
In a totalitarian state, this is easy.  Someone takes a theater?  Black out the media, and only rumours are heard.  Then you can do whatever you want to the hostages and the hostage takers.
Here it's not so easy.  Lessee, someone takes a theater, threatens to kill 600 people (and sorry, bystanders outside the theater are not in the terrorists' control, and shouldn't be there) unless certain demands (which everyone knows will not be met) are met.  So they get news headlines for three days, and in the end, 115 hostages are dead.
What's the difference? 485 people.  A statistic.  There are still a lot more innocent bodies than hostage-takers.  The difference in media impact between 115 and 600 people is minimal.  This isn't a dozen unfortunate casualties, it's three times the number of terrorists.
And any logic like "well, they let innocent people die because they were afraid that maybe the terrorists would come back next month" is stupid.  They'll be wearing gas masks next time.

Success may have been impossible, but whatever it is, it doesn't involve meeting the hostages' threat.

[Hawklore]

Dont count me wrong but There might have been a better alternative but they wanted those hostages out and quick the death toll was mild but not the best.

[miko2d]

Dinger: It's not "Either negotiate with terrorists or kill the hostages yourself;" it should be "deny the terrorists both their terms and their threat".

 I see - you use the basic formula that Good is always stronger than Evil - so there was a way for them to succeed, they just could not see it. Or may be their hearts were not pure enough.

 Let's consider the same situation, only happening 13 yars ago. Now the russians would have been Evil and Chechen mujahedins would have been american friends and thus Good. So they would be guaranteed victory, not the russians - there must have been a way for "freedom fighters" to achieve what they wanted - and then kill the hostages anyway - possibly by skinnning them and keeping them alive for a week,like they used to.

 So considering that being american friends one must win and being american enemies one must lose, losing american friendship must negatively affect one's intelligence.

 Actually I think this formula works - russians are not considered that good friends of ours an chechens are not considered our enemies - I still haven't figured out who does our govt support here, so they must be pretty evenly matched on good-evil scale. So we have a "tie" - all chechens dead and three times as much of russians but not all of them. See? How nice it matches your wishfull thinking.

 miko

[Thrawn]

"German doctors identify gas used in Russian hostage rescue

Last Updated Tue, 29 Oct 2002 12:05:36
MOSCOW - German doctors say they've identified the mysterious gas Russian authorities used to bring an end to a hostage drama in a theatre in Moscow.

The doctors believe the gas is Fentanyl, a chemical in the same family as morphine and heroin. It can abruptly paralyze the respiratory system.

The bodies of two German nationals were flown back to Germany after the hostage taking ended. "

http://cbc.ca/stories/2002/10/29/gas_moscow021029

[Dinger]

Miko, I have no idea where you see Good and Evil in what I posted, or where I state that success was possible.

If it happened 20 years ago with the same results, it would have been a victory for the HRT.  20 years ago, of course, it wouldn't have happened for just that reason.  Why incite fear if there's no state-independent mass media to communicate it?

All I'm saying is that "success" and "failure" here can be determined independently of right and wrong.  I know many here can't think in those terms.

Success: was the mission accomplished?
Let's see:
the terrorists' stated goal was:
either A. end the war or B. kill a lot of people.

by killing a lot of people, they hoped to incite fear (=what terrorism is) and raise the cost of prosecuting that war.

The terrorists succeeded in B.

Any state response should be aimed at denying the enemy their goals.  If they didn't do that, they failed.  If the HRT saved some folks, great.  But they still failed.
Now, you can argue that they had failed the minute 50 or so terrorists got themselves and a whole bunch of really big bombs into the theater.  But you can't say they succeeded any more than saying that Iraq won the Persian Gulf War.

Take by comparison the Japanese embassy in Peru.  What was it? 18 guys with really big bombs and a discrete number of VIP hostages.  That rescue mission was a success.  Does this mean I think the government of Peru is a champion of Good?

There are impossible missions, like "two people, armed with M14s and limited ammunition are to hold off for 3 hours an angry, armed band of 5,000 in the middle of a city".  That doesn't mean people don't take them fully aware that they will fail.

whether this rescue mission could have succeeded is speculation.  What happened is necessary. That it could have been done better is without question.  Even now, the Russians are saying they will not release the name of the gas lest future terrorists protect themselves against it.  Uhhh, that might work when you have control over the media, but not here.

[Vulcan]

What logic?

My facts were simple:
 - there were a lot of terrorists, making overpowering or simply snipering them impossible
 - the terrorists were wired to a huge amount explosives, should one of these bombs go off it was likely the whole block would go (ie 0 survivors)
 - the terrorists had already indicated they were prepared to die, and were quite suicidal
 - the demands could not be met

Doesn't take a genius to see that:
 - negotiations would fail
 - any attempt at breaching would result in total failure

Get of your high horse OR come up with a working viable alternative and then I'll change my mind. Until then, the Ruskies did the best they could. Those 115 people died because of terrorists, not the Ruskies.

Originally posted by Dinger
I stand by what I wrote.

This isn't a videogame; sometimes the best you can do is concede defeat and do damage control.  That should not be confused with success.

Vulcan, according to your logic, HR mission is a success if there are 600 casualties, and one survivor.
 

[miko2d]

Dinger,

 Just because "state response should be aimed at denying the enemy their goals" does not meat that there is always a reasonable chance of that - terrorists are smart capable people willing to die and they had more time to pam and train for the operation than anyone else. They make their plans in such ways that it is hard to deny their goals.

 The terrorists' primary goal was to "end the war" - really give them free run in Chechnya and Dagestan. They failed that goal spectacularly.
 The terrosist's secondary goal was to discredit the government by showing that it cannot protect it's citizens or take decisive steps. They failed that goal too.
 If they just wanted to kill a lot of people, they did not have to get so fancy. At worst they could have killed all the hostages and died for ratio of ~40/700 which is about 17/1 - way too large considering they can blow up appartment buildings without any loss.
 They cannot even take credt for killing those people - as those were obviously "friendly fire" type casualties.

 Your comparison with Japanese embassy in Peru is irrelevant. The chechens are probably quite different from Peru "terrorists".

 Also the russian culture is very different from teh american one. For better or worse, the loss of 118 or even 700 people does not shock them nearly as much as it does americans.
 But the indecisiveness of the government would have shocked them much more than americans which have government specifically designed to be deadlocked and ineffective.

 You are making a huge mistake trying to judge their responce through your cultural point of view - you are way off the mark in this particular case. Red Ant and Boroda are russians - and they think the military did great - as well as most russians.

 Also, this whole argument of whether to label what happened as "success" of "failure" is quite meaningless. Everybody has their own definition of those terms.
 I was relieved when I learned that terrorists were not negotiated with and that only 118 people died and few hundred others are probably affected for life. So for me it's a "success".
 It seems for russians it is also "success".

 It probably could have been done better. Or not.

 miko

[Dinger]

Just because "state response should be aimed at denying the enemy their goals" does not meat that there is always a reasonable chance of that

no argument here.

[Pongo]

Miko is at his best in this one..

[Fishu]

Had americans knew about the planes in september 11th, they would have shot down those planes before reaching WTC or Pentagon (most likely it would been thought to go for the White House)
That would have caused hunreds of civilian casualties, but with that being the only option to prevent thousands of casualties..  theres no doubt those planes would been shot down.


so... russians did their best to avoid higher casualties.
Had the terrorists got off the bombs, there would been over half thousand casualties and a crater where used to be a theater.