58 days of being a hostage and every week or so someone was killed.
3 days and only two had been shot by the time of the raid. Newspapers are only 35 cents bud. (I'm a smarmy bitch, I know.)
<a href="http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2002/10/28/002.html" target="_blank">The Moscow Times</a> puts some of the witnesses' stories together into an account of the last hours before the raid.
Moscow Times editorial: <a href="http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2002/10/28/005.html" target="_blank">Why Were Doctors in the Dark?</a>
Lets give them the benefit of the doubt . . . maybe they didn't realize the gas would be so fatal.
While it is a possibility that they didn't expect the gas to do what it did, most chemical weapons have been around for 20 years or more. They should all have been tested and well understood before they are used. I don't see any excuse for using a gas that they didn't know the effects of. It appears, according to the Moscow Times editorial and reports by medical authorities, that the authorities who authorized the us of this gas did so with more concearn for keeping the type of gas a secret than for protecting the hostages from the effects of the gas. They told the city's chief doctor what the gas was minutes before its use, (and apparently told him not to tell anyone any more than general guidelines for treatment), but they didn't tell the doctors at the hospitals what it was. There was no plan to treat hostages at the scene, or to get them to clinics that were prepared to treat them. There are now around 30 families who still have not found thier relatives and the government will not help them.
I think this thing was handled completely irresponsibly by the Russian authorities. What was so unusual about this hostage situation that the security forces were so unprepared to develop a coordinated raid? Why did they not know that this gas was particularly dangerous to people suffering physical exaustion? Why are they now still hiding the type of gas used? Why did they not have medical personnel at the scene to treat patients, or have an evacuation plan?
As for holding Russia to American standards of conduct, it's more a case of holding the Russians to standards of international laws which they are a party to. There are international laws that cover how a situation like this can be handled without disregarding the lives of the victims. They also may have violated the Chemical Weapons Treaty, depending on the type of gas used, and their lack of protection for the victims. These standards exist because internal repression by any country effects the world as a whole, either by providing a rationale for repression by other countries, contributing to international terrorism, or degrading the value of human live and human raghts generally. It's the principle of rule of law that the US made the great contribution to the world 200 years ago. It is the foundation of the world's democracies and of the UN and the collection of international treaties that make up the UN. When a prominent nation like Russia thumbs its nose at the rule of law it seriously undermines that system and threatens the security of all of us. Obviously I sound like I'm getting carried away here, but I don't know any simpler way of explaining why international law is so important to the modern world. It's also not too much for the Russian people to expect from their own, once great, nation.
Remember, they heard shooting. they thought the carnage had begun already, so they went with the only plan they had.
According to the witnesses in the above article, there were two shots fired and the raid began four hours later. That's not to say the Russians were not trying to save the hostages, but it was not an immediate response to gunshots. They had time to prepare better than they did.
<img src="http://yerdaddy.homestead.com/files/pics/sigruby.jpg" >
It was a joke goddammit!