08 December 2007

From Beslan To America, Part 1

Posted by Terry Gatewood at 6:37 PM

Recently, Glenn Beck aired a series on his television show called “The Perfect Day”. The content of this series, the 2004 Beslan school siege in Russia, was something that I had been in the process of learning about at the time of the airing of the series. What was unfolding in my research was chilling, to say the least.

While I was reading everything that I could get my hands on about the incident, I kept wondering why it was being portrayed as a Russian problem, in the view that the news outlets put out the information as civil war issues between Russia and Chechnya. Not once in the mainstream outlets did I find any information that the siege was even remotely related to Islamic terrorism. The closest anyone came to this was mentioning that Chechnya was predominately Muslim, and that was a news program doing a background on the former Soviet republic.

The following is what I’ve learned about what may be in America’s future. Kudos goes to Glenn Beck and his guests for putting the information out there to everyday Americans.

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Lessons Learned From Russia


From everything I've read and heard the perfect day scenario has been sugar-coated. As a matter of fact, it seems that anything terror related is glossed over and sugar-coated because of political correctness. I believe this has a negative effect on the way the American public prepares for any type of terror related incident. This is bad. It is going to cause a lot of casualties when (not if) an attack does occur.

When the Beslan siege occurred, the world was not told the whole story. What we were told was that Chechen separatists had taken over 1200 children and women hostage at school number one in Beslan, Russia. In the end, we were told that over 300 of them died in an explosion and fire that resulted from Russian Spetsnaz storming the school. This simply is not correct.

The real truth is that the Chechen separatists were Muslim, and there is strong evidence that this particular group was being backed and/or supported by Al-Qaeda. Also, while it is true that Spetsnaz did storm the school, they only did so after one of the explosive devices accidentally detonated when one of the captors removed his foot from a pressure detonator (probably due to being exhausted). One part of the story that was really glossed over was what these "Freedom Fighters" did to the children.

One thing you have to remember in situations such as these is that the media and the government walk a fine line when it comes to dissemination of information. On one hand, the information that something has happened, or is happening, has to get out to the masses. On the other hand, you don't want panic and chaos to rule the day. To this end, both media and government have a tendency to give facts, but not all the facts. When you take that and throw in political correctness, you end up with everyone looking like they are basically decent people, just misunderstood. God forbid that anyone in the media blames Muslim radicals for something as sinister as this, or portray them as anything other than peace loving. You can thank CAIR for that bit of brainwashing.

Now that the stage has been set, it is time for some brutal honesty.

If, God forbid, this does come to fruition, children will die. This we cannot stop once the siege has started. What we can do is prepare and keep the casualties as low as possible. By preparing, I'm talking about everyone; Fire, police, schools, school boards, parents, and anyone who lives near a school.

There are lessons that we have learned from the Beslan siege, and these lessons are not pretty. They are, however, lessons that we need to learn from.

First of all they will kill any and all adult males, as well as any younger males who may be old enough or big enough to resist. If anyone, including women and small children, try to run they will be shot and killed. Once anyone who is perceived as a threat to their mission has been eliminated, along with attempted escapees, the remainder will be herded into a large area such as a gymnasium. The next step will be for the terrorists to fortify the perimeter by barricading entryways, wiring explosive devices, and placing guards in strategic places to prevent a quick action deployment by law enforcement. In Beslan, once the terrorists were settled in they began throwing the bodies of those shot and killed out of the windows.

One of the most important things to remember is that terrorists will not negotiate. Although they may appear to want negotiations of some kind, their intent is not to trade off. They will use this tactic to buy time, and for many reasons. One, it will give them a chance to "dig in". By digging in I mean organizing the hostages into manageable groups (Women, children, elderly) and separating them. Also, they can better place explosive devices so that when the time is right they will inflict maximum casualties on the hostages as well as any rescuers.

Once the terrorists have fortified the perimeter and have everyone under control, the real horror begins. They will deny their hostages food and water. The Beslan siege lasted for a little over three days in hot weather. Water became such an issue that children resorted to drinking their own urine. They were not allowed to go to the bathroom and had to relieve themselves where they were. More than likely they will have the hostages sit with their legs crossed and their hands on top of their heads. Anyone who has done this for any length of time will tell you that it is very uncomfortable and tiring. You will start cramping up in about an hour.

If any child, or adult for that matter, cried, they were told once to shut up and stay quiet. If they cried incessantly, they were shot and killed in front of the others. The terrorist would then take the corpse and drag it in front of anyone else who had been crying to discourage them from crying.

The female children were raped. Some were beaten. After some had been raped and beaten they were shot in the head thrown out of windows. The terrorist did this to show they had no mercy whatsoever for human life. This also showed that if any rescue attempt were mounted they would kill everyone without hesitation. The effect this had on the bystanders was chilling. Can you imagine being at your child’s school in a situation like this and hearing a gunshot then seeing a child’s lifeless body flying out of a window to the ground below? This accomplished the terrorist’s intent, and that was sheer terror. Russian Spetsnaz, who is considered one of the most elite Special Forces in the entire world, was stymied. Even though they are the experts at hostile deployment, they held off anything planned for three days because of the ruthlessness displayed by the terrorists.

The Beslan siege only ended when one of the terrorists accidentally detonated one of the explosive devices. When the explosion occurred it caused enough chaos and cover from smoke and debris that hostages made a run for it. When this happened Spetsnaz stormed the school, first gathering any of the hostages they could while identifying the bad guys and killing them. This was not the way it was supposed to end. The end result was to execute all hostages and then set off the devices as the school was stormed.
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Here in America we have good intelligence that such an attack is being planned on our own soil. Unlike Beslan, though, the attack here will probably be a multi-target, time coordinated effort. American military personnel have uncovered training videos from Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan that show this is being planned. They also discovered that some targets had already been under surveillance in Texas, New Jersey, and other places. We also have uncovered training compounds here in America where school buses have been used for training by terrorists.

The targets will be, with very few exceptions, schools in rural or remote areas away from larger cities. Areas such as these have small police departments without many internal resources. They would have to rely on larger outside agencies for reinforcements and tactical teams. This would be an ideal scenario for the terrorists, as it would give them enough time to fortify their mission.

There have also been reports of "dry runs" in various parts of the country. One such incident happened in Florida, where two middle-eastern men actually boarded a school bus. These dry runs don't mean that an incident is imminent, but that the bad guys are probing.

Like any well trained soldier, the terrorists will perform surveillance runs on schools and school buses. This is called reconnaissance, or recon. This is where the public and parents come in. Trust your gut and report ANYTHING that seems suspicious or out of the ordinary. If these terrorists find that people are alert and willing to inform the authorities, they may just move on to an easier target.

In part two I will discuss in more detail of what can be done to deter an attack.

 

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