Their official casualty figures state that more than 500 Chechen rebels were killed over a 24-hour period on Friday.

RAS-PUTIN " EVERYTHING IS GOING AS PLANNED"

"""he said on Jan. 14, using the official parlance that portrays this war overwhelmingly as a fight against Islamic insurgents."""

"""In front of us was a small white Lada car, and inside it we found two members of the Chechen resistance quietly eating sausage and drinking vodka from the bottle while they rested after taking part in an attack the previous night."""

So Russian Government tries to portray this war as a fight against Islamic insurgents, while on ground, reporter describe us rebels drinking vodka.

I did not know it was allowed to drink vodka in Islam!!!

This war is predominantly an indepence war of Chechen nation from the Russian hegemony and violance. Yes there are islamic elements within Chechen rebellion, but only a naive person will believe that all Chechens are islamic fundamentalists.

Once you succeed in convincing the people that islamic fundamentalism is the greatest danger the world ever faced, and then successfully paint your enemy as islamic insurgents, you can go ahead and commit all sort of violance against these people safe in the knowledge that world will not give a damn to the plight of these poor people. But history always comes to haunt those who are trying to keep a blind eye.

Well, Antonio, according to the Bible Jews are God's chosen people. It does not mean any qualities other than a destiny to carry Lord's name. Nowhere in the Bible this privilege (or burden) is taken back.

This board is getting funnier and funnier. SLOVAK was right on this one...

antonio:
so, i musta struck a nerve for you to ramble on and on and on and zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......
but RHETORIC IS RHETORIC, blah blah blah.
and not merely RHETORIC, but ANCIENT RHETORIC from CENTURIES AGO from some old WITCH-DOCTOR "POPE" whose every word means NOTHING to me....whose very EXISTENCE means NOTHING to me.

and whose relevance to the topic at hand is nil.

i didnt believe a word of your impassioned-yet-foolishly-unreal typing (eyeroll) and everything i said in my previous post still stands.

loonies are as loonies do. yawn....

"By Turk: I did not know it was allowed to drink vodka in Islam"

I was always under assumption that vodka (which was invented, btw, by muslims) was allowed for consumption since it is free of vine impurities.

Walex,

Islam forbids anything which can harm body and/or mind. All alcoholic drinks, drugs of dependence, and even cigarette smoking fall under this category. This might sound very extreme to most people, but knowing that in Russia alcoholism (consumption of extreme amounts of vodka) is one of the main reasons in the reduction of life expectency of males to 58, it might be possible to appreciate its wisdom. But I guess it is for a person to decide, ie. if someone choses to drink despite all the evidence and warnings, they can do so, and face the consequences. A society's (including an islamic one) responsibility to an individual lies in the removal of conditions which pushes an individual over the edge, such as powerty, abuse, crime, and lack of education.

Best Regards.

Chechen President wounded http://cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/01/22/russia.chechnya/index.html

BONES HERE IS ONE FOR YOU http://www.dawn.com/2000/01/22/top15.htm

Armenian you will like this one .Western satellites mistake camels for Islamic fundamentalists.

http://www.rotten.com/

Last year Shamanov predicted that Chechnya will be under control before New Year celebrations.
Now it is already Y2000 and what do we hear now?
Same Shamanov says that War2 in Chechnya will go for few years(!!!!!)

He He He...Russian Army - puk puk puk....

War in Chechnya will continue until Russian Army wil be totally eliminated and then it will withdraw in disgrace.

We will hunt down Russian Criminals (read --> those who supported this War 2 against Chechen people) and we will eliminate them around whole World

War in Chechnya will continue until Caucasus is liberated from criminal Kremlin regime

We will avenge everybody who is against Independent Chechnya and Independent Caucasus

"By This is your death: War in Chechnya will continue until Russian Army wil be totally eliminated and then it will withdraw in disgrace."

Would be quite a deal to see a grim reaper learning new tricks and allowing eliminated army to withdraw either gracefully or in disgrace.

What is for sure is that Caucasus is a good cemetery for predictions.