Chechen Terrorists to be Buried in Pigskin
08:07 Oct. 31, '02 / 25 Cheshvan 5763


According to the Moskovski Komsomol newspaper, Russian security forces have decided to bury the terrorists from last's week's hostage siege wrapped in pig's skin. The aim is to deter potential Islamic terrorists from future attacks.

Shahidi (Jihad martyrs) believe by their nefarious acts that they ascend immediately to heaven. Using their beliefs against them, wrapping their corpses in 'unclean' pigskin prevents them from entering heaven for eternity.

Posted by Jonathan Gewirtz on February 22, 2004 11:39 AM


Comments


I hate it and find it despicable when they call terrorists "militants" "rebels" "guerillas" and such euphemisms. It bugs the s*** out of me.

Call them what they are - terrorist scum.

I like Russia's Putin - "There's nothing sacred to the scum responsible for this crime"

UK's Guardian - "President Vladimir Putin blamed the blast on "terrorist scum" - meaning Chechen rebel guerrillas"

I also like this nice touch after the Moscow Nordost hostage rescue - they buried the dead terrorists wrapped in pig skin and pig manure at an undisclosed location.

I love Russians.

Posted by: In-Cog-Nito on February 22, 2004 02:06 PM ----------------------------------------------------------


"I also like this nice touch after the Moscow Nordost hostage rescue - they buried the dead terrorists wrapped in pig skin and pig manure at an undisclosed location."

that was just childish. maybe next time the russian policemen should eat the dead chechen's hearts?

Posted by: vasili on February 23, 2004 02:54 PM ----------------------------------------------------------


Childish? If it deters future terror attacks it's a good idea. Whether it really is an effective deterrent is another question, but at least the Russians don't handicap themselves with PC bull****.


Posted by: Jonathan Gewirtz on February 23, 2004 05:17 PM ----------------------------------------------------------


well, sometimes even childish ideas seem to work, but then they're still childish. imo it's not a question of political correctness.

Posted by: vasili on February 24, 2004 12:29 AM ----------------------------------------------------------


There is some reason behind it. Muslims believe if they are buried wrapped in pig skin, they won't see Allah and receive the 70 virgins after they blow themselves up. Since they place such a high value on why they blow themselves up, the deterence factor is there.

Russians have been dealing with bad people for a long time. They tend to not beat around the bush. For example, back in World War 2 if they caught a really nasty Nazi in the dead of winter, say an SS, they would douse him with cold water and throw him outside.

Posted by: In-Cog-Nito on February 25, 2004 12:01 AM ----------------------------------------------------------

How to break hearts and bend minds by
Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of The Washington Times.

"Psychological warfare, or the art of using fear to demoralize and neutralize an enemy, is older than bombs, bullets or even boiling oil, and in a war on terrorism, it's likely to be the most effective weapon available to the civilized side.


As awful as the atrocities of September 11 were, the most effective weapon Osama bin Laden unsheathed was fear - fear of the unknown, fear of the unexpected, fear of what next.


"The modern terrorists have at their disposal what amounts to a nearly unstoppable weapon, in some ways the ultimate weapon," says Stephen Ambrose, the pre-eminent historian of World War II, in the Wall Street Journal. "It is the man willing to give up his life for his cause. In World War II, the U.S. Navy took its most severe losses not at Pearl Harbor or in the Atlantic, but in the Philippines and at Okinawa. What sank more American ships and killed more sailors than any other weapon was the kamikaze. There was no machine then, and no computer now, that can respond as fast or as accurately as the human eye and brain. Kamikaze pilots are relatively easy to train, darn near impossible to stop."


But just when we began to breathe a little easier as the FBI, the CIA and local cops began to identify the terrorists among us and to close in on Osama bin Laden's cells abroad, we're told that breathing could be riskiest of all - that the terrorists could dwarf the carnage at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with bio-terror, the spreading of deadly germs and chemicals. The possibility of this actually happening, bio-terror experts concede, ranges from unlikely to remote, but you wouldn't know that if you listen to the hype and gory in the media. A lot of us are properly scared.


This only demonstrates how effective psy-war can be, and suggests infinite possibilities, if not exactly infinite justice. The Islamist fruitcakes (we're not talking about peaceful Muslims) are likely to be far more susceptible to psy-war than we are.


There's something about the untutored Arab imagination that responds to hyperbole, rendering it especially vulnerable to suggestion and manipulation. Osama bin Laden's followers are obsessed with the promise of an afterlife in paradise and the 74 virgins who wait there to serve them. (The fanatics apparently have not considered the grim fact that for every waiting virgin there's a prospective mother-in-law). They're peculiarly vulnerable to psy-war.


Devout Muslims may not fear death, but they are terrified of pork, with or without beans. Many believe that even martyrs will be denied entrance to paradise and the virgins if they are contaminated by the flesh of pigs. The British learned this the hard way in 1857, when their sepoys, or native Muslim soldiers in the Bengal army of the East India Co., went crazy when gossip spread through the barracks that a new shipment of cartridges, with greased paper to survive the heat and dust, were soiled with grease made from the fat of pigs. (The mutiny spread to Hindu troops when provocateurs said no, it was grease from the fat of cows.) Thousands died before the British put down the Sepoy Rebellion a year later.


So here's a helpful suggestion. We learned only yesterday that U.S. and British commanders intend to drop leaflets on Taliban territory in advance of precision attacks on Osama bin Laden's hideouts and training camps, assuring Taliban soldiers and sympathetic tribesmen that the West means them no harm. This is nice, and it might even persuade a Taliban warrior or two.


The leaflets would be far more effective if they relate the story of how Gen. John J. "Blackjack" Pershing dealt with Islamist terror in the Philippines in 1911. Pershing detailed a patrol to bring in six known terrorists who had slain women and children in a backwoods village. The terrorists were required to dig their own graves, and then were lashed to stakes to await the firing squad. Several pigs were brought before them for slaughter.


"When you are buried," the officer of the detail told the terrorists, "we will bury the pig offal with you. You'll never see paradise." And no virgins, either.


One of the terrorists was allowed to "escape" to return to his fellows to tell the awful story, as Pershing knew he would. There was no more trouble in the neighborhood for years, for long after Pershing was long gone to France to command American doughboys in the Great War.


This was the kind of punishment a society like ours would never countenance today, of course, even for Osama bin Laden's evildoers. But merely telling the story would tell the Taliban warriors, loud and clear, just how mean the infidels are prepared to be. "


Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times.

From what I've heard the Gen. Pershing story is an urban internet legend.

Here's a link: http://urbanlegends.about.com/sitesearch.htm?terms=pershing&SUName=urbanlegends&TopNode=3919&type=1

It doesn't really surprise me that a paragon of journalistic integrity like The Washington Times would report this.

Here's another interesting note that I saw in the News Tribune this morning. It is in a column called News of the Weird.

"In April, the Treasury Department's agency that investigates allegedly illegal financing across U.S. borders was revealed to have only 4 agents working on money traceable to Osama bin Laden and Sadaam Hussein, but 21 agents working full-time on violations of the U.S. embargo of Cuba."

Scary stuff, I'm reminded of the old saying - We have met the enemy and they is us.

I just heard this yesterday and it has been around quite awhile. For all the publicity the "atrocities" committed in Iraq has gotten we are pansies compared to how the enemy is treated everywhere else.

Would it be considered an atrocity to feed the terrorist prisoners nothing but ham?

I would support almost any punishment that would deter terrorism BUT . . . I want to be CERTAIN the folks punished were in fact terrorists.

I the case of our abuse scandle, it appears that many of the ones abused were not guilty of anything. Several were working for news agencies and many were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the guilty ones - do whatever works, not for vengence but for deterance.

We do need to be sure that our punishmens do not backfire and creat even more hatred. It's a tough call. Butr if wrapping the guilty in pig skins works - do it!

Iasn't terrorism itself a type of "psy-op"?

I'd say yes.

If you allow yourself to be like them, you have become them.

h2O..good point...we are not like them for the most part. We don't want to be either. I can't imagine what it would be like to have to guard people who belong to the opposing side that may have just killed your buddy. Anger and emotion has to take over. That is why the commanding officers need to be polished enough to avoid the emotional urges to retaliate.

The down side to our kinder and gentler way of doing things is that we expose ourselves to attack more than those who choose more severe forms of retaliation....Such as Russia or China...

Grandpa-

Bad policy led us to where we are, not loose command.

The Bush administration views the Geneva Conventions as quaint and outdated. The military on the other hand has viewed their fifty plus years of strict compliance to those conventions with pride, to do otherwise would disgrace those Americans soldiers who experienced the same types of humiliation and torture in Korea, Vietnam and the pacific theater.

That's why they opposed this new policy nearly to a man. Now you tell me what kind of Commander in Chief disregards the advice of his top military advisors on his most important military decisions? How does that affect our national security, positively or negatively?

The only answers of course are 'a poor one' and 'negatively'....and you are going to vote for him again?

How much worse would he have to screw things up before you even considered changing your vote?

I wouldn't switch my vote from Bush to Kerry as long as I can still function mentally. I might get fed up and vote for Al Sharpton though.

"The Bush administration views the Geneva Conventions as quaint and outdated"

Because the current enemy does not recognize the Geneva convention. It's like making a boxer fight by the WBC rules against a street fighter with no rules . The boxer may have honor but he is going to take a beating.

The military needed a change , something they hate. We are fighting a new enemy with neew tactics. As evidenced in Iraq with road side bombs. The Army never imagined they would need harded vehicles for this type of tactic and spent the better part of 6 months welding steel plate to their vehicles. We went through the same thing in Vietnam. The screaming from the old guard military is normal when things get shaken up. Look how long the rank and file howled at the new Boeing. They would have ridden the old system into bancruptcy in the face of the industry changes brought by Airbus.

"Now you tell me what kind of Commander in Chief disregards the advice of his top military advisors on his most important military decisions?"

I highly doubt it is as simple as blowing off their advice. You have to weigh your decisions based on as much info you can get and consider the source and their motivations. For example, look at JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis. If he followed his war hungry military advisors, we may have ended up in a nuclear war and you and I probably wouldn't be debating this stuff today...

Is that REALLY what its like? Boxing....

If so, why stop at torture? I say take off the frickin gloves then! We should start sending welfare babies over there with car-bomb's strapped to their cradles.

Open a Spam superstore and tell the Iraqi people its made from 'beef' by-products.

If you think America will stand by while its leadership violates its own moral ethos, you're wrong.