>From: Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com>
>
>Really? That's certainly not the case with Palestinians. Much of the
>drama when they are discovered is about trying to keep them from
>connecting the wires.
Yes, that was the case at the Krylya concert bombing and at the bombing at the National Hotel yesterday, which appears to be aimed at the Duma building. I think sometimes these events are orchestrated to some extent for show rather than effect; I would think driving a truck bomb into the Duma building would be more effective than strapping bombs to people.
>Fwiw, there is an excellent 50 minute HBO documentary called "Terror In
>Moscow" on the October 2002 theatre seizure, and at at least in that case,
>all the suicide bombers were women, all of them controlled their own
>bombs with connecting wires, and none of them were drugged.
It has been claimed (in the Sunday Times UK, if I remember correctly) that they didn't detonate the bombs because they had been instructed to wait for an order from the men. I of course have no way of appraising whether it's true or not. Or maybe they never intended to become suicide bombers at all.
In the moscow theatre situation, though, where their
>Russian seatmates had good long talks with them, despair over losing the
>men closest to them seemed to be motive. They seemed mainly to want to
>commit suicide.
Suicide in a holy cause. Despair and fanaticism are not a good mix. Most of these women seem to be widows of mujaheedin, from what I've read. On the other hand, some of the shakhidy have come from intact families that haven't been touched by the war, reportedly. Again reportedly, one of the women at the Krylya bombing had been kidnapped from her family by her brother.
>
>If the suicide bomber has to put on the bomb and then go somwhere to
>deliver it, I'm not sure I see that it makes any difference to the degree
>of voluntariness whether it's set off by remote control or by hand.
In the sense that, if the bomber has second thoughts and tries to leave or remove the belt at the last instant, it can be detonated anyway.
_________________________________________________________________ Our best dial-up offer is back. Get MSN Dial-up Internet Service for 6 months @ $9.95/month now! http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup