3 Days in September (Documentary)
This is not about any of the ongoing GD fracases. (I say that because it involves Putin tangentially, but I am posting this just to review a documentary)
Remember the 2004 Russia school where armed Islamic separatist militants, mostly Ingush and Chechen, killed 300+ people, mostly children?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis
They have a big ceremony for the first day of school so almost everyone had some sort of video device (cell phone camera, etc.) and it is amazing how much footage was recovered from devices inside the school of the siege. (Including one guys camera that the rebels took away to record their own activities.)
Unbelievable, and not for the faint-hearted. Not a brilliant documentary, but the footage that exists is unreal.
And that we are seeing it at all speaks to one difference in the US and Russia. The military moved in, fought till everything was over and left. Some of these cameras were recovered from the rubble by reporters, local citizens, etc.. Would never happen here, where the FBI would have sealed the area and pored over everything.
Everything about the Chechen war is fantastically brutal. (On both sides, of course.)
At points you forget that it isn't a re-enactment, but that this is real footage of the bombs being placed, the guys on the "dead man's switch" that had to stay depressed at all times lest the bombs go off, the female rebels who didn't know the target was going to be a school blowing themselves up with suicide vests, or their vests somehow being triggered by other rebels... incredible and awful.
= new reply since forum marked as read
