Find and Destroy

From a BBC story:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered special services to "find and destroy" the killers of four Russian diplomats taken hostage in Iraq. The head of Russia's security services immediately pledged to see Putin's order carried out.

The Russian government confirmed the four men's deaths this week, after an insurgent group released a video showing two of them being killed.

The group had demanded Russia leave Chechnya and release Muslim prisoners.

"The President gave the order to Russian special services to take all measures for finding and eliminating the criminals who carried out the murder of Russian diplomats in Iraq", the Interfax news agency quoted the Kremlin's press service as saying.

"Finding and eliminating them" makes it sound like a fair trial is not going to be part of the process. Course, that's Putin's business. At least there will be no Russian ACLU nipping at his heels, claiming beheadist abuse. Also:

Separately, the lower house of the Russian parliament approved a statement condemning the killings, and appearing to blame Iraq's "occupying powers".

"The whole responsibility for the situation in Iraq, including guaranteeing the security of its citizens, and also foreign specialists, as before lies on the occupying powers," the statement said

Russia has strongly opposed the US-led military campaign from the beginning.

About Russian opposition to the US military campaign, I'd note: fat lot of good it did them. The horror at Beslan was in 2004, their diplomats are not safe, and I haven't heard anything about the Chechen situation cooling.

Personally, I hope that justice is done in the case of the Russian diplomats. And I hope that we assist the Russians in finding the bad guys. Watch though, if we help deliver the bad guys, and the Russians kill them, and the New York Times finds out about it..... The headlines will be "War Criminal". So, let's not let the NYT find out about it. It seems the only way you can keep information secret these days, I mean really secret, so that nobody hears about it, is to advertise it on Air America.