In the fight against terrorism Russia is willing, perhaps to a callous degree from our perspective, to sacrifice quite a number of her soldiers and citizens in a long, sustained struggle to win ultimate victory over the enemy. Think of the long war in Chechnya, where somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 Russian soldiers have died. But those losses haven't fazed the Russian leadership, nor the Russian public, really. They're willing to keep fighting on.

My impression is that the Russian people will be upset if it turns out that a tactical error caused the deaths of 150 hostages, but they won't turn against Putin because of it. They'll stoically accept the cost of battling a dangerous enemy, inside their own nation.

Would the American public be as understanding and forgiving? I doubt it.

(And I must say that it does appear that the Russian military authorities badly miscalculated the effects of the gas, and were poorly prepared to quickly resucitate the hostages under its effects. The fact that untrained soldiers, not medics, were carrying the unconscious hostages out of the theater is telling.)