: "But the important thing is to succeed in freeing at
: least one of the children who appear in those horrendous
: pictures," Ormanni said. "If we do succeed, we
: will have achieved a large part of our goal."

Well, here's hoping they remain focused on that goal. And on finding the people actually responsible for kidnapping, molesting, torturing, and killing those chidren. Anyone who murdered a child as part of this deserves to be executed, or at the least locked up for the actual rest of his life.

That being said, the use of this "sting" website disturbs me. 1,491 people? Most of them had nothing to do with perpetrating these awful crimes. Governments should not go around luring people into ordering this stuff. How specific were the "warnings" that the people had to get past to register at this site? Lots of people don't read such warnings closely. People should not be prosecuted for registering at an internet site, nor for casually viewing or downloading ANY material. But more to the point, the effort spent on this phony site is effort that could have been spent on tracking down the people responsible for actually torturing and killing children, but wasn't.

Why did Microsoft participate in this "sting". What pressure was brought to bear in order to secure their cooperation? I don't think they involved themselves simply out of a sense of "public spiritedness". In a separate thread, Rayelan refers to this case as being a "piece of the puzzle". Indeed it is. But the
"Pedophile Eradication Teams" she discusses are as disturbing as the pedophile activities themselves. If we want the rule of law to prevail, and not the rule of shadowy "black" groups, we need to be consistent about it and not make any exceptions at all.

I'll be satisfied that this investigation is on the right track when I hear about people being tried on charges of kidnapping, sexual abuse, torture or murder of specific, identifiable children in connection with it. The parents (or other guardians) of the children in question would presumaby be there, crying out for justice to be done. Why is it that I don't really expect to see this any time soon?