Why disable the gas if they're going to kill everyone anyway? Surely it would be easier to use that rather than go searching the jungle, having to shoot people (who'd also be shhoting back). Maybe Charlotte and Daniel didn't know about the mass murder side of the mission? Thoughts please guys.

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Go then, there are other worlds than this.

Good question. But looks like F4 was there to prevent the use of the gas because if Ben was to activate before freighter guys get to him, everyone including Freighter people on island (brainy 4 or the armed guys- don't matter) would get killed. So it's a safety measure for Freighter people themselves before anything else..But I do agree that not everyone on boat was aware of the killing mission..

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"Bear...? Is that you?"-- Hurley S03E4

I'm a little confused are you guys saying the F4 are the ones that came in the first helicopter, if so then it should be F5 I think they were suppose to go in pairs to do their missions on the island, but since they had problems coming to the island some had to bail out except for the pilot. So since John threw the knife into the back of one of them that put her out of comission but not before she was able to get a messages back to the freighter.
I think their all working for Widmore but were only told so much information, they were picked to do certain things because of their abilities brains/muscles.
I caught a glimps of one of the guys shooting those automatic rifles on the freghter, I thought his tattoo was somewhat like Jack's could he had been a part of Jack's past when Jack had gotten his tattoos from that woman many many moons ago? I thought we were going to get to know more about those tattoos of Jack's.
Sorry if I'm off topic here.

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Standing in the ocean with the sun burning low in the west
Like a fire in the cavernous darkness at the heart of the beast
With my beliefs and possessions, stopped at the frontier in my chest
At the edge of my country, my back to the sea, looking east

hey lookingeast2002- no confusion I guess the question earlier was 'why bother with some operation Tempest if the main aim was to kill everyone on the island after getting to Ben?' I think it was because Whidmore knew enough about Ben to assume that if he were to become aware of Frieghter people's presence on island, he might take some extreme measures, like activating the gas. Gotta weaken the enemy's hand before you make your own move, right?

And, interesting point about the tattoo. Did you see Naomi's tattoo as well? That one looked interesting too- and quite like some Asian pictographic writing, similar to Jack's.

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"Bear...? Is that you?"-- Hurley S03E4

maybe they the freighter folks don't want to kill everyone with the gas, but instead want to capture them before killing them.

dead men tell no tales....... in other words, you can't interrogate a dead person.... well, maybe one of them can.....I'm talking in circles.

Miles can =)

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Ted Striker: My orders came through. My squadron ships out tomorrow. We're bombing the storage depots at Daiquiri at 1800 hours. We're coming in from the north, below their radar.

Elaine Dickinson: When will you be back?

Ted Striker: I can't tell you that. It's classified.

Miles and Charlotte had biohazard (hazmat?) suits though - so the freighter guys wouldn't be bothered about Ben trying to gas them. Think it's probably another one of Bens' porkies about them wanting to kill everyone.

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Go then, there are other worlds than this.

Miles just wants to get rich he knows Ben's got money.

ectheloin, you might want to recheck that about Miles in hazmat suit, he was kind of busy with grenade in his mouth. It was Faraday that was shutting off the gas.

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Standing in the ocean with the sun burning low in the west
Like a fire in the cavernous darkness at the heart of the beast
With my beliefs and possessions, stopped at the frontier in my chest
At the edge of my country, my back to the sea, looking east

why does everyone believe what ben says.....

i think the freighter people are the good guys not Ben.

Yeah, sorry - I'd just read the post above my 2nd one and had Miles on my mind!

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Go then, there are other worlds than this.