All of the evidence in the London assassinations indicates that Putin is behind it. Means, motive, opportunity.

So naturally, Pat Buchanan thinks that this is proof that Putin is being set up.

It's amazing to think of how many people voted for this man for president.

[Update at 7 PM EST]

I didn't read carefully enough. Putin's not just being set up. He's being set up by the Jews!

It can't be Putin, Bush looked into his eyes and measured his soul.

Is it just me, or is there something creepily consistent about tendency for foaming-at-the-mouth paranoid nutjobs to settle on the Jews as their scapegoats?

Of course! It had to have been the Jooz. Thank you Herr Buchanan for enlightening us, and a hearty Sieg Heil to you.

I'm not surprised that Russians voted for Putin (and continue to support him strongly; his approval ratings are sky-high). In fact you wouldn't, if you just knew the history.

The previous administration's stance on Chechnya was the one of de-facto independence and appeasement. Huge sums of money were paid, too -- sort of reminds of EU and Palestinians. It seemed a reasonable tack, too. It was the position advocated by none other than Daniel Pipes, and don't think that I'm quoting some antisemitic website on that. I've read his article myself on paper.

The result was predictable. Chechens used the independence and the multi-year break to gather their forces and to plan their Barbarossa in Dagestan. They kicked the Russian butt once in a very impressive way before, so they were sure they would be able to do it again. So one day it was a full scale war all over again, with heavy weapons on both sides and scorched earth. It took quite a bit of casualties and destruction to beat Chechens back into their borders. Everyone saw that appeasement did not work.

After the plain old military defeat, Chechens fell back on the tried and true track of blowing shit up and generally murdering people wherever they could reach.

In this situation, Putin ran on the platform of doing something about the abscess instead of letting it fester. Naturally he won in a landslide.

As for the poisoning, I would suspect that most Russians approve. Traitors have to be eliminated, it's the basics. It's not as if we're talking about an innocent person here. Litvinenko wasn't some kind of nation's conscience like Sakharov. He was a defector from the secret service. Russians have a proverb for people like him: "Dog's death to dog". Also, dealing with traitors severily is what all normal governments do. If I remember right, Israelis kidnapped and executed the guy who sold all secrets of their nuclear program and defected to France.

Mind, the point here is not the apologism of assasinations as the way to teach potential traitors a lesson, but to show you that Putin's support in Russia is fairly rational, at least from their barbaric point of view. So please keep this in mind.

It was Tony Blair in the ballroom with the lead pipe.

(reference)

So, do people believe the accusations that Russia did the house bombings themselves to start the war in Chechnya (?) again?

Pete --

I think Rand meant "it's amazing to think of how many people voted for Buchanan for president".

Yes, Ilya, that is what I meant.

Anon says: It can't be Putin, Bush looked into his eyes and measured his soul.

Once again, its Bush's fault. Man, that guy gets around.

I predict that Bush's comment about measuring Putin's soul will be his most infamous remark. The whole Soviet collapse in the 1980's was a planned farce. The same group is still in charge, and still promoting asymetrical warfare against the West via their KGB trained terrorist sock puppets, and regimes like Iran and North Korea. Yet the West wants to turn a blind eye to the growing partnership between Russia and China.

Actually, it's quite possible that someone in the Russian mob did this. I imagine someone who happens to know how to safely handle thorium and kill someone with it could make much better money in the private world than in civil service (especially if they knew a lot of other ways to kill and were pretty skilled at it). Would be interesting to know if there's been other thorium poisonings or not. This one might have been caught merely because the doctors were looking for it.

Orville,

Breaking up the USSR and reducing Russia to its current state of extreme weakness is planned? What will they do next to continue lulling us into a false state of security? Collectively shoot themselves in the head? Look maybe Putin pines for the glory days of the USSR, but the collapse of the USSR was real even if it wasn't intended to be so.

Mac

Bush sets foreign Policy, his decisions to support Putin
are his and his alone to make. Bush decided Putin was a
good guy, he measured his soul, he decided to keep
russia into the G-8 when COngress wanted to
suspend them. That was when he made his Infamous
soul remark.

While I don't doubt for a moment that Putin was behind this, I do wonder about the choice of murder weapon. Why would anyone choose a poison that's so uncommon, detectable, and identifiable? Is this just the usual intelligence agency bumbling (like the CIA's Wiley Coyote scheme to kill Castro with exploding cigars) or did Putin want to be implicated, in order to send a message?

It's very clearly the later. The KGB aren't idiots. If they didn't want to be detected they would have simply smashed the guy in the head with a brick and thrown him in the Thames.

Anon says : Mac

Bush sets foreign Policy, his decisions to support Putin
are his and his alone to make. Bush decided Putin was a
good guy, he measured his soul, he decided to keep
russia into the G-8 when COngress wanted to
suspend them. That was when he made his Infamous
soul remark.

You know, maybe you should change your name to B&W.

Yeah, Bush thought Putin was a good guy. He was wrong, so what? Bush has also opposed Putin on several occasions, but you seem to not mention those. I am forced to assume though that you've never mistaken a person's character at all.

So anon, if only Bush had let Russia be kicked out of the G-8, Putin wouldn't have iced this former spy?

Documentation, please.

Mr. Zaitcev,

Quick correction re. Israel. While they have certainly assassinated many people, the man who betrayed Israel's nuclear program, Mordechai Vanunu, is very much alive and still stirring up trouble. He is under a lax form of house arrest, I think, having completed his prison term.