With our own vote-tabulation woes fresh in mind, one of last year's most interesting and (so far) heart-warming stories has to be the election events in Ukraine. The Ukrainians knew they were being rolled by Pooty-Poot's minions (say, there's another example of why maybe Bush might want to use more than just his gut in those big decisions), and they weren't going to stand for it.
One aspect that is so bizarre is the undeniably old-school tactics employed against Yushchenko (not, as American newsreaders keep mispronouncing it, "Yushenko". Earn your money, would you please, people? You read a TelePrompTer. How hard can it be?). Dioxin-laced soup? One can't help but get a quick visual of Boris and Natasha from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, hatching diabolical schemes to eliminate Moose and Squirrel. (Yes, I'm old.) We're just inured to car bombings and such, ultra-violent means of assassination, so dioxin-laced soup provided by the head of the secret police is just very cloak-and-daggery, like a ricin-tipped umbrella.
So hats off to all the Ivan Q. Publicoviches in Ukraine for standing up for themselves, and the Bush Administration also deserves a lot of credit for siding with them, putting Bush and Putin's much-vaunted personal relationship at risk. Very principled decision on their part, regardless of the big-picture scenarios that factored into it.
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