today
Posted on 07/21/2014 11:02:08 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
AMONG the daft things uttered by George W Bush while he was president of the United States — and there were plenty — his 2001 assessment of Russia’s then new leader, Vladimir Putin, was the dumbest.
Mastering that familiar expression of simian incomprehension, Bush said that he “liked the look of the man”.
“I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy, and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
Bush said he saw in Putin a man committed to his country and its best interests. But before him that day at their summit in Slovenia was a scheming psychopath and ruthless egomaniac.
In defence of Bush’s uninformed character assessment, it is true that Putin had risen almost without trace from the backblocks of the KGB to his country’s presidency at breakneck speed. His promotions under then president Boris Yeltsin might have much to do with Yeltsin being incapacitated by alcoholism and having to rely on someone — anyone — to help him steer the ship of state and keep quiet.
If that is so, it was a deal with the devil. On New Year’s Eve 1999, the devil came knocking. No one knows what was discussed, but Yeltsin shocked the world on the final night of the century that his country had influenced more than any other, mostly for the worst.
In a way, only to Russians would passing power to the young Putin make sense. He had become the country’s most popular politician having masterminded the brutal suppression of Chechnya’s separatists. It was a sign of the country’s dark heart.
Long before communism sank under the weight of its own contradictions it had been hijacked by genocidal opportunists — first Lenin, then, infamously, Stalin.
Putin is the latest thug writing a chapter in that sorry saga. But the Russian character has been corrupted by decades of a brutal perversion of “communism”.
Russian nationalism masking itself as pride can be an ugly thing and it is why Putin reigns again as a popular leader; his predatory and murderous expansion into Ukraine plays well at home.
During the communist era, there was no need to think for one’s self, indeed it was dangerous to do so. The fearful nation of children to which this gave birth was kept in its place by a KGB killing machine.
The Iron Curtain meant most of these murders went unnoticed in the West. But when the KGB assassinated dissident Bulgarian broadcaster George Markov on London’s busy Waterloo Bridge in 1978 with a tiny ricin capsule injected in to his leg by an umbrella, we were reminded of communism’s paranoia.
Putin was a three-year veteran of the KGB by then. Of course, he was not involved. And neither was he involved in the murder of reformist politician Galina Starovoitova, who supported Russia’s ethnic minorities and was opposed to in-house appointments such as Putin’s to head the KGB’s successor, the FSB. Putin got that job in July 1998. Starovoitova was shot dead that November. Hitmen were convicted. Their paymaster remains anonymous.
Then there was Iskandar Khatloni, who had been filing reports on human rights abuses in Chechnya. In September 2000 he was attacked with an axe in his apartment. It’s an unsolved crime.
Three years later, investigative reporter Yuri Shchekochikhni was working on stories of corruption in the FSB, but died of an “infection” that shut down all his internal organs. No autopsy was allowed.
HE worked for Novaya Gazeta. Anna Politkovskaya also worked there. Not only was Anna brave enough to write about the brutal suppression of the Chechens, she boldly wrote a book, titled, naturally, Putin’s Russia.
Reviewers were shocked by her revelations of how the Russian state brutalised its soldiers, of torture and unofficial prisons, of dissidents being “diagnosed” as schizophrenic and then “hospitalised” and of how parodies of capitalism had allowed some men to amass vast fortunes.
She was perhaps Putin’s most severe critic. “Am I afraid?” she asked. She said it was easy to fall in line and be optimistic about Russia’s future, “but it is the death sentence for our grandchildren”.
Politkovskaya was shot in the chest and head in her Moscow apartment lift on October 7, 2006 — Putin’s birthday.
After several trials, her hired killers were convicted, but again the paymaster remains unknown.
That was five years after Bush had found Putin “straightforward and trustworthy”.
Putin’s men brought down that Malaysia Airlines jet using his rockets. His bullies — out-of-towners, insist locals — kept investigators at bay with guns. His brutes then interfered with the bodies of the dead. And his drunken hooligans looted their victims’ valuables.
Tony Abbott should not withdraw Putin’s invitation to the G20 meeting in Sydney in Brisbane in November.
But he should have him arrested and charged with crimes against humanity when he touches down in Brisbane.
Just asking. If the answer is no I’d love to hear it.
Do you like Putin?
Do you think he’s just dreamy?
Would you like him to be President of the USA?
If Russians in Ukraine do not want to be Ukrainian, then they should go to Russia.
Americans who love Russia and hate the USA should go to Russia too.
Whatever you’re smoking, fax me some of it.
today
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