Posted on 11/27/2006 2:00:34 PM PST by Risha
Is Putin Being Set Up?
by Patrick J. Buchanan Posted Nov 27, 2006
PARIS—Whoever poisoned Alexander Litvinenko had two goals: a long and lingering death for the KGB defector and pointing a finger of accusation for his killing right in the face of Vladimir Putin.
Which leads me to believe Putin had nothing to do with it.
In an assassination, one must ask: Cui bono? To whose benefit? Who would gain from the poisoning of Litvinenko?
Certainly not Putin. Litvinenko's death puts him, the Kremlin and the KGB, now the FSB, under suspicion of having reverted to the terror tactics of Stalin, who commissioned killers to liquidate enemies like Leon Trotsky, murdered in Mexico in 1940.
What benefit could Putin conceivably realize from the London killing of an enemy of his regime, who had just become a British citizen? Why would the Russian president, at the peak of his popularity, with his regime awash in oil revenue and himself playing a strong hand in world politics, risk a breach with every Western nation by ordering the public murder of a man who was more of a nuisance than a threat to his regime?
Litvinenko, after all, made his sensational charges against the Kremlin—that the KGB blew up the Moscow apartment buildings, not Chechen terrorists, as a casus belli for a war on Chechnya and that he had refused a KGB order to assassinate oligarch Boris Berezovsky— in the late 1990s. Of late, Litvinenko has been regarded as a less and less credible figure, with his charges of KGB involvement in 9-11 and complicity in the Danish cartoons mocking Muhammad that ignited the Muslim firestorm.
Yet, listening to some Western pundits on the BBC and Fox News, one would think Putin himself poisoned Litvinenko. Who else, they ask, could have acquired polonium 210, the rare radioactive substance used to kill Litvinenko? Who else had the motive to eliminate the ex-agent who had dedicated his life to exposing the crimes of the Kremlin?
Indeed, no sooner had Litvinenko expired than his collaborator in anti-Putin politics, Alex Goldfarb, was in front of the television cameras reading Litvinenko's deathbed statement charging Putin with murder:
"You may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. ... You may succeed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed."
Litvinenko's statement is awfully coherent and eloquent for a man writhing in a death agony. But if he did not write it, who did? All of which leads me to conclude Putin is being set up, framed for a crime he did not commit. But then, if Putin did not order the killing, who did?
Who else could have acquired the polonium 210? Who else would kill Litvinenko to make Putin a pariah? These are the questions Scotland Yard, which also seems skeptical that Putin had a hand in this bizarre business, has begun to ask.
As the predictable effect of Litvinenko's death has been to put a cloud of suspicion over Putin and a chill over Russian relations with the West, one must ask: To whose benefit is the discrediting of Putin? Who would seek a renewal of the Cold War?
Certainly, the oligarchs and robber barons like Berezovsky—many of them now dispossessed of the wealth they amassed in a collapsing Soviet Union, and all of whom have been run out of the country or imprisoned—have the most powerful of motives. They hate Putin and seek to bring him down. And Goldfarb and Litvinenko both enjoyed the patronage of the billionaire Berezovsky.
Surely, rogue or retired KGB agents, passed over by Putin and bitter at Litvinenko, would have a motive: to send a message, written in polonium 210, that this is what happens to those who betray us and Mother Russia.
Scotland Yard has yet to declare this a murder case and is looking into the possibility of a "martyrdom operation"—suicide dressed up like murder—in which Litvinenko may have colluded. The Putin-dominated Russian press is pushing this line, as well as the idea of an oligarchs' plot to discredit Putin and destroy Russia's relations with the West.
Yet Litvinenko was still in his early 40s, with a wife and two children. While his agonizing public death would make him a celebrity even more famous than Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian anti-communist murdered in London in 1979 with a poison-tipped umbrella, Litvinenko would not be around to enjoy his fame.
America has a vital interest in this Scotland Yard investigation. What it discovers may tell us more about the character of the man into whose eyes George Bush claimed to have stared, and seen his soul, or it may tell us who the real enemies of this country are, who are out to restart the Cold War, and perhaps another hot one.
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Copyright © 2006 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
George Soros is not like that. I feel that he is actually in Putin's pocket, allowing Putin to justify actions like this.
Soros, on one occasion, has blamed the West for Russia's actions.
Buchanan's anti-semitism is triggered by the spokesman's name, "Goldfarb".
Pat, meet Gideon Readers Blackjack:
Never assign to conspiracy and guile what may be laid at the doorstep of simple stupidity and dumb happenstance.
Because he doesn't give a POOP who knows he did it. Because it sure helps silence the OTHER Putin critics. Because it works for him. And because other than a few titters in the press, no one in the West will do a damn thing to stop him. Oh, and because it HELPS, not HURTS, him to not be trusted by the west.
Who would benefit from deteriorating relations between Russia and the West?
C-H-I-N-A
This stuff is too dangerous to handle openly! Ya need a big lead box!
Buchanan may be nuts, but he's correct about Putin this time. Good to see ya, bud!..............FRegards
But, unlike Buchanin, Putin is a Neo-Communist who wants to dominate the world.
it might be plausible, if Putin gave a rip about his image. I don't think he does, because, by virtue of the natural resources he controls, he holds 5 aces.
"You are a nutcase, homophobe, racist, sexist bigot."
.....by the way I also disagree with Pat but I would disagree on the merits of his argument.
Found this...
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/bbs/message.php?messageid=309872&mpage=1&showdate=11/25/06
Alexander Litvinenko's article on Putin the pedophile
Quote
"NEWS"
July, 05, 2006
The Kremlin Pedophile
By Alexander Litvinenko
A few days ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin walked from the Big Kremlin Palace to his Residence. At one of the Kremlin squares, the president stopped to chat with the tourists. Among them was a boy aged 4 or 5.
'What is your name?' Putin asked.
'Nikita,' the boy replied.
Putin kneed, lifted the boy's T-shirt and kissed his stomach.
The world public is shocked. Nobody can understand why the Russian president did such a strange thing as kissing the stomach of an unfamiliar small boy.
The explanation may be found if we look carefully at the so-called "blank spots" in Putin's biography.
After graduating from the Andropov Institute, which prepares officers for the KGB intelligence service, Putin was not accepted into the foreign intelligence. Instead, he was sent to a junior position in KGB Leningrad Directorate. This was a very unusual twist for a career of an Andropov Institute's graduate with fluent German. Why did that happen with Putin?
Because, shortly before his graduation, his bosses learned that Putin was a pedophile. So say some people who knew Putin as a student at the Institute.
The Institute officials feared to report this to their own superiors, which would cause an unpleasant investigation. They decided it was easier just to avoid sending Putin abroad under some pretext. Such a solution is not unusual for the secret services.
Many years later, when Putin became the FSB director and was preparing for presidency, he began to seek and destroy any compromising materials collected against him by the secret services over earlier years. It was not difficult, provided he himself was the FSB director. Among other things, Putin found videotapes in the FSB Internal Security Directorate, which showed him making sex with some underage boys.
Interestingly, the video was recorded in the same conspiratorial flat in Polyanka Street in Moscow where Russian Prosecutor-General Yuri Skuratov was secretly video-taped with two prostitutes. Later, in the famous scandal, Putin (on Roman Abramovich's instructions) blackmailed Skuratov with these tapes and tried to persuade the Prosecutor-General to resign. In that conversation, Putin mentioned to Skuratov that he himself was also secretly video-taped making sex at the same bed. (But of course, he did not tell it was pedophilia rather than normal sex.) Later, Skuratov wrote about this in his book Variant Drakona (p.p. 153-154).
[link to 72.14.253.104]
Pat defending Putin? Too funny. Is this from The Onion, or is Pat having one of his spells?
Along with about 13 journalists that have been murdered under his tenure. Almost all unsolved as I understand it.
Not long ago Pat was saying that Japan was justified in attacking Pearl Harbor. Now he defends the thug Putin. What's next, wanting Saddam back in power?
If things get worse in Iraq, it might be YOU who will want "Saddam back in power" :(
Wholeheartedly agree (with Frank_Discussion, not Pitchfork Pat).
Why would Stalin have Trotsky assassinated? Trotsky himself did it, right? Why would Hitler have Ernst Röhm assassinated? Röhm probably did it himself, right?
Pat has said that a long time ago.
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