[marvel5]

I ignore personal attacks (usually). Maybe you would like the testimony of someone a little more familiar with the practices of the Cheka/KGB.

• “Vladimir Putin — yes, he was an officer of the intelligence services, but he was not a KGB investigator, nor was he the head of a camp in the gulag. As for service in foreign intelligence, that is not a negative in any country — sometimes it even draws praise. George Bush Sr. was not much criticized for being the ex-head of the CIA, for example.”

“Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible — a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, author of “The Gulag Archipelago,” now required reading in Russian schools.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview-with-alexander-solzhenitsyn-i-am-not-afraid-of-death-a-496211.html

[MeganC]

I ignore personal attacks (usually).

Which makes sense since you probably don't get paid to respond to them.