I have been watching the spy poisoning case with a strange sense that it was a movie, or a John LeCarre novel. It's deja vu for any of us Cold Warriors, as I was on the border when Germany was two countries and there were spies etc sneaking back and forth across it.
When it first broke I thought it was a hoax, but it gets curiouser and curiouser. Who in the world is using an absolutely traceable, absolutely nuke weapons related poison to kill a former Soviet spy? Putin? If he did something crazy is going on. Let's look at Putin as prime suspect.
He has cause, as Litvinenko was a formidable critic of the gargantuan corrupt criminal enterprise that is Putin's Russia. But if he decided to whack him why use a poison that leads directly to a nuclear laboratory. Did they think it was undetectable? Even so, why not just shoot him, or have him mugged to death? It smells like they were sending a message to other critics reminding them that Putin used to operate in the basement at Lubyanka prison. There are plenty of other folks out there with dirt on Putin, but it's not hard to see why the possibility of having your guts shredded by radiation might make you reluctant to air any concerns about Vlad the Poisoner.
If it's not Putin things get crazy fast. ...
I pretty much ignored this story when it broke because I figured it was pretty much a "family matter" but it's starting to sound bigger than that. See Allah's posts here and here for instance.
