So, the KGB has successfully whacked a Putin critic in Great Britain. I'm sorry, the KGB has allegedly successfully whacked a Putin critic in Great Britain. This comes after about two years after they allegedly nearly successfully poisoned Yushchenko in Ukraine, in an attempt to whack the leader of the Orange Revolution.

The Syrians successfully whacked... whoops, there I go again. The Syrians allegedly successfully whacked a critic in the Lebanese cabinet, less than two years after they allegedly successfully whacked the Lebanese Prime Minister. (I expect any minute now to hear the news that Bashir Assad signed a deal with News Corp. for a book entitled, "I Didn't Order Hariri Assassinated, But Hypothetically If I Did, Here's How It Went Down.")

Saddam Hussein got the death penalty in a two-year-and-change trial that the organization Human Rights Watch has deemed "fundamentally unfair" and "unsound." I suppose we may have the wrong Iraqi dictator; perhaps it was some other Saddam Hussein who slaughtered all those people.

And the last time a great butcher faced an international tribunal, Slobodan Milosevic, he died in the midst of a trial that was stretching into its fifth year.

In other news, the Germans wanted to put Donald Rumsfeld on trial for war crimes. Because if there's any country that has the moral authority to judge American actions in war, it's Germany.

There's a reason Americans are generally skeptical of international institutions and their laws, rules, and regulations. They generally stink.

Besides the revelation that "Grosse Pointe Blank" was an inadvertent documentary, the current assassination chic reveals that democratic reformers, the international order, civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc., are doomed, at least as long as they play by these rules. The Syrians, the KGB, terror groups, etc. ignore all rules and laws and simply do what is necessary to kill anyone who stands in their way.

The "good guys" not only don't use the same tactics, they've pledged to never consider it, through executive orders and death penalty bans. It's funny how Rep. Charlie "Let's Reinstate The Draft Specifically Because It Will Make the U.S. Military Less Effective" Rangel can lament the "assassination" of Uday and Qusay. The killing of Abu Zarqawi was also often described as "an assassination" in the U.S. press. Sadly, a hellfire missile coming out of the sky does not pause to read the target his rights.

I made the mistake of watching "Munich" last week, in which I learned that assassinating members of Black September who helped plot a terrorist attack is "not righteous." That it's not something that good Jews do. No, good Jews lay down and die for their assailants, apparently. Or they live safely in Hollywood like Spielberg and make movies about how immoral it is for Israelis to assassinate terrorists.

In a world in which the innocent are not safe while eating in Britain, or driving through the streets of Beirut, or running for office in Ukraine or working in skyscrapers in New York City, I turn to my social betters, the ones so quick to lament the blood on our hands from "assassination" and ask, "Okay, how do you want to fight this war?" Or perhaps, more specifically, "how do you want to win?"  The bad guys are out to win, and will put out all the stops.

And if they say "international tribunal," they might as well come out and say, "we're okay with dying."

Because, you know, waterboarding is mean. Much meaner than poisoning someone or shooting up his car.

UPDATE: So not long after this initial post, I got quite the response from a reader in Europe:

There is no such thing as the KGB, so such an organization could not "whack", or even "allegedly whack" anyone, whether in London or elsewhere.

Semantics. The Russian secret police and spy network can change the letterhead, but they’re the same bunch of cold-hearted SOBs. If it bothers you so much, print out the posting, cross out KGB and write “FSB” above it.

Indeed, the British police are not even certain the man was deliberately poisoned and have downgraded the investigation to "suspicious death", which suggests they're moving away from that theory. He ate sushi just before he fell ill.

Interesting. The man is on his deathbed, pointing the finger at Putin, and the insistence is, “the fish did it.” Round up the usual sushi chefs. Of course, eating bad sushi often leaves diners with their hair falling out, their throats swelling, severe damage to the nervous and immune systems and sudden heart failure. Happens all the time, right?

 

I’m sure it’s strictly coincidental that he had tea with a former KGB bodyguard before falling ill. 

The interesting thing is why he was investigating this woman journalist's death and on behalf of whom. Since the neocons/Israel Lobby have been screeching from day 1 that it was Putin who did it, finding evidence to support that claim would be nothing new. However, if he had uncovered evidence that she had been murdered by someone else, and was too honest to suppress it, that would be a sensation that the guilty parties might not want to come out. A qui profite le crime?

It was Neocons! Honest to God, this is like a parody of inane lefty conspiracy theories. 

Putin critics like "this woman journalist" Anna Politkovskaya are getting shot, dying in mysterious circumstances left and right, and the suspicious mind of our friend slips right over Putin and goes straight to Tel Aviv and the American Enterprise Institute. Come on, man, even Inspector Clouseau got the right guy eventually.

I have never before heard anyone claim that Yushenko was poisoned by any agency of the Russian state or any other foreign state for that matter. Yushenko himself has never made any such claim. I assume you just made that up.

 

Which do you, prefer, ABC News?

A Ukrainian presidential candidate's chief of staff believes "Soviet Union … sort of KGB experts" were behind a plot to poison his candidate, the aide told ABC News' "Good Morning America" today.

 Or, the Washington Post:

In December, Saathoff, Holstege and another doctor traveled to Vienna to meet Yushchenko and consult with his doctors. During the trip, Holstege's diagnosis was confirmed by a lab in the Netherlands. Dioxins are organic compounds that contain chlorine and are a byproduct in the manufacture of many industrial chemicals.

Zimpfer said the Dutch lab determined that the level of dioxin in Yushchenko's blood was greater than 100,000 picograms per gram of fat; he said the maximum tolerable level is believed to be about 30 picograms. A picogram is one-trillionth of a gram.

The U.S. official said there are indications that the substance found in Yushchenko's body was similar to highly concentrated dioxin produced by a Russian lab earlier in the decade.

Zimpfer declined to comment, except to say that prosecutors are working to identify possible sources. Another U.S. official familiar with the Vienna trip said the possible connection to the Russian lab did not mean the Russians were involved, since the material could have been stolen. "We are not embarrassed by the truth, but at bottom no one is able to say who did it. We just don't know," he said.

Or how about the guy who just got poisoned himself? Courtesy of that noted neocon propaganda rag, the New York Times:

 

[Litvinenko] also claimed familiarity with the alleged techniques of the Russian secret service. At the time of the dioxin poisoning of the Ukrainian leader Viktor Yushchenko, in 2004, Litvinenko said a secret KGB laboratory in Moscow was still operated by the FSB and specialized in the study of poisons."

The view inside our agency was that poison is just a weapon, like a pistol," said Litvinenko, who served in the KGB and the FSB, from 1988 to 1999. "It's not seen that way in the West, but it was just viewed as an ordinary tool."

Or the Christian Science Monitor: 

"This case of poisoning Yushchenko is not an isolated one at all," says Andrei Piontkovsky, head of the Center for Strategic Studies in Moscow. "This practice was routine for the KGB in Soviet times, and I don't think their successors have higher moral standards."

Anyway, back to our friend the skeptic:

The ordinary principles of criminal investigation suggest that neither Syria nor Iran nor the US had anything to do with the Gemayel murder. All three had everything to lose and nothing to gain by such a crime. A qui profite le crime?

Gemayel’s claim to fame is that he was an anti-Syrian politician; and yet our friend sees absolutely no benefit to Syria in this guy getting whacked.

 

I also note that this “give-Syria-the-benefit-of-the-doubt-because-they-have-no-motive” thinking has yet to extend to the Lebanese:

Mourning gave way to calls for unity, defiance and confrontation. Demonstrators in the crowd shouted for the resignation of the Lebanese president, Émile Lahoud, who is allied with Syria. They cursed the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and spat on pictures of Gen. Michel Aoun, a Christian who has aligned his party with Hezbollah.  

It seemed that Lebanon’s struggling pro-Western movement, at least for a day, had regained its footing in outrage and fear at yet another political assassination. Mr. Gemayel, 34, was the fifth anti-Syria leader to be killed since Mr. Hariri was killed in February 2005 — and his supporters immediately blamed Syria and its allies in Lebanon, charges that Syria strongly denied.

But hey, what would the Lebanese know? I’m sure they’re too busy dodging bullets and bomb shrapnel to conduct a rational investigation.

When I see you reduced to ranting and sneering, I realize that you believe that your ideology is defeated. Welcome to the club.

Reassuringly, this e-mail comes from an account with the European Court of Justice, the supreme court of the EU.

 

I feel safer, don’t you?