The poisoning

Who poisoned Yuschenko? (via Instapundit)

So it now looks certain that Yuschenko was poisoned. Some had been arguing as early as last week that Yuschenko had really just had a flare-up of rosacea, a disease that causes some acne and red splotches on the face as well as a thickening of the skin on the nose.

I looked rosacea up on the internet and found that it looked to be more localized to specific areas of the face and not to the whole face. The symptoms though bad for those who suffer from it, didn’t seem to be nearly as bad as those suffered by Yuschenko. His whole face has been affected, every part of it. His looks have changed so dramatically as to make him look like an entirely different man than he was. Rosacea just didn’t seem like a good explanation to me.

But who would be stupid enough to try and poison the opposition candidate during an election? That is the question I think that gave some people pause. Yuschenko said he had been to dinner with the SBU chief--the successor of the KGB--when it happened. (He drove off and then had to stop to vomit. Probably saved his life.) So what could be more obvious? Secret service poisoning a man who is challenging the ruling elite. And at a dinner with the head of that service. Case closed. Who would order such a thing that so obviously points back to the government and who would carry out such an order where there could be no deniability? No one in his right mind would do it, that’s for sure, so it must have been something else, some thought.

But it was done and it does point back to the government. And I think this fact points to the real problem here. The falsified and fraudulent election is one thing as bad as it was. And corruption is another thing and the real reason why the revolution is justified. But in reality it is the depths to which these people will go to maintain what they have and to get more that is the real issue. It is corruption but it is more than that. Corruption we see in other parts of the world, places like India, China, Latin America, and others. But in Ukraine the ruling elite will do anything to keep themselves in power and in privilege, even when it points back to them. Anything. This may seem reckless and foolish, but when you have been able to hush things up for so long and to bury them deep so that they do not come to light, what is a thing like this but just some more cleanup they need to do. But this is corruption with no bottom to it.

So this is something they could do and something we now know they did do. And they must have felt they could deal with it like they have all the others. Except they didn’t figure that the people might have had enough of this. And they have.

UPDATE: Apparently the AP ran a report that has the Austrian clinic and doctor denying that they said it was poison. So I take it all back.

The problem might be with the label. "Poison" suggests an act and is better investigated using forensics. A clinic is not equipped to handle that sort of thing and is not trained in forensics. So they might be wary of the label. They might feel more comfortable talking about substances than what did or did not happen.