December 16, 2004
From the desk of Jane Galt:Pure poison
Good post on dioxim poisoning from Derek Lowe. He engages in some of the speculation that I've seen on other web sites: why would you bother to poison Yuschenko with something that isn't really that poisonous? The only proven long-term side effect is Chloracne, which is what is currently disfiguring him.
Well, it seems to me that maybe that was the point. If you kill an opposition candidate, you create a martyr, with a groundswell of indignation on which his successor can ride into office. If you, on the other hand, make him terribly unphotogenic and a little too sick to campaign effectively, but don't disable him enough for the opposition to put a more effective candidate in his place, you increase your chances of taking the election quite considerably.
Posted by Jane Galt at December 16, 2004 11:49 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksHmm, that particular angle hadn't occurred to me. But I'm not sure that this was the logic. After all, with the disfiguring chloracne and all, Yushchenko is the worst of both worlds for his opponents: he's simultaneously a martyr and a live campaigning force. The other problem is that individual reactions to dioxin vary, both in overall sickness and specific symptoms like chloracne. You couldn't be sure you'd get the effect you wanted.
Of course, we could both be right, since this line of thought takes us right back to the nefarious-but-incompetent scenario.
Given a choice between:
A. "someone was an idiot"
or
B. Someone was particularly clever
I would go with "A" every time. Maybe the KGB was the most competent Soviet-era institution (it makes for good spy vs. spy plot lines), but it was still a Soviet institution. Put my money on "A."
What was that supposed CIA plot to poison Castro's cigars? KGB spooks aren't the only ones with silly ideas. Poisoning in general is a lame way to attempt assassination, unless it's accompanied by a chair, a rope tying the victim to the chair, a device to hold the victim's mouth open... or, let's say, a concentration camp with seriously armed guards, "showers" that lock, and a poison delivered through the victims' respiratory systems (shudder).
I am shocked, SHOCKED, that the Red Sox Pitcher who beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the ALCS would know so much about biochemistry.
I hadn't followed the Ukraine mess much and hadn't seen a photo of the man before this came out. Seeing the before-and-after, I'd have to go with the idea that they were trying to scare him into submission/soften him up to concede and that taking a good looking relatively young guy and making him look like a monster certainly couldn't hurt.
Okay, but I posted on it first, and said the same thing! :)
and PS, you misspelled "dioxin" in the first sentence. again, :)
Try die-oxen. That will get the animal rights people involved. Yuschenko cannot fail with their support.
Seriously, Yuschenko was devilishly handsome before his transformation. This was obviously a part of his enormous political appeal. By destroying his good looks, damaging his health, and attacking him on a psychic level by reminding him of his vulnerability, his enemies may have made themselves overconfident. (but not so overconfident as to neglect certain backup plans for the election, eh?)
Next week I will provide a further installment as to why the plot failed.
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