>>People who get all their knowledge of world affairs from Newsweek do tend to forget that Putin learned his craft from Yuri Andrapov. But the folks who follow such things knew who Putin was long before he had much of a public profile and back when power struggles usually ended in a cellar in the Lubyanka.
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>>I am somewhat comforted that he seemed to come from the cynical rather than ideological wing of the KGB and that in the case of Islamic fundamentalism we have somewhat common interests. If 911 had happened in Moscow Afghanistan would be glowing in the dark.
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>I was always dismayed by Bush's statement that he had "looked into Putin's eyes". I did too, and I kept seeing KGB.
Yeah, that one kept bugging me too. I was pretty sure Rice got to talk to him in Russian and I know she'd been studying him for a long time so I would imagine whatever Bush said publicly there were probably other people telling him to count his fingers after he shook hands.
I think they did cut a deal re: Chechnya and Uzbekitan right before the Afghan invasion which probably would have made Bismark or Metternich proud.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
