you dioxin say

Did you read about that a presidential candidate in the Ukraine who was poisoned? Have you seen the pictures? It's incredible. One day Viktor Yushchenko is a relatively youthful and attractive guy walking around doing his political thing and then he has dinner with the Head of the State Security Service, eats some soup and less than three months later he looks like he's caught a bizarre case of Elephantitis of the face. He's pock-marked and swollen and there's a distinct grey cast to his skin. It's horrifying. The diagnosis is poisoning by Dioxin, the active ingredient in Agent Orange, commonly used in weed-killer and pesticides.

Are you kidding me? Poisoning? Who does that these days? It's so archaic. It's so Eastern.

In the West it seems we're more forthright. We want you dead, we shoot you. As my friend Eddie said, we're more of the "You better run" school of violence. We like guns. We like big ass tanks. We're down with stabbings and of course the ever-popular character assassination. But poisoning?

Damn.

It's just so mean. The stuff of gothic romance novels, not modern day politics.

Though I guess everyone can't be as modern and civilized as we in the States are. We'll just take your entire country to war, kill 100,000 of your country's people and call it peace-making.

But we'll do it to your face.

An interesting side note: Yushchenko's opponent has publicly stated that he wishes Yushchenko no evil, but does question whether his health has been compromised enough that he could effectively serve as president.

Now that's more like it.