LONDON POISONING UPDATE: Reportedly, it was polonium, and others are at risk. Has Putin overstepped this time?
UPDATE: Paul Milenkovic emails:
To ask if Mr. Putin has overstepped, if he is indeed implicated as the victim of poisoning has charged, is to put things a bit mildly. For all of the talk of the terrorist threat from the political Islam and a nuclear threat ranging from an atom bomb downwards towards “dirty bombs”, it appears that the first radiologicial act of terrorism was state-sponsored and connected to Russia.
And this is radiological terrorism. In addition to killing one man, one has to ask how many others were exposed, perhaps not to a lethal dose but to a quantity to result in cancer some years later? While this does not rise to the level of a dirty bomb attack, it certainly crosses a threshold and gives other terrorists ideas regarding the kind of attack they could stage.
Conducting an assassination in a foreign country by shooting a man or perhaps by poison is one thing, but employing a radioactive poison is crossing a threshold we all hoped would not be crossed. If this sort of thing had been connected to political Islam there would have been some serious repercussions, but as Russia still maintains a nuclear arsenal, they will get away with this, and there will be terrible consequences for letting this pass.
Well, at least this is out, and not being covered up the way some Iranian assassination efforts have been.