Is Vladamir Putin Insane?

Perhaps, but don't fool yourself too much. A story I posted a couple of pages back even states in the title that Putin is a dictator "in the Andropov mold" before outlining the various reasons why that is.

Times are different now, both for Russia and for the world. The United Nations is full of crooks who grandstand as peacekeepers, yet no one thinks to punish them or deny them the power that fosters the corruption right under their noses. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can go speak at Columbia University, even after denying that the Holocaust ever happened and saying that he would like to wipe the entire nation of Israel off the map (and worse).

Seeing this, any world leader sees that it is all just a game of posturing, with your finger stuck accusatorily in the air while your other finger is saying something very different to the audience behind your back.

Putin may not be any "less" of a dictator than Stalin and Andropov, or any of the others. But he may be more strategically flexible, as the times demand. The court of public opinion can be very fogiving to someone speaks in line with their own idealogy, no matter what manner of misdeeds he may be carrying out behind the scenes.

The title of this thread might not be pointed enough at the true nature of Putin's disfunction. He might not be insane after all, but rather a very carefully calculating mastermind.

I iterate,

christophersnow wrote: "Does a dog have fleas?" -Ummon