- Some Thoughts

The news is full of articles recently about the russian spy that was poisoned by polonium 210. (see the Yahoo story, Italian Who Met Spy Has Traces Of Poison and the CNN story, Polonium 210 One Of The World's Rarest Elements.)
We know a couple of facts:

1) An ex-soviet spy, Alexander Litvinenko died, poisoned with Polonium 210
2) Polonium 210 poisoning is very difficult to detect
3) Litvinenko was a harsh critic of Putin's Russian government
4) Litvinenko blames his poisoning on Russia
5) His wife and a friend of his also have traces of Polonium 210 on them
6) You just can't find Polonium 210 in your house or grocery store. In fact, only government labs or large universities with a reactor can make it.
7) Polonium 210 has been used as an initiator to detonate nuclear weapons in the 40's and 50's. But, the technology is now obsolete.
8) His friend received an e-mail from a source naming the purported killers of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian investigative journalist gunned down on Oct. 7 in Moscow. The e-mail reportedly said that he and Litvinenko — a friend of the reporter — were also on the hit list.
9) Politkovskaya had planned to file a lengthy story on Soviet torture practices in Chechnya.
10) Litvinenko was a very vocal proponent of the theory that the Kremlin ordered the assassination of Politkovskaya because she was trying to tie together a story that the Putin government had an official torture policy in the war in Chechnya.

Deductions:

It's not likely to be an accidental poisoning.
It's pretty clear it's a murder
The murder weapon is pretty expensive.
Who ever is behind it, did not want it to be easily detected.
Hmmmm could it be the Soviet government? It's well known the soviets tortured in Chechnya. So why does this need to be covered-up??

Or how about if Chechnya was the destination of extraordinary rendering by a western country that would be repulsed by mass torture? Perhaps the US government? How would that be covered up? Wouldn't it be nice to blame it on a "barbaric" government like the Soviet Union? ...especially when our leader is evangelic and would never dream of torturing anyone.

Why are we bombarded with media blurbs that are trying to get us to accept torture? Why is this propaganda necessary if we are not complicit in torture? Should this not be repulsive to everyone? I'll tell you why there aren't mass protests about these human rights abuses. It's because people show no sign of even recognizing there's a problem with torture in the first place.