January 5, 2008 By Robert Amsterdam

Georgia at the Polls

georgiagasmask.jpgIt was a fantasy come true for the Kremlin apologists. Distracted for just a moment from their diligent yet nutty work debunking the supposedly anti-Putin agenda/conspiracy in the international press (how these people reconcile that position with the Time nomination is beyond all logic), they took notice of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s terrifying brutal crackdown against opposition protesters last November – the consequences of which have led to today’s disputed snap election. The scary scenes of jackboot riot police beating the peaceful marching crowds seemed like it was pulled directly from Moscow, Myanmar, or even Kenya (apart from Georgia’s innovation of the Mickey Mouse gas mask for the riot police (pictured)). What exquisite hypocrisy!, exclaimed the apologists – here we have the golden boy of the West, a man who holds diplomas from Columbia, George Washington, and the International Institute of Human Rights, behaving like a tin-pot despot! Now no one can complain about a few imperfections in Russia, they concluded, and declared the so-called “color revolutions” to have been officially and definitively defeated.