because they did not name the stuff Oil of Olay.

Maybe his enemies just wanted him to be ugly.

I'm more surprised they didn't go after his wife as well (an American who once worked for Reagan).

Even if acne was the only problem, you'd end up with self-esteem issues being raised by residents around the Superfund sites, along with calls by community activists for federal Clearsil subsidies.

Ummmm .... actually, he was in grave danger of permanent liver damage. The Austrian clinic to which he fled managed to get it out of his system in time to prevent that (it is hoped).

Perhaps the poisoners believed the dioxin hype?

But rbk...

The point being made here is that "grave danger" nonwithstanding, Yuschenko apperently had "the second highest level ever recorded" of dioxin poisoning in a human.... and he is still alive.

Ergo and de facto, dioxin is just not a very good poison to use to kill someone with.

So it is worth a bantering about here if there really was an agenda other than straight-up murder here, especially since the prime suspects are masters of the black art of poison (at least in Russia they are).

I have no theory to offer, but that fact that he was successfully poisoned (big), but is still alive but looks awful... well, 'tis all very odd, that's for sure.

Mike:

If it were an assassination by Greenpeace presumably they'd have global-warmed him?

Best speculation I've seen is that the poisoner wanted to scare him out of politics (presumably because an actual assassination would have brought too much attention).

This of course would mean that he basically has called their bluff.

Of course, this is all speculation on my part.

They probably just wanted to discredit him or scare him rather than kill him. An assasination in the middle of a Presidential campaign might cause the Ukraine to become as isolated internationally as the Stalinist Disneyland of Belarus. Since the Ukraine is a gold mine, nobody in the oligarchy or the apparat wanted to risk killing the goose laying the golden eggs.