I haven't had time to read all the responses, so my apologies if someone covered this evidence more fully...I'd like to see an evaluation from a full clinical forensic psychologist on Dr. Ivins around 2001. I'm no expert, but I did go to graduate school for clinical forensic psychology before going in a different direction... as an intern at St. Elizabeth's I witnessed evaluations, and even on a preliminary basis they answer a lot of outstanding questions.

On the mental health evidence: Paranoid Personality Disorder does not equal homicide. I won't say that as an absolute, but it's close...the diagnosis of "personality disorder" implies he has a distorted way of interpreting events, but not active delusions. Those would be almost certainly required for someone who saw fit to potentially kill dozens of people. In fact, as Dr. Nass mentions, the care taken in executing the attacks (and more importantly, faking the source!) doesn't jive with any paranoid psychotic state, much less the axis 2 "personality disorder". People who are in that place want the world to know they are defending themselves from attack, and would shout it from a rooftop if they could. The organization in the execution of the attacks would be more suited to someone with anti-social personality disorder, i.e., your garden variety serial killer. Someone who wants to hide what they've done.

Also, Paranoid Personality Disorder seemed like something less than a full diagnosis and given well after the attacks. No evidence on his mental health at the time, which is paramount. Honestly, if someone is in a place where they would do this and doesn't want to hide it, people around them will know. (Of course, I wouldn't rule out that they did and aren't saying, or we haven't seen it...but that would obviously be critical evidence.)

Right now, there's nothing that shows someone who would plan these attacks. There's a smattering of honestly, fairly low-grade mental health issues. An emergent hold is not low-grade, but it happened years later and not in a manner consistent with the attacks. I'm not saying that more damning mental health evidence doesn't exist, given how sketchy the records released are, but given his willingness to seek help it would be somewhere if it existed at all.

There seemed to be a glitch in logging in to post responses earlier today - I wouldn't want anyone to think that because this show is a quite thoughtful discussion on different motives and concerns in the S.Ossetia dispute that others aren't as interested in it as they are in, say, U.S. politics. Even if that's probably in part true.

I think that in the show Glenn, and to some extent King, veers too quickly away from the U.S. narrative. I'm not saying Russia's all at fault, just that it's less about fault then about resolution. King and Glenn touched on the most relevant analogy here: Kosovo. Or, for that matter, Ireland and the U.S. You simply cannot carve out a piece of a country and say because in this part the majority of people - many of them recent immigrants or settlers - support another form of government that they should automatically self-determine. It was wrong of Britain to assert that right in Ireland, wrong of the U.S. and Albania to assert that right in Kosovo and it's wrong of Russia to do so here.

Are we hypocrites? Did Georgia overreach because they thought they had our support, and help provoke the mess? Is the media only telling one side of the story? Sure. Does Russia need to withdraw immediately and unconditionally? Also true - Georgia is an internationally recognized sovreign nation. We shouldn't "be grateful that Russia isn't bombing Tblisi". I wish we abided by international law in Iraq, but we shouldn't lose sight of that now.

I'm pretty sure that if we sat down in a room most here would find themselves in agreement - U.S. is dangerously overstretched already, has few good moves and even less moral authority.

That said, to Sean (and to Glenn) this is not a conflict to be viewed through the U.S. lens. Violations of international law have occurred; this isn't a "proactive approach to defending its borders" on Russia's part. The longer they are there the more it looks like an invasion. Again, I am not saying that Georgia doesn't bear much responsibility for the situation; they gambled and they lost. It was a stupid move on their part. But it has to stop there, and the U.S. should work through the international community to the maximum amount possible to bring this to an end.

And while the U.S. got burned by aggressive and ill-considered words about Kosovo (to say nothing of our actions in Iraq), I do kind of tire of hearing what hypocrites the U.S. is here. Of course we are, as are most. If you are waiting for a non-hypocritical actor on the international scene you will be waiting a long time.