Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.
Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko.
That one failed. "There will be no Kostunica in Belarus," the Belarus president declared, referring to the victory in Belgrade.
But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev.
The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections.
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Alliance Atlantis films proudly presents...
Anakin Skywalker will fall and the Empire will rise May 2005.
While the Americans can be so admired, the reality is that they are only human. They may appreciate the efforts of the Ukrainians trying to finally throw the Russians off their backs, but it's unlikely that hundreds of thousands of people have stayed outside protesting for an entire week in freezing temperatures simply as a result of a slick marketing campaign. It's not like they're all wearing 'Nike' clothing too...
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<a href="http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/2004votefraud_testimony.html">http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/2004votefraud_testimony.html</a> <br />
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<a href="http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/947">http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2004/947</a> <br />
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<a href="http://okimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=344">http://okimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=344</a> <br />
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That is after 5 seconds of looking. If you don't know what has happened, it just means you don't want to know.