This is William O. Beeman, the author of this piece. Thanks to others for the comments on my article, which has been well received internationally. I wanted to make sure that everyone knew that the article was published in New America Media, which syndicates to a wide variety of news outlets. The article url is <http: news.newamericamedia.org="" news="" view_article.html?article_id="be0c1714ee6d115a328ec24b7d081e62&amp;from=rss"> A few random resposes. It is impossible in a limited format to cover ancillary issues such as Russian drive for a warm water port. I was last in the Caucasian region in 2007. One can talk about relative corruption, but I should point out that Transparency International, who publishes the annual assessment of perceptions of corruption with a measure of 1 (most corrupt) to 10 (least corrupt, ranks the Caucasian independent nations as follows: Georgia 3.4 Armenia 3.0 Azerbaijan 2.3 The world is very corrupt, but these nations are among the most corrupt.