A tragedy and the basis to become a mythic part of the long memory of Polish history, for this flight carried key members of the Polish government into Russia to attend the memorial for the Katyn massacre by the Soviets of 20,000 Polish soldiers during WWII.

Even though it was pure accident, such events become symbolic and mythic: a government mourning those who were killed in Russia is itself killed in Russia.

Now let's see how Russia handles this - it's vital that they stand up and acknowledge this event as a great loss.

My sympathies and prayers are extended to Poland at this time. This is a great loss for Poland.

Tragic to lose so many leaders in one fell swoop.

ET, it was the Polish Officer Corps that they massacred,just to make sure Poland had no military leaders that could thwart Soviet plans post-war.

As Lech Walesa said, another great tragedy at Katyn.

I wonder if rumors will start up on the internet.

A couple of decades ago, there would be a Polish joke somewhere in this grim event. There are no many more appropriate targets for cynical humor.

Since Poland is one of the only productive and god fearing Christian nations left in Europe why couldn't this have been the Idiot Gordon Brown's Plane full his jolly micro-managers and perverts.

A sad day for us all.

That should have read, "There are many more appropriate targets for cynical humor".

So, there are reports of 132 being on board, the official death count at 88 but have now boosted to 96.

The great Soviet mystery: the dead and the "officially dead", those numbers just never seem to quite add up.

A "convenient" way to have some undesirables dealt with in a most delicious way!

dmorris - yes, thanks for clarifying - it was the Polish Officers Corp who were massacred.

Rumours will develop on the internet and in the towns and villages. People don't live, ever, by facts alone or by reason alone. It's impossible. Only machines are capable of that.

People live within emotions and narratives that hover within the fuzzy realm between fact and fiction - and this event cannot remain fact; it's too large and too embedded within a past history. Watch how quickly it becomes fiction and part of the Polish-Russian narrative.

Posted by: ET at April 10, 2010 11:02 AM

Everyone love a great story in Europe, especially over some "wodka"!

Message to world "Don't fly Aeroplop" Message to the Polish people "We share in your loss. God Speed".

Unfortunately Russian has a bit too much history for this to be totally seen as an accident. Especially when there was confusion over whether or not they were following orders from the ground at the time (and in which language?). God Bless Poland, and please see her through these troubled times.

How horrible and tragic. Prayers for all.

According to Polish pre-WWII law, all able bodied male college graduates were drafted as officers of the reserves. That accounts for relatively high number of officers captured by Soviets in 1939.
Most of privates, especially if they were members of ethnic minorities were disarmed & released on the spot. Officers representing the educated classes were shipped east to their doom.
Brutality of Katyn executions shocked even the Nazis.

Anyone catch that PUTIN will be heading up the investigation from the Russian end?

I call BS. Tupolevs and their pilots have IFR capabilities.

Now if it were an Airbus, I'd immediately blame the plane.

In the late '70s while in high school, I read a book about Katyn, adding to knowledge from "Gulag" and a number of other books and authors. It was yet more information to compare and contrast with the official nonsense about the Soviet system. This current loss is insult to injury, especially as this was the first official Russian memorial. The Poles just seem to keep taking hits.

Meanwhile, in the "Daily Mail", a Truther ignores the tragedy and spews.

The narrative is starting.

Russia is holding hands with Obama, pushing him, the naive narcissist, behind them...as they consolidate their control over Georgia, over the Ukraine..and Kyrgyzstan...whose new govt Russia has instantly recognized.

Meanwhile, Obama is busy informing the world that the US is moving out of the nuclear realm; that its goal is a gaian world of hope-and-change; that terrorists don't exist (except far-right extremists internal to the US); that Islamic fascism doesn't exist; jihadism doesn't exist; and that all one has to do in this Virtual Obama World..is talk, because Mind Controls Matter.

Now, what about Poland? What will Russia do?

Related:

OK, it's too easy to be paranoid about such things. But did you notice that the coup-makers in Kyrgystan were "recognized" by Putin as its legitimate government on the very day that leaders of eastern European countries, many former "satellites" held in orbit by the gravity of mother Russia, met with the man-child Obama?

Message: Keep playing footsie with the West and you could be next.

Putin did it.

This definitely has a certain.....odor?....
Negligence and stupidity cannot be ignored.....what nation places ALL it's executive on one aircraft......DUHHH...
"the Katyn massacre" actually refers to several widely separated mass executions of Polish officers, academics and business owners.
Like most such NKVD purges it was a pistol bullet in the neck, point blank, rather than firing squads.
Nazi inquests involving as many international authorities as possible and allied officers (POWs) attest to contact marks at the entrance wounds.

My thoughts drifted immediately to those you expressed @ 12;04, Nick. Has this been a warning shot across the bow to the Chech President?

Strange that the Obama and the evil KGB president(s) met in Prague so recently...why was this Katyn Woods massacre remembrance kiboshed so brutally? The people of the world would learn about the collaboration of the Soviets and the Nazi's in the obliteration of Poland during and after WWII. The world would also learn about the rest of the world (USA, France and GB) allowing such a tragedy without a squeak. When Churchill took over in GB, things changed but it was too late for Poland; USSR already had it's claws dug in and those claws stayed embedded until President Regan came out on the side of Freedom for the Polish people. I was in Poland in 1983, the KGB had just tortured a Polish priest to death and that Priest's body was lying in a church in Warsaw. Every night the people of Warsaw circled the church with their bodies carrying candles and defiance for ammo. The Soviet overlords imposed a nine o'clock curfew shot random people who were out in the streets to discourage the defiance.

The officers shot by the Soviets, in Katyn woods had fought the Nazi tanks on horseback - they were that brave, the Polish airforce went to Britan and fought in the Battle of Britain. The Polish never stopped fighting and for their resilience and sacrifice, FDR went to Yalta and handed Poland over to 'Uncle Joe' Stalin...Churchill was against it but he was out of men and ammo by the time he won WWII so Poland was again stabbed in the back....was someone in that delegation planning to give a history lesson?

My admiration for the Polish people, at that time (1984), made my heart glow with hope for the world. Ronald Regan and the Pope put the final nails in the coffin of the Soviet rule in Poland because they supported the Polish people. The Soviet Union head honchos have been seething ever since the Polish people gained independence from their Soviet oppressors...was this payback? What was the Zero doing over there? Was this a warning from Zero/putin to the Polish people?

My skin crawls as my heart goes out to the brave people of Poland. God keep the nation of Poland safe while it recuperates from this terrible tragedy. I wish, with all of my heart, that this had not happened.

America...please, please wake up and do something about the terrible mistake you made in 2008.

Here is what Robert Service, the bard of the Yukon wrote in Sept, 1939:

"Warsaw

I was in Warsaw when the first bomb fell;
I was in Warsaw when the Terror came--
Havoc and horror, famine, fear and flame,
Blasting from loveliness a living hell.
Barring the station towered a sentinel;
Trainward I battled, blind escape my aim.
England!I cried. He kindled at the name;
With lion-leap he haled me...All was well.

England! they cried for aid, and cried in vain.
Vain was their valour, emptily they cried.
Bleeding, they saw their city crucified...
O splendid soldier, by the last, lone train,
To-day would you flame forth to fray me place?
Or--would you curse and spit into my face?"

This is the way I feel today. Robert Service was a Red Cross driver in WWI and he stayed overseas after the war. He never returned to the Yukon.

Did the President of Israel smell an ambush, and for that reason; decided to stay away from the nuc fest that Hussein Obama wants to host? Will the banquet be cancelled out of respect for the Polish tragedy?

Why was the entire entourage on ONE plane?

This has a real bad smell about it...what a mess.

The Polish intelligencia obliterated again...

From today's readings:

"Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation" Mark 16:15

I would suggest the Poles have rarely faltered on that commission...

It would appear JPII will be welcoming some more Poles to the resurrection.

I was introduced to Belvedere vodka by a Polish friend some time ago so will have to hoist a couple glasses tonight as a send off.

Na zdrowie

Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief

1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North"

jema 54 - yes, paranoia and conspiracy theories...as differentiated from realism...It's hard to separate them.

But Russia maintains control over Georgie, the Ukraine..and has made great use of Obama's schizoid narcissistic existence in a Virtual World of his own authorship... whereby Obama sees everyone as overawed and overwhelmed by Him as Messiah of Peace.

That has enabled Russia to open Eastern and Central Europe to its return, to move into Venezuala (which is one of Russia's top arms clients); to set up an alliance with Iran to enable it to develop its nuclear capacities, ..all under the nose of Obama.

The 'reset button' of Obama and Hillary Clinton was a PR joke; the reality is the expansion of Russia-Iran-Venezuala power and the entropic disappearance of the US within the ignorant, naive hope-and-change ideology of a demented narcissist.

For the Poles, this is crushing. For the Russians, it is a another chance for indifference.

Obama offered his condolences to Poland Saturday, mourning the “devastating” the death of President Lech Kaczynski, and dozens of other senior officials in a plane crash fire. Poland,Polish President http://usspost.com/polandpolish-president-7967/

I don't buy into the conspiracy theories. The fog was too thick to land and the pilot had 'gone around' several times. He was about to try again and likely lost the numbers over a forest. Even the most experienced pilots make mistakes when faced with tremendous pressure. A plane full of VIPs over a fogged in runway. Land the plane or look like an incompetent.

A shock to me as my prayers go out to the good people of Poland. What a tragedy.

I am so sorry for Poland. Do not trust the Russians...EVER !!!

But Joe - according to the Russians, the pilot was told NOT to land there because of the fog. He was redirected to either Moscow or Minsk. Why did he ignore the directors of the air controllers? Since when does a pilot take such responsibility after being told repeatedly not to land?

Now we watch - and wonder how far Russia will go into its political and economic expansion into East and Central Europe.

I hate to add fuel to the smouldering fire but, the pilot in command has absolute authority, and absolute responsibility for his passengers and crew. You're taught this in basic flight school from day one.

The result of any other method of operation can result in,well, this kind of thing.

He should have gone to an alternate airport where it was safe to land.

But then, look at the experience of the Dutch Captain in the Canary Islands,in command of a loaded 747,and how he acted.

A family friend, now dead, was a Polish academic who'd been drafted into the army in his forties. He was taken by sealed train with his fellow officers to Katyn forrest and heard the gunfire outside his cell, although he didn't understand at the time that there was a massacre going on.

It's likely he was spared because he'd done his PhD in German Economics.

He was one of the ones who maintained for years that the Soviets, not the Nazis, were responsible for this particular atrocity.

There's a reason that lefties are known as "lying scumbags".

Well ET there is an old saying amongst pilots, "there are old pilots and there are bold pilots but there are no old bold pilots. As pilot in command the guy sitting in the left seat is in charge of the aircraft. The air traffic controller can instruct the pilot all he wants but it is still the pilot's decision whether to listen to ATC. Being cleared to land doesn't mean the pilot has to land. Being told the visibility is below minimum doesn't stop the pilot from attempting the landing. We don't know what all was happening on the flight deck and how far away the alternate airport was. I haven't flown for years but the Air Regs used to decree that you carry 45 minutes of fuel reserve. Was the alternate airport too far away after the 'go rounds" to reach with existing fuel reserves? Was there national pride at stake? "Maybe you wussie Russians can't land in a fog but we Poles can!" Maybe it was sense of mission. "That's the president sitting in the VIP section so I have to get him where he is going". It could even be ice build up in the pitot tube that gave the pilots the idea that they had a thousand feet of clearance that didn't exist.

To send condolences to the Polish Embassy in Ottawa:

ottawa@ottawa.polemb.net

Kathy - "Putin did it."

Putin just announced that he is taking personal charge of the investigation.

But of course.

Joe

I am quite sure that the pilot had a good reason to make his decision.

On the board of that plane there were not only politicians but also many generals (6 generals) and a lot of catholic priests (11 of them).
When I heard about I could not believe it, I was convinced only after I checked polish news website.
I want to keep an open mind but my first thought was that FSB/russians were complicit in that crash.

It is such a tragedy. !!!!

God keep the Polish people in His hand.
Ill wait to see more info before I start thinking about Russian plots.
Fact is, people don't want to believe the rain (tragedy) falls on the just & unjust alike.
We always have an excuse for why good people die. If not we make up one.
JMO

For those of you who are interested, Putin and Tusk at the crash site
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4C0q2FBURY

First, if the Russians had been trying to pull off some kind of mass assassination they'd have had to have arranged for a thick fog, convinced a pilot to commit suicide and known that any leak would set their efforts to retain influence amongst the former Warsaw pact nations back ten years. So I think we can dismiss the conspiracies out of hand.
Second, who the h@## were the security people who allowed all the country's political elite to fly on one aircraft? They're supposed to be split up whenever practicable exactly for this reason.
My prayers to the long-suffering Polish nation and Polish people.

Joe and Adolf were socialist brothers until .... they held a socialist civil war.

Meanwhile, O was last seen being chased by the MSM. (RTips)
...-

"American “Patriots” to be deployed in Poland
The Voice of Russia ^ | 4-9-10 | Yevgeny Grachev

The decision by the US administration to deploy Patriot anti-aircraft missiles in Poland has triggered mixed reactions in both Poland and elsewhere in Europe. Unlike the politicians, who expect to get both political and economic gains from the plans, the Polish public has repeatedly voiced protests against the plans. Now that the deployment of the missiles is expected any day and the locations all set, criticism of the move is gaining momentum among Poland’s neighbors, including Russia.

Preparations for deploying the Patriot systems and accommodating its personnel are in full swing in the town of Morag in Poland. The ground-to-air missiles are to be delivered there within the next few weeks. The original location for the missiles was a Warsaw suburb but it was changed in favor of Morag due to better maintenance conditions. But since Morag is located a mere 70 kilometers from the border with Russia, the deployment is seen by Russians an anti-Russian move, even though American and Polish officials continue to claim that the missiles are being deployed to prevent a nuclear threat from Iran.

A Patriot missile consists of an interceptor missile and a radar system. It can destroy targets at a range of up to 160 kilometers and at an altitude of up to 11 kilometers. The distance from Tehran to Warsaw can be calculated easily enough."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2490630/posts

Joe has the handle on this. Carrying VIPs to a specified location and ramp time has resulted in more than one major accident. Remember Secretary Brown and the approach to Dubrovnik, which happened to inadvertently go through a mountain; they were trying to land on the scheduled time after a route change and took a short cut. I once delivered a VIP to the wrong airport (fog as well) but we shot two approaches and went to the alternate leaving a band playing for themselves. Better a live chicken than a dead duck.

and JFK was shot by a lone gun man!!!!

I'll just wait and see what the next few days bring

as we know that news paper reports are usually filled with errors and hype

DrD

Not all of polish elite was on the aircraft, just majority of them.

There were many discussions in polish blogosphere (and outside of it) on whether Kaczynski should attend memorial services or not. That was because Putin (former member of KGB - the same organization who murdered polish officers) was supposed to be present during services in Katyn. Some people wanted Kaczynski to go, some did not wanted him to go.
Kaczynski and many others decided to go to show that Poles will always remember what had happened there.

As for policies of Kaczynski - some of them were controversial but that is usual with all political decisions - some people agree and some are against. And it is true, many Poles were against deployment of Patriot missiles in Poland but lately many changed their mind, particularly after events in Georgia and recent articles in Russian media (very anti-polish).
****
as for assassination - I do not think there was an assassination on the other hand I will not believe anything russians would say or the evidence they will provide about crash.

The little proverb about Katyn is just one more reason not to like lberia the troll.

This might well be a tragic, most unfortunate accidental disaster... but in my opinion Putin is not to be trusted.

Something tells me he is ruthless.... evil personified! He presents himself as a statesman, a reasonable world leader and Head of State, but the 'Evil Empire' was never slain!
Do not be lulled into a false sense of security.

"Why was the entire entourage on ONE plane?"

That's what I've been wondering, too. Something smells.

Louise they were all on the one airplane because they were not invited to the ceremony. The President being rather strong willed decided to attend even without an invite and undoubtedly made it abundantly clear that the pilot had to land. It wouldn't be the first time as he had previously pressured a pilot to land at a socked in airport in the Balkans.

they were all on the one airplane because they were not invited to the ceremony.
Joe

What the hell are you writing about!!!
It was a ceremony commemorating POLISH OFFICERS MURDERED by RUSSIAN communists in KATYN!!!
You mean that POLISH president and polish people should not be at ceremony commemorating THEIR OWN PEOPLE?!! That Russians who murdered POLES in KATYN should decide who should be or not be at the memorial services for murdered POles ??
THINK first before you write something that stupid!!!

Yes ella, the president of Poland was NOT invited because of his anti soviet stance. He was going to crash the party. The Poles that were invited were those who were friendly toward the soviets.

Got a link to that Joe? That actually sounds kinda interesting.

I'd like to see that link too, Joe.

There are about 4 postings on Drudge.

An article from the Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vip-syndrome-and-pilot-error-blamed-for-crash-1942116.html