It seems that in memorializing a commonly shared calamity, the Polish government was trying to get over the idea that bipolarity in its relations with Russia should be existential, even if it suffered at the hands of repression itself. What an ironic twist that government officials should be killed on that occassion. I hope the intent behind their initial journey remains in the minds of the Poles and Russians. Condolences to all affected.

http://www.bigqueer.com/index.php?/plugin/tag/lech+kaczynski

Poland is not known for their tolerance of gays which became painfully clear when they elected Lech Kaczynski, the outspoken anti-gay former Mayor of Warsaw, as their president last year. As mayor of Kaczynski twice banned a gay equality parade but allowed an anti-gay "normality parade and is infamous for calling homosexuality un-natural.

(You have "executive" when you mean "execution?")

thanks questions -- that must have been an auto-correct error ironically. thanks much for noting, steve

This is a tragedy of epic proportions for the Poles who have seen so many tragedies of epic proportions.

I hope that President Obama and Vice President Biden go to the funeral; they should be joined by both President Clinton and President George W. Bush. Bush had a particularly good relationship with the Poles that Obama damgaged by the tactless way he handled the missile defense issue.

The Poles are amongst the most pro-American nations in Europe.

They deserve our sympathy and respect.

"The crash devastated the upper echelons of Poland's political and military establishments. On board were the army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. Also killed were the national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, Olympic Committee head, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said."

A lot of top officials.

Jesus H Christ WigWag, the only tactless interpretation regarding the plane crash is your psychotic obsession to criticize anything Obama.

Do you get your talking points directly from Dickless Cheney or does he feed them to you through his retarded daughter?

I don't care if I get banned from this blog for this posting, you are a despicable POS!

It's hard for me to believe that a presidential pilot would
ignore the traffic control or take undo risk. The story is strange
and all accounts are sourced from Russian media or military.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I point out that this pilot
behavior sounds odd as reported by the Russians.

Putin taking charge of the investigation doesn't give me
confidence that it will be focused on real events. It's similar to
Cheney taking charge of an investigation of possible Bush
admin failure.

Message delivered: "Don't f_ck with the Russians." And Putin flies in to make sure it is clearly understood. Maybe a 'small' change in missile policy coming up.

My deepest sympathies to the Polish people for their loss, especially at this site.

One strange angle to this tragedy is when, in Georgia, the Saakashvili controlled TV station staged a nutty "War of the World's" replay of the previous year's Russian-Georgia border war. In the fake news broadcast that caused chaos and two deaths in the country, a fictional account of the airplane bombing of the Polish President's plane occurred. Strange and bizarre.

Another strange and sad angle is when the actual Russian-Georgia border war occurred, the Polish President showed his solidarity with Georgia by flying to Georgia to stand with Saakashvili at his time of crisis. The pilot declined to land near the combat are and flew to a nearby location. Kaczynski, who had to continue in a car, threw charges of insubordination at the pilot.

This probably played a role in the sad repeated attempts to land at the site of the Katyn forest
massacre site. Too sad.