Putin to head investigation into Polish president's death

[ixion]

Source: ABC News - AU

Russia says Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will personally head the investigation into an aeroplane crash that killed Poland's president.

...

They were part of an official delegation travelling to commemorate the massacre of thousands of Polish soldiers by soviet troops during the second world war.

...

Authorities have found one of the flight recorders of the plane, news agencies reported.

Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/10/2869413.htm?section=world

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It seems curious to me that Putin is so eager to head up an investigation.

[joeybee12]

1. Oh yeah, with Putin on board the truth shall prevail!

:sarcasm:

[dipsydoodle]

3. Thev've already said

the plane was only 2 seconds short of landing and it clipped the top of trees near the end of the runway. That was from a Polish reporter on the spot. Not much to investigate really.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

6. Here's a crazy thought: maybe Putin WANTS people to suspect him, knowing full well it's an accident?

Send people into wild goose chases?

Boost self's image as a superpowerful evil badass?

Just a random idea.

[dipsydoodle]

7. Its common knowledge now on the news

that the pilot had ignored an instruction to divert to Minsk due to fog. It was the fog which apparently caused him to misjudge the height of the trees.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

8. Yep. But when did such things ever stop conspiracy theorists? -nt

[dipsydoodle]

10. Exactly

:hi:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

11. See post #9 (while you can)

:rofl:

[dipsydoodle]

15. What a nutter.

Complete fruitcake :rofl:

[RufusTFirefly]

28. Excellent job of jumping right in!

Why would anyone suspect that nice young man Mr. Putin of anything?

(Be sure to mention Oliver Stone in one of your subsequent posts. That's a proven winner if you want to quickly discredit anyone who dares to be skeptical.)

[Art_from_Ark]

32. What if the headlines had read like this:

"Former KGB agent puts himself in charge of investigating plane crash that kills top Polish leaders"?

[PDJane]

2. My first thought was.......

I wonder why he needed to be assassinated. The second thought was, "Oh, yeah....put the fox in charge of the investigation. Good."

I'm either cynical as hell, or too aware of the possibility of political assassination being for the better good of the oligarchy.

[FarCenter]

4. Pretty clearly pilot error

BBC says that the pilot had been advised to proceed to Minsk, due to the fog at Smolensk.

AFP says that there are reports that the pilot made 4 attempts to land before crashing.

[IScreamSundays]

33. Don't you think it odd that the pilot made 4 attempts to land at Smolensk

When he was asked to divert to Minsk. I also believe he had another alternative.

[onehandle]

5. Quick! Somebody run a geiger counter over the wreckage! nt

[abdullah]

9. Putin killed them.

Putin didn't want an anti-ballistic missile system going in near Russia. Putin was in the KGB since 1975. You know they are ruthless people and they operate to the day. Just like when Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated in the U.K. just a few years ago by means of Russian radiological poison! Poland is a NATO country so if they determine foul play, that means all NATO countries go to war with Russia. It would be a good thing for NATO to overthrow the Russian government right now because Putin is a dangerous dictator but they also have a large nuclear arsenal.

[mojowork_n]

13. Bull plop

Putin (no, I mean Boris and Natasha's diabolical weather control machine) created the fog, then took over the pilot's brain, so that the plane would clip the trees...

[mojowork_n]

14. Oops, double post n/t

[Robeson]

18. Oh my. That sound you hear is abdullah's post sucking my brain cells away.

[JackRiddler]

20. Fundamentally I wouldn't put anything past him...

but, assuming they wanted to, wouldn't there be less conspicuous ways for the KGB successor organization to off the Polish president, if that's what they wanted? Taking down a plane over RUSSIAN air space doesn't seem like a good way to avoid suspicion.

[CynicalObserver]

24. one view would be that russia, with the US now politically

oriented in a way that seems to favor russian interests over the former ssr's (and poland's, remember the russia-invasion-anniversary cancellation of the missle def. deal, Russia does something so absolutely brazen that it sends a very clear message to ALL the world that they are going to do what they want in their sphere. You can bet a lot of pro-western e. european governments aren't going to just privately believe the BBC's line on this.

[JackRiddler]

37. It would be pretty crazy... like asking for a world war.

The fact that they were on their way to a commemoration of the Katyn massacre, against the Russian government's preference, is going to make theories about possible sabotage irresistible to many in Poland, and Russia for that matter. If so, it would be like a second Katyn, which is where the Stalinists murdered thousands of Polish army officers and intellectuals caught in their zone of occupation at the start of World War II, in an effort to decapitate Poland, much as the Germans were doing in their own zones (some annexed to Germany with all Poles deported, some under the dreadful Generalgouvernment).

I just don't see this in a Russian interest.

[Lagomorph]

21. Of course!

As we all know, nobody ever makes a mistake or exercises poor judgment. The Truth is always deliberate and diabolical.

[CynicalObserver]

23. realpolitik has to be taken into account re russia here, this is

just too much of a target-rich event to simply believe the first things reported on the news, which invariably all has to come out of sources located in russia. The entire top-level of the polish government and military has been killed.

I am dismayed that people here believe, just because bbc or whoever reports what they were told, that it must be true.

[ClarkUSA]

12. Kacynski wasn't as "friendly" to Russia as the new Polish President, according to the NYT. Hmm...

"Mr. Kaczysnki, 61, was elected president in 2005 just as his identical twin brother, Jaroslaw, became head of the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice government, often putting Poland on a collision course with Russia. Mr. Kaczynski forged close relationships with Ukraine and Georgia and pushed for their accession into NATO, arguing passionately that a stronger NATO would keep Russia from reasserting its influence over Eastern Europe.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin took a major step to address improve relations by becoming the first Russian or Soviet leader to join Polish officials in commemorating the anniversary. He was joined there by Mr. Tusk.

Mr. Kaczynski, who is seen by the Kremlin as less friendly to Russia, was not invited to the joint Russian-Polish ceremony on Wednesday. Instead, Mr. Kaczynski decided to attend a separate, Polish-organized event in Katyn on Saturday."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/world/europe/11poland.html

Now Tusk is the new President and Putin has gotten rid of a big pro-Western, anti-Russia thorn in his side. Funny how he now wants to head up the "investigation" into the "terrible accident."

[Abq_Sarah]

19. Bronislaw Komorowski is the interim President

Donald Tusk remains Prime Minister. It's true the President was a thorn in Putin's side. He deliberately refused to deal with Kaczynski, preferring the conciliatory manner of Mr Tusk.

Putin's declaration that he will lead the investigation is going to send the conspiracy fans into a frenzy. Putin may hope Poland's elections result in a President who is not a anti-Russian hardliner but this accident might result in another Kaczynski being elected.

[ClarkUSA]

25. Putin-friendly Polish premier Donald Tusk is now the leader of Poland's government.

"Kaczynski, 59, was active in the anti-communist opposition since the 1970s and advised the Solidarity hero Lech Walesa during the workers' strikes that led to the toppling of the communist regime in 1989... Kaczynski infuriated the Tusk government several times by blocking legislation including health sector reform."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100410/wl_time/08599198107500

How convenient for Putin and Tusk.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

26. No. Tusk was already Prime Minister, and remains Prime Minister.

A congressman is acting President until elections in a couple of months.

[ClarkUSA]

35. True, but now Putin's buddy Tusk rules w/o Kacynski's pro-Western/anti-Russia opposition.

And Putin has removed a large pro-NATO thorn in his side, along with plenty of Kacynski's allies. Funny how so many of Putin's serious opponents get killed, eh? Anyone who knows Putin's track record knows this is a bit too convenient to be true.

Nice of him to want to head up the "investigation" though. :eyes:

[colorado_ufo]

16. I laughed out loud . . .

[Beacool]

17. Putin? Former KGB Putin? THAT Putin is heading the investigation?

Oh, boy...........

;(

[dflprincess]

38. This is even better than putting Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission n/t

[JDPriestly]

22. The news from Afghanistan is bad.

The "surge" is not working. The Russians see an opening, and they are grabbing the opportunity.

The Russians are laughing at us for making the same mistake that they made in Afghanistan.

Besides, the kind of raw capitalism that they adopted does not work that well.

Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine -- Are we about to find out even more than we already know how it feels to be on the receiving end?

Kyrgyzstan and now this?

And we cannot take a moral high ground since we have announced that our president has the power to order political assassinations.

[AtheistCrusader]

30. Yeah, I bet putin was out there watering the trees himself.

'Come on, just a couple more feet'.

Probably had a fog machine too.

Ockham's razor. They didn't want to divert, because they wanted their press junket coverage at the planned arrival point. And they got it, in an unfortunate way. There's no moral high ground to take. Human pride. Human error. Tragedy.

[JDPriestly]

36. All it takes is an error in calculating the height of the plane.

If there was a fog and no visibility, the pilot may have relied more than he should have on the local air traffic control to determine his altitude. The accident could have been caused by wrong information from the ground -- depending on what kinds of instruments he was relying on.

[Old Troop]

27. I'm good with that. Not!

[Strelnikov_]

29. Long standing Russian tradition . . like when Stalin led the investigation

into the assassination of Trotsky and Grand Duke Nicholas the killing of Rasputin.

[Blue_Tires]

31. Some news sources are saying that the CVR/FDR were recovered

If it's true that the flight crew were ordered to land at Smolensk over their objections, then it will be easy to prove...

[pipoman]

34. Did Putin ever get to the bottom of the tragic

poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko?