Polish President and others die in plane crash
 

Polish president killed in plane crash - CNN.com

Talk about wiping out the whole heads of state and military.....

CFIT..... Controlled Flight Into Terrain

Pretty crazy stuff, this would be like AF1 going down...

-spence

Along with the VP, Speaker, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff onboard, all while leaving the Minority Whip in charge of what's left......

Sad stuff,,,

Crazy! Wife has been pretty upset the last few days.

sad, they all flew together to save $. It appears from the reaction that the government was liked.

Very sad. A nations future changes in the blink of an eye.

Tyler, give her our regards.

Ironically, on the way to Katyn forest. One of Stalin's most brutal mass murders.

Horrible news.

Now there are reports that the Polish president, in the past, overruled his pilots on flight decisions and ordered landings that were, at the very least, chancy.

It's clear that the Russian controllors advised the pilot to divert to either Minsk or Moscow, as the field at Smolensk didn't have a full ILS landing system--probably only a localizer beam without glideslope.

Is Russia to be trusted on this? Putin is personally supervising the investigation. He is a master of the coverup.

On this one, yes. The cause of the accident is pretty clear. If Russia somehow wanted this guy dead, someone forgot to clue in the Russian air traffic control guys who told the pilot to break off his approach and divert to either Minsk or Moscow, both of which have all-weather ILS landing systems. Clear cut case of controlled flight into terrain due to poor visibility, IMO.

Putin is the prime minister, and nominally at least, Medvedev as President outranks him (although most believe Medvedev to be Putin's puppet). As Prime Minister, he met with the Polish PM earlier and they toured the massacre site together. Medvedev was supposed to meet the Polish president there. By all accounts, relations between Russia and Poland are improving