A mission to Katyn

Shantih (peace) to the president of Poland, killed with all his companions on a flight that was to have commemorated the 20,000 Polish officers murdered by the Russians so they'd pose no obstacle to the Soviet takeover of that country in 1945. First Poland was raped by the Germans, then by the Russians, and left to half a century of foreign rule (dressed up during the Soviet era as a People's Democracy). But the Katyn massacre finally emerged in all its Stalinesque brutality. Now that eastern Europe seems likely to be abandoned again by the United States, the Polish president was on his way to salute the dead, and incidentally to mend fences with the newly emergent Russian almost-empire. It seems that nothing turns out well when it involves Moscow. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford