Poland reeling and questions needing answers

In the wake of the catastrophic plane wreck it is worth noting just how much damage has been done to the Polish government and society.

In addition to the death of their president they have also lost the head of the country's central bank, a swath of very senior members of parliament from all of the parties, a significant number of senior staff to the President, a large number of leading figures from Polish society and culture, and perhaps most seriously; almost the entire top layer of Poland's national security team has been wiped out.

Both the civilian and military heads of the national defense forces were killed along with many of the most senior military commanders for each branch of the armed forces. It is difficult to see how a deliberate attempt by terrorists or a foreign enemy to decapitate the Polish national defenses could have been more successful. Indeed this very fact, coupled with Poland's long history of bad relations with Russia has already (and inevitably) got the usual conspiracy theorists fired up.

While I am not a fan of wild conspiracy theories (it looks like a terrible accident), all of this does beg a number of questions. Chief among them... What on Earth were they thinking putting so many senior government officials on one plane? I mean seriously. The lowest and most rookie security agent should know that this is a no no.

This is not a new concept. We in the United States have long understood that you don't put all your people in one place at any given time without truly exceptional reasons. The only two circumstances I am aware of where this occurs here is the annual State of the Union Address and the every four years Presidential Inaugural. In both of which cases extraordinary security measures are taken. At least as far back as the 1960's there were protocols against too many senior people being on the same plane. In 1963 during the fateful trip to Texas, President Kennedy and Vice-President Johnson both traveled to Dallas... on separate planes.