Today is one year anniversary of the Beslan Islamofascist atrocity. Mothers of the killed children will spend three days in the gym, just like their children did a year ago before they were murdered.

Tomorrow four women of a group called "Mothers of Beslan" will meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Many Russians believe that the tragedy happened due to the corruption among the border police and incompetent intelligence agencies. It is known that one of the Russian intelligence operatives who was supposed to participate in a few terrorist attacks (which he did to gain the trust of the terrorists), eventually became a double agent for money and made fools out of his superiors.

False leads confused border police about the terrorist activity around Beslan. And police officers in Russia are known for accepting cash bribes in American dollars. As the Chechen bin Laden Shamil Basayev bragged to the media, getting a few truckloads of gunmen and explosives through the checkpoints only cost the terrorists a few thousand dollars. All this has contributed to an enormous tragedy.

Parents of the victims have a very strong suspicion that the Russian government continues to cover up the corruption and complete incompetence surrounding the Beslan rescue operation, blaming the failure to save more kids on the only terrorist left alive and the parents themselves. According to one account of the final bloodbath at the school, the shooting that led the terrorists to set off their bombs and forced the final Spetsnaz assault came from enraged parents with Kalashnikovs, and not the Spetsnaz snipers.

Nonetheless, all this incompetence and corruption cannot obscure the fact that Russia remains at war with an adversary with a bottomless capacity for cruelty.

Parents of the massacred children want answers; hopefully Mr. Putin will have something to tell them about how future horrors like Beslan might be prevented.