The North Ossetian parliamentary investigation into the Beslan massacre is out, and guess who caused the fabled first explosion?

Last week, the results of a North Ossetian parliamentary investigation into the terrorist attack in Beslan were made public. The report went largely unnoticed. The pro-government media shied away from a number of awkward conclusions, while the opposition was dissatisfied with the level of invective directed at the government of President Vladimir Putin.

There is no question that the parliamentary commission, headed by Stanislav Kesayev, deputy speaker of the North Ossetian legislature, came under enormous pressure. A good deal was also clearly cut out of the report in order to preserve the main point — to determine who and what caused the first explosion in the school gymnasium, after which government troops stormed the school.
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The upshot is that one of the command centers in Beslan set out to eliminate the terrorists, not to free the hostages. For this group, it would have been very convenient if the hostages were removed from the equation. Troops could then move in and wipe out the bad guys, and civilian deaths could be blamed on a miscue by the terrorists.

The simplest way to accomplish this would be to set off the terrorists’ own bomb. But here they ran into a little problem: The snipers couldn’t get a clear shot at the terrorist with his foot on the detonator.

This problem was resolved with the help of a grenade launcher. Did the feds have the plans for the school? Yes. Did the plans indicate where the basketball hoop was attached to the wall? Yes. Did they know the bomb was hung up in the hoop? Yes.

The snipers needed a clear shot. A soldier with a grenade launcher could fire from the roof of any nearby apartment building.

Stay tuned. Every day more and more information comes out clarifying that the Russian military screwed up and tried to cover it up.