Thank you, President George W. Bush, for correcting history and making a long overdue apology for one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's tragic mistakes. Speaking in Latvia on May 7, Bush repudiated "the agreement at Yalta" by which powerful governments negotiated away the freedom of small nations.

Bush accurately blamed Yalta for "the captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe" and said it "will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history." This admission has been 50 years coming, and Bush's words assure that "the legacy of Yalta was finally buried, once and for all."

It was at Yalta, a filthy Russian port on the Black Sea, where our dying president in February 1945 made a secret agreement with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin to surrender millions of people to Communist oppression behind what Churchill a year later labeled the Iron Curtain. No treaty was submitted to the U.S. Senate; indeed, the record of what went on at Yalta was not released until 10 years later.

The Soviets demanded, and FDR acquiesced, that the conference be held on Soviet soil (where they could plant listening devices). Churchill said, "If we had spent 10 years on research we could not have found a worse place in the world than Yalta. ... It is good for typhus and deadly lice which thrive in those parts."

FDR came home from Yalta and made a false report to Congress. Calling it "a personal report to you and to the people of the country" he asserted, "This conference concerned itself only with the European war and with the political problems of Europe, and not with the Pacific war."

Here is a list of the European AND Asian concessions he made to Stalin, which were confirmed by the Yalta documents released on March 16, 1955.

- Poland was turned over to the Soviet Union. The United States and Britain agreed to recognize Communist stooges as the new Polish government and to withdraw recognition from the legitimate anti-Communist government of Stanislaw Mikolajczyk.

- Germany was to be dismembered, its "national wealth" removed within two years, and several million Germans were to be sent to the Soviet Union to work as slave laborers. The record quotes Roosevelt as saying, "I hope Marshal Stalin would again propose a toast to the execution of 50,000 officers of the German army."

- All Russian citizens who had fled to Germany from Communism were to be forcibly returned to the Soviet Union (i.e., the gulag).

- The Soviet Union was allowed to keep control of Outer Mongolia, which the Soviets had seized from China. The southern part of Sakhalin and all the adjacent islands were given outright to the Soviets.

- The Kurile Islands were given outright to the Soviets, and Port Arthur was given to the Soviets for use as a naval base. The Soviets were given effective control of the commercial port of Dairen, the Chinese-Eastern Railroad and the South-Manchurian Railroad, using the subterfuge of assuring that the Soviet Union's "pre-eminent" interests would be "safeguarded." Continued...