I came back from some lame job interviews in Manhattan today to turn on CNN International to learn that Aslan Maskhadov, Chechnya's only democratically elected president, had been killed.

The thing about being into the world of news is that if you wait today, most likely what you are thinking about will be gone in the proverbial tomorrow, be it the WTC or a prominent Chechen resistance leader. It's what separates photojournalism from virtually any other intellectual pursuit. You wait, you lose, and with that loss, the world itself has lost. If it can be believed, the whole of the Caucusus region may descend into the inferno. Perhaps hardly anyone on earth cares about the devasted Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, much less that one of it's leaders has fallen in a hail of Kalshnikov rounds.

I don't know where the Chechens, their Caucasian bretheren, or myself and anyone that claims to care are to go from here. Allah-o-Akbar!