Earlier this year, there was justified outrage when the National D-Day Memorial Foundation installed a bust of Communist Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin at the memorial in Bedford, Va.

Among the critics was the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which noted that in the 20th century, only Communist Chinese dictator Mao Zedong was responsible for more deaths than Stalin.

Although the Soviets did fight Nazi Germany in World War II, no Soviet soldiers took part in the D-Day invasion of France on June 6, 1944. So it made no sense to place a bust of Stalin at the site.

Now, the D-Day Memorial Foundation has somewhat relented by removing the bust of Stalin.

But that is not, unfortunately, the victory for common sense that it seems to be. The foundation also plans to remove busts of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and it will group the three busts - Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill - and put them back at the memorial in one location at some future date.

That is no solution. A mass murderer such as Stalin does not deserve to be honored on U.S. soil or anywhere else. And he most certainly should not be honored at the D-Day Memorial in close proximity to busts of Roosevelt and Churchill.

The American Legion is among the groups that have rightly condemned the placement of the bust of Stalin at the memorial.

Basic decency and common sense should persuade the administrators of the memorial never to return Stalin's bust to a place of honor at the site.