It seemed pretty obvious that Assad was behind the chemical attacks in Syria didn't it? Only kooks had their doubts..
MH17 who shot it down?
- Thread starter mnztr
- Start date
Ukraine has done it (Serbian in 2001), Russia has done it (South Korean in 1983), and the US has done it (to Iran in 1988).
In this case you're not a 'kook' to be curious who did it. Unlike the other planes that the rebels brought down this plane was at a sufficient altitude that no machine gun, autocannon, or MANPAD could have hit it. The rebels have maybe one longer ranger BUK system that they captured, that may or may not be working, that may or may not be crewed, and maybe more BUK type longer range systems that the Russian may have given them (with zero evidence of them existing). The Ukrainian state has a large number of longer range systems, and planes with anti-air missiles. The Russians have even more, newer and superior, systems and planes.
We can hope that this was a fuck up, but we don't know who did it. With that being said, the rebels were winning on the ground at the time, and the Ukrainian government (such as it is) is/was desperate for more direct assistance from NATO and this would be a good pretext no matter at what level it originated from. On the other side of that, the rebels (or in some profoundly unlikely case the Russians themselves) may well have confused it with an Antinov or otherwise thought it was bringing reinforcements to the East of the country. So it was likely a fuck up, but we really don't know...
Yeah, that's certainly incontrovertible. Especially when you have multiple invested parties (who are all prone to lies, fabrications, embellishments, and half truths) acting under the fog of war. It is hardly case closed given that nobody had even established that the rebels can reach that high.
Even American officials are dialing back the blame ( http://www.bigstory.ap.org/article/us-present-intelligence-data-plane-crash-0 ). Indeed, the official line is that "Putin is to blame for creating the conditions...", not that the rebels did it. That's a cheeky way of making it Putin's fault no matter what happened.
Every time those are played by a major agency they came with huge disclaimers about their authenticity. Also they came out pretty quickly .
Cionsidering the American Chickenhawks encouraged the Candyman to take a hard line with the rebels, I would say they have much more culpability in ending the ceasefire and creating the conditions. The people in the east see Kiev as a proxy of the west (well how can you argue against that really) so when they get bombed and killed they feel it is the responsibility of the west. You cannot expect them to feel too bad about a plane full of westerners when hundreds of them have been killed in this war. That whole article was about a full page of "We DON'T KNOW SHIT!!!"
