Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

[pescamaaan]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

thank you very much EJ. these changes will certainly help to preserve the integrity of iTulip. there's may be a time and place for "those types" of discussions, but iTulip is not the forum.

[sutro]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

Even though I don't rule out that the rebels are behind the crime since all "evidence" had been collected by the Ukrainan government and presented within "a few hours after the incident", but the events leading to the incident and what happened immediately after can't make one wonder if this whole incident was planned and orchestrated.

1. Kiev deployed surface to air missile system near to the city of Dotnsek. What are these missiles for when there's rebels had no aircraft?

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogsp...e-systems.html

2. "Recordings of rebels telephone calls" appeared on social media hours after the plane was struck. In all military operations, these recordings would be sent to the HQ for investigation but this didn't happen. In all likelihood, these recordings appeared to have been pre-recorded as part of the orchestrated operation.

3. Why did MH17 deviated from the usual flight path that was south of East Ukraine?

Warning: Graphic.

I think this report backs up the idea that the shootdown was a mistake.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0PY33O20140723

[vt]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

"Officials describe the sensitive information, ranging from satellite images to social media analysis, as evidence that Moscow trained and equipped rebels in Ukraine responsible for the downed jet."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...y.html?hpid=z1

National Security

U.S. discloses intelligence on downing of Malaysian jet

Images released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence claim to show the movements of a surface-to-air missile launcher, and evidence of a buildup of Russian military activity in Ukraine.

U.S. intelligence officials released these satellite images of a Russian military base near Rostov, showing an increase in vehicular activity since June. They identified the base as being a main conduit of Russian support to separatists in Ukraine. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence
By Greg Miller July 22 at 7:24 PM

The Obama administration, detailing what it called evidence of Russian complicity in the downing of a Malaysian airliner, on Tuesday released satellite images and other sensitive intelligence that officials say show Moscow had trained and equipped rebels in Ukraine responsible for the attack.

Senior U.S. intelligence officials cited sensors that traced the path of the missile, shrapnel markings on the downed aircraft, voiceprint analysis of separatists claiming credit for the strike, and a flood of photos and other data from social-media sites.

The officials also for the first time identified a sprawling Russian military installation near the city of Rostov as the main conduit of Russian support to separatists in Ukraine, describing it as a hub of training and weapons that has expanded dramatically over the past month. The officials said that tanks, rocket launchers and other arms have continued to flow into Ukraine even after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which killed 298 civilians.

Analysts at the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies are continuing to examine information about the crash, but U.S. officials said the intelligence assembled in the five days since the attack points overwhelmingly to Russian-backed separatists in territory they control in eastern Ukraine.

Senior U.S. intelligence officials said they have ruled out the possibility that Ukrainian forces were responsible for the attack.


Intelligence documents show the location of the downed jet. (U.S. Intelligence Community)
“That is not a plausible scenario,” said one senior U.S. official, who noted that American intelligence agencies have confirmed that Ukraine had no antiaircraft missile system within range of the Malaysian flight at the time it was struck.


The official was one of three senior U.S. intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity during a briefing arranged for reporters in Washington to provide more detailed information on the assertions made by administration officials in recent days, as well as to rebut Russian claims.

“We are seeing a full-court press by the Russian government to instruct affiliated or friendly elements to manipulate the media environment to spread Russia’s version of the story,” the official said. “What this looks like again is a classic case of blaming the victims.”

The U.S. intelligence officials, who included experts on Russia’s military and its relationship with separatists in Ukraine, said they do not know the identities or even the nationalities — whether Russian or possibly defectors from Ukraine’s military — of those who launched the missile from an SA-11 surface-to-air battery.

Nor have U.S. spy agencies reached any conclusions on the motive for the attack, except to say that the reaction among separatists recorded on social media indicates they believed they were targeting a Ukrainian military transport plane.

In part, officials said, that may have been because the rebels operating the missile battery were poorly trained and did not have access to other radar systems and equipment that ordinarily accompany an SA-11 system and are designed to help distinguish military targets from civilian planes.

U.S. officials said earlier that they had seen “indications” of advanced antiaircraft systems being moved into eastern Ukraine from Russia and being removed after the jet was shot down.


Images claim to show the movements of a surface-to-air missile launcher and build up of Russian military activity across the border.
Intelligence officials said spy agencies were not aware that an SA-11 system was in eastern Ukraine until the attack had happened. They declined to answer questions about whether warnings about the Russian military buildup over the past month had been shared with international aviation authorities.

The officials also declined to provide more details on the satellites and other sophisticated sensors that enabled them to trace the path of the missile, citing concerns about compromising secret U.S. capabilities.

Still, the administration released information that had been kept secret until Tuesday, providing the most explicit illustration to date of the extent to which it has mobilized intelligence resources to track the conflict in Ukraine.

In particular, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released images taken of the Russian military facility near Rostov over the span of a month, before-and-after slides that officials said showed a substantial buildup after Russia had pledged to pull back from Ukraine.

Russia has gone to significant lengths to disguise that flow of weaponry, the officials said, by delivering equipment that matches the inventory of Ukraine’s military. In some cases, the officials said, Russia appears to have pulled aging and inactive tanks out of storage because shipping newer ones would make it obvious that Russian arms were flowing into Ukraine.

“We think they’re continuing to do it” in the aftermath of the strike on the Malaysian aircraft, one of the intelligence officials said.


Russia appears to have “felt compelled to increase the level of support” for separatists, the official said,because Ukraine’s military has become increasingly effective against the rebels, retaking the city of Slovyansk.

In recent days, the Ukrainian government has posted online what it has described as incriminating communications among rebel leaders and units, calls and radio transmissions apparently intercepted by Kiev.

The U.S. officials said they have confirmed the authenticity of some of those recordings, including one in which the self-proclaimed defense minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Igor Strelkov, claimed responsibility for shooting down a military transport plane at the time the Malaysian aircraft was struck.

Analysis comparing that audio clip to other confirmed recordings of Strelkov’s voice “confirmed these were authentic conversations,” one of the officials said.

The officials noted that separatists had shot down aircraft on about a dozen other occasions over the past month — mostly helicopters and Ukraine military planes flying far below the 33,000-foot altitude at which the Malaysian flight was hit. Ukraine’s military, by contrast, is focused on the ground threat posed by separatists and has yet to fire on an aircraft, the officials said.

U.S. intelligence analysts have examined photos from the crash site and identified damage consistent with that caused by an SA-11 missile, officials said, but they stressed that such analysis is preliminary.

The briefing also revealed the extent to which U.S. spy agencies are relying on Twitter, Facebook and other social-media sites to monitor the conflict. The officials cited verbal exchanges among rebels posted on YouTube indicating separatists arriving at the scene of the wreckage were surprised to discover civilians.

“If you listen to YouTube you get that: ‘We’re finding civilians,’ ” a senior U.S. intelligence official said. Partly for that reason, the official said, “the most plausible explanation to me is [it was] a mistake.”

http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-o...ightTopStories

[loweyecue]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

Oops?

Ukraine hasn’t said how it immediately knew rebels downed Malaysian plane, notes the Russian Foreign Ministry, as it unveils 10 awkward questions for Ukraine (and perhaps the US 'snap judgment') to answer about the MH17 disaster. However, what is perhaps more concerning for the hordes of finger-pointers is that:

• RUSSIA HAS IMAGES OF UKRAINE DEPLOYING BUK ROCKETS IN EAST: IFX
• RUSSIA: UKRAINE MOVED BUK NEAR REBELS IN DONETSK JULY 17: IFX
• RUSSIA DETECTED UKRAINIAN FIGHTER JET PICK UP SPEED TOWARD MH17

Obviously, if there is proof that this is so, aside from CIA-created YouTube clips, these would deal another unpleasant blow to US foreign policy.

The Russian defense ministry during its press conference which concluded minutes ago:



Here is the full clip of the Russian ministry releasing its own forensic analysis of what happened to flight MH17 (with English translation).

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/KSpeo5RcQQo?feature=player_embedded" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>


Russia wants to know why Ukraine moved its BUK missiles systems the day of the MH17 crash:

• RUSSIAN GENERAL STAFF HAS SPACE IMAGES OF SECTORS OF UKRAINIAN FORCES' POSITIONS IN SOUTHEASTERN UKRAINE, INCLUDING BUK MISSILE LUNCH SITES 8 KILOMETERS FROM LUHANSK - RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY - interfax

The day the Malaysian airliner crashed, the Ukrainian forces deployed an air defense group of three or four Buk-M1 missile batteries near Donetsk, Lt. Gen. Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Russian General Staff's Main Operations Department, told reporters on Monday.

"These surface-to-air systems are capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 35 kilometers at an altitude of 22 kilometers. For what purpose and against whom were these missile systems deployed? As is known, the militia has no aviation," he said.

Russia has the flight paths of the Ukrainian fighters and MH17. Furthermore, it is asking the same question we asked last Thurday:

• RUSSIA SAYS MH17 DIVERGED 14 KM FROM FLIGHT PATH NEAR DONETSK

And wants to know why. The image (as seen in the presentation above) allegedly shows Ukraine fighter jets near MH17:



Here is a screengrab of a Su-25 fighter jet detected close to MH17 before crash.


As RT reports,

“A Ukraine Air Force military jet was detected gaining height, it’s distance from the Malaysian Boeing was 3 to 5km,” said the head of the Main Operations Directorate of the HQ of Russia’s military forces, Lieutenant-General Andrey Kartopolov speaking at a media conference in Moscow on Monday.

“[We] would like to get an explanation as to why the military jet was flying along a civil aviation corridor at almost the same time and at the same level as a passenger plane,” he stated.

“The SU-25 fighter jet can gain an altitude of 10km, according to its specification,” he added. “It’s equipped with air-to-air R-60 missiles that can hit a target at a distance up to 12km, up to 5km for sure.”

The presence of the Ukrainian military jet can be confirmed by video shots made by the Rostov monitoring center, Kartopolov stated.

And asks for US proof of their accusations:

• RUSSIA SAYS U.S. SATELLITE FLEW OVER MH17 AT TIME IT WAS DOWNED... which would provide all the proof needed to show who is responsible - so why hasn't the US explained this or shown it?
• RUSSIA ASKS U.S. FOR EVIDENCE ROCKET FIRED FROM REBEL-HELD AREA
• RUSSIA: NO U.S. PROOF THAT MISSILE FIRED FROM REBEL-HELD AREA
• DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYS RUSSIA DID NOT DELIVER ANY SA-11 BUK MISSILE SYSTEMS TO SEPARATISTS IN EASTERN UKRAINE "OR ANY OTHER WEAPONS"

And went on to rebuke all the Twitter photos created by Maidan to 'prove' the BUKs were moving in Russian hands.
Summing it all up, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has 10 questions for Ukraine (google translated)

The global public expects a speedy and independent investigation into the causes of the disaster Malaysian aircraft in the airspace of Ukraine.

In order to conduct an objective investigation of possible leadership of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation has ased ten questions to the Ukrainian side.

1. Ukrainian authorities immediately identified the militia as the perpetrators of the tragedy. What is the basis of such findings?

2. Could official Kiev to report all the details of using [BUKs] in a war zone? Most importantly - why these systems are deployed there, as the militia no planes?

3. What are the causes of inactivity of Ukrainian authorities on the formation of an international commission? When such a committee will work?

4. Are the armed forces of Ukraine international experts to present papers on accounting for missiles, air-to-air and ground-to-air ammo and anti-aircraft missiles?

5. Whether these funds objective control on the movement of the Ukrainian Air Force aircraft on the day of the tragedy brought international commission?

6. Why Ukrainian air traffic controllers allowed deviation of the route of the aircraft to the north side of the "anti-terrorist operation zone"?

7. Why was not completely closed to civilian aircraft airspace over the combat zone, especially because in this area there was no solid field of radar navigation?

8. Could official Kiev to comment on reports in the net, ostensibly on behalf of the Spanish air traffic controllers working in Ukraine, which shot down over the territory of Ukraine "Boeing" was accompanied by two Ukrainian military aircraft?

9. Why Security Service of Ukraine has begun without international representatives work with recordings of talks with Ukrainian crew dispatchers "Boeing" and Ukrainian radar data?

10. How were the lessons from previous similar disasters Russian Tu-154 in 2001 in the Black Sea? Then the leaders of Ukraine until the last minute denied any involvement of the Armed Forces of the country to the tragedy until irrefutable evidence showed no guilt official Kiev.

Unfortunately, there has been no response by the Ukraine side to these questions so far. We expect that there will be some answers.
* * *
Needless to say, this places Ukraine and The US (as main protagonist of "finger pointer") in an awkward position as finally someone, somewhere will have to present some actual facts instead of merely continuing the "emotional appeals" propaganda.

We expect many of these questions to be answered once the contents of flight MH17's black box are revealed and/or when Ukraine finally releases an undoctored version of the Air Traffic control recording with the doomed flight.

I don't really have a strong opinion on this, but why wouldn't Ukraine move SAMs to the Russian border? The militia may not have planes, but the openly hostile Russians do. Having said that, I think Kiev still stands to benefit more than the militia to shoot a plane down and blame it on the other side.

[touchring]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

How about a question that is relevant to the thesis: Will the downed jet/Ukrainian conflict lead to a spike in the oil price big enough to bring about a recession?

If gas supply is reduced, will countries use more oil? Or can they use coal instead?

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...rks-both-ways/

[Slimprofits]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

How about a question that is relevant to the thesis: Will the downed jet/Ukrainian conflict lead to a spike in the oil price big enough to bring about a recession?

Well I thought it was interesting to note that even before this jet was shot down, the topics of ISIS and Iraq quickly re-exited the 24/7 news cycle and oil price futures fell back to where they had been, before that crisis grabbed everyone's attention.

[Chomsky]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

Indeed.

We will henceforth turn the News section back to its intended purpose, for level-headed discussion of events by the non-subscriber iTulip community, held to the same standard as Select News behind the paywall.

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
- Napoleon Bonaparte

Conspiracy theories are now officially off-topic for all iTulip forum threads.

I have instructed the FREDs to re-write the titles of News threads that take a conspiracy line and delete threads that trend in that direction.

Over time the conspiracy minded will drift away, leaving the rest of us.

As for the tragic downing of MH17, the truth if it is ever known -- unlikely in time of war -- it will be that a terrible error was made by one side or the other in the conflict, with hundreds of innocent men, women, and children suffering the consequences, and the guilty party doing everything possible to cover their trail.

Our thoughts are with the families who lost loved ones.

Reflecting on this, you'd think the orgy of destruction that was WWII would be enough to teach national leaders that violence among our species is contagious and best kept contained to spectator sports and other diversions.

Putin let the nationalist genie out of the bottle for domestic political purposes. Can he get it back in?

Unlikely in my opinion for today we have a highly efficient tool of contagion of organized violence action in the form of social media.

If spectators are jumping to conclusions imagine what interested parties are doing.

How about a question that is relevant to the thesis: Will the downed jet/Ukrainian conflict lead to a spike in the oil price big enough to bring about a recession?

[touchring]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

and yet the title to this thread is "did the allies bring down MH17"

*sigh*...it's pretty disappointing that this is in the News section of the forums...what's next, 9/11 inside job thread??

The title maybe somewhat offensive to some of you, and sounds like a conspiracy theory, but if you would think objectively, how it all started with the February 2014 armed coup, followed by the noticeably low key MSM news coverage on the "anti-terrorist" operation in Eastern Ukrainian.

Until MH17, the majority of people, were not aware of the severity of the civil war going on a East Ukraine.

The Malaysian airlines management did not know. The management of many other airlines did not know that a full scale war is going on with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian reservists mobilized.

911 is an unfortunate but isolated incident by a couple dozen crazy terrorists, but this conflict has the potential to turn into something very dangerous for Europe because unlike terrorist groups, Putin can retaliate and this has the potential to bring down world markets.

Many parties are responsible for MH17, but who should hold greater responsibility, we'll need to wait for the results of the blackbox and forensic work.

[EJ]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

and yet the title to this thread is "did the allies bring down MH17"

*sigh*...it's pretty disappointing that this is in the News section of the forums...what's next, 9/11 inside job thread??

Indeed.

We will henceforth turn the News section back to its intended purpose, for level-headed discussion of events by the non-subscriber iTulip community, held to the same standard as Select News behind the paywall.

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
- Napoleon Bonaparte

Conspiracy theories are now officially off-topic for all iTulip forum threads.

I have instructed the FREDs to re-write the titles of News threads that take a conspiracy line and delete threads that trend in that direction.

Over time the conspiracy minded will drift away, leaving the rest of us.

As for the tragic downing of MH17, the truth if it is ever known -- unlikely in time of war -- it will be that a terrible error was made by one side or the other in the conflict, with hundreds of innocent men, women, and children suffering the consequences, and the guilty party doing everything possible to cover their trail.

Our thoughts are with the families who lost loved ones.

Reflecting on this, you'd think the orgy of destruction that was WWII would be enough to teach national leaders that violence among our species is contagious and best kept contained to spectator sports and other diversions.

Putin let the nationalist genie out of the bottle for domestic political purposes. Can he get it back in?

Unlikely in my opinion for today we have a highly efficient tool of contagion of organized violence action in the form of social media.

If spectators are jumping to conclusions imagine what interested parties are doing.

[pescamaaan]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

and yet the title to this thread is "did the allies bring down MH17"

*sigh*...it's pretty disappointing that this is in the News section of the forums...what's next, 9/11 inside job thread??

[vt]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

War kills innocent civilians and mistakes are made. This has happened with the U.S. ans is still happening. It has happened with troops from Ukraine. It has happened with the rebels and Russia.

At this point no one knows for sure who is responsible.

But what does stand out is the failure to secure the crash site for independent recovery of bodies and debris, thus contaminating evidence of the true cause. The utter failure of Russia and the rebels to secure the site and AND speed independent inspection teams to the site stands out. This, above all, points enormous suspicion on the rebels and their sponsor Russia.

A grave concern is that we may never find the true cause because of this criminal cover up.

[touchring]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

even if the blackbox had radar info showing a missile approaching, i don't see how that would identify who launched it. the missiles are, i believe, maneuverable, and not ballistic, so you can't even calculate its launch point.

From what I've read on the Internet, the blackbox records information such as voice recording in the cockpit, GPS position, radio conversation (with Ukrainian air traffic controller???), changes in direction, altitude and speed of the blackbox.

I also learned from airliners.net forum that planes can continue flying for up to 10 minutes after being struck.

[jk]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

even if the blackbox had radar info showing a missile approaching, i don't see how that would identify who launched it. the missiles are, i believe, maneuverable, and not ballistic, so you can't even calculate its launch point.

[touchring]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

The charge of the Atlanticist Brigade
By Peter Lee

The bloody farce in the Ukraine took another ugly turn with the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

And to be ugly about it, if the rebels shot the plane down, it shouldn't matter very much except as a horrible and unexpected catastrophe in a war zone and an overwhelming tragedy to the survivors of the victims on board. Call it an accident, collateral damage, manslaughter, there is no credible version of events in which it was intentional mass murder or terrorism, either by the rebels or Russian technicians that, according to the Ukrainian government, possessed the ability to operate the elderly but complex anti-aircraft systems fingered in the attack.

If it were mistaken identity, it won't mass murder. But if MH17 had been tricked to lower altitude or deviate from the original flight path, then it's another story.....

The truth will be out soon.

[don]

Re: Did the allies bring down Malaysian Airline MH17?

The charge of the Atlanticist Brigade
By Peter Lee

The bloody farce in the Ukraine took another ugly turn with the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

And to be ugly about it, if the rebels shot the plane down, it shouldn't matter very much except as a horrible and unexpected catastrophe in a war zone and an overwhelming tragedy to the survivors of the victims on board. Call it an accident, collateral damage, manslaughter, there is no credible version of events in which it was intentional mass murder or terrorism, either by the rebels or Russian technicians that, according to the Ukrainian government, possessed the ability to operate the elderly but complex anti-aircraft systems fingered in the attack.

Recall the US shootdown of Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988 by the USS Vincennes. It was also an ugly business. The Iran Air jet was on a standard civilian flight path with its transponders on; the Vincennes through some bit of naval derring-do had actually intruded into Iranian territorial waters when it shot the plane down (something that was only admitted by the US three years later); 290 people died. The US never apologized, but eventually paid out some money to smooth things over, not in a particularly classy way, according to a 2002 account:

The US had compensated non-Iranian victims about US$2.9 million (not acknowledging any responsibility) but nothing to Iranian family members. In 1996, a $131.8 million settlement was reached that included the ignored families ($61.8 million). Seventy million was to be put into bank accounts and used to "pay off private US claims against Iran and Iran's expenses for the Iran-US Claims Tribunal, which is handling the claims." The US stated it was for claims "involving banking matters, not the airliner," while Iran said that 30 million was for the plane.

The shootdown was accompanied by the usual quotient of dishonest denial and blame shifting.

The following day, the Pentagon held a news conference on the incident. After originally having flatly denied Iran's version of the event, saying that it had shot down an F-14 fighter and not a civilian aircraft, the State Department (after a review of the evidence) admitted the downing of Iran Air 655. It was claimed that the plane had "strayed too close to two US Navy warships that were engaged in a battle with Iranian gunboats" and, according to the spokesman, that the "proper defensive action" was taken (in part) because the "suspect aircraft was outside the prescribed commercial air corridor". (Washington Post)

That it "strayed" from its normal, scheduled flight path is factually incorrect. And so was the claim that it was heading right for the ship and "descending" (emphasis, mine) toward it - it was ascending. Another "error" was the contention that it took place in international waters (it did not, a fact only later admitted by the government). Incorrect maps were used when Congress was briefed on the incident.

In an interesting sidebar, the "planeful of naked corpses" conspiracy canard (for which Western journos have repeatedly mocked a Ukrainian rebel militia leader who was, presumably, dumbfounded by the grotesque carnage of the crash) was first deployed by right wing US radio commentators to accuse Iran of staging a provocation by flying a plane of naked corpses at theVincennes.

The Iran Air shootdown was classified as a goof - although the Iranians declared it rose to the level of criminal misconduct (and have been accused of engineering the Lockerbie bombing as retaliation) - and the captain of the Vincennes was condemned by his fellow officers as a reckless dingbat, per Wikipedia:

Commander David Carlson, commanding officer of the USS Sides, the warship stationed near to theVincennes at the time of the incident, is reported to have said that the destruction of the aircraft "marked the horrifying climax to Captain Rogers' aggressiveness, first seen four weeks ago."[39] His comment referred to incidents on 2 June, when Rogers had sailed the Vincennes too close to an Iranian frigate undertaking a lawful search of a bulk carrier, launched a helicopter within 2-3 miles (3.2-4.8 kilometers) of an Iranian small craft despite rules of engagement requiring a four-mile (6.4 km) separation, and opened fire on small Iranian military boats.

Of those incidents, Carlson commented, "Why do you want an Aegis cruiser out there shooting up boats? It wasn't a smart thing to do." He also said that Iranian forces he had encountered in the area a month prior to the incident were "... pointedly non-threatening" and professional. At the time of Rogers' announcement to higher command that he was going to shoot down the plane, Carlson is reported to have been thunderstruck: "I said to folks around me, 'Why, what the hell is he doing?' I went through the drill again. F-14. He's climbing. By now this damn thing is at 7,000 feet." Carlson thought the Vincennes might have more information, and was unaware that Rogers had been wrongly informed that the plane was diving.

Craig, Morales & Oliver, in a slide presentation published in M.I.T.'s Spring 2004 Aeronautics & Astronautics as the "USS Vincennes Incident", commented that Captain Rogers had "an undeniable and unequivocal tendency towards what I call 'picking a fight.'" On his own initiative, Rogers moved the Vincennes 50 miles (80 km) northeast to join the USS Montgomery. An angry Captain Richard McKenna, Chief of Surface Warfare for the Commander of the Joint Task Force, ordered Rogers back to Abu Musa, but theVincennes helicopter pilot, Lt Mark Collier, followed the Iranian speedboats as they retreated north, eventually taking some fire:

... the Vincennes jumps back into the fray. Heading towards the majority of the speedboats, he is unable to get a clear target. Also, the speedboats are now just slowly milling about in their own territorial waters. Despite clear information to the contrary, Rogers informs command that the gunboats are gathering speed and showing hostile intent and gains approval to fire upon them at 0939. Finally, in another fateful decision, he crosses the 12-nautical-mile (22 km) limit off the coast and enters illegally into Iranian waters.[42]

Captain Rogers was not officially censured for the shootdown; instead, two years later he was awarded the Legion of Merit for his services while captain of the Vincennes and soon after retired.

There you have it.

So, by the ordinary standards of murderous military ineptitude, the fallout from the MH17 tragedy would be disorganization and denial, an exhaustive and time-consuming investigation, a belated acknowledgment of responsibility, no legal consequences, and the application of some financial emollient eight or so years down the road.

This is obviously Putin's goal, whether or not rebel forces were complicit (which I should say is not yet a slam dunk, despite the declarations of the US government), an objective which the US and many of its allies are determined to deny him.

There have been several attempts to frame the accidental shootdown as an episode of Putin barbarism that places him and his government beyond the civilized pale and in the fatal zone of illegitimate pariah state upon whom demands can be made, and whose calls for due process can be swept aside, and fair game for whatever principled skullduggery the democratic powers can concoct.

The first and, to be blunt, most ludicrous episode was "corpse gate", an attempt to depict the militias, and by extension their purported puppet-master, Putin, as inhumanly callous in their treatment of the remains of the nearly 300 people that had fallen from the sky.

The militias were clearly overwhelmed by the vast disaster scene and the question of how to secure it properly. No doubt there was looting - an endemic problem at all crash sites, even in the civilized United States - and possibly the idea of diddling with evidence and getting the black boxes into friendly Russian hands. As to the disgusting drunkenness allegedly exhibited by some militia members, crash scenes are horrible, they can be extremely traumatic, and it is not out of the question that some militia members turned to alcoholic oblivion to deal with the scenes they had witnessed.

But the media tried to latch on to the idea that the militias were committing a crime against humanity by dragging the rotting bodies hither and yon through the 88-degree heat and eventually loading them into refrigerated rail cars. In this effort the militias worked together with emergency services of the Ukraine government, which somehow made it on site, a fact that was ignored in the accusations of militia barbarism. Once the body bags were put on the train, there was also some attempt to flay the militias for not immediately pulling the train out of the station, even though the root problem seems to have been the Ukrainian government's inability to come up with dispatch instructions.

Then there was "destruction of evidence gate". Again, beyond the militias' fiddling with luggage and removal of bodies, there is no credible reportage that they were attempting to tamper with the key evidence: the immense debris field of plane wreckage.

On US ABC News, an aviation expert, John Nance, pointed out that the key forensic evidence to be gleaned from the crash site would be shrapnel impact on the airframe, which would indicate what struck the plane (SAM, air to air missile or whatever) and where, and is available in abundance across the crash site. The black box recorders would be unlikely to yield useful information on the instantaneously catastrophic event itself, nor would the bodies.

The key evidence for the overall investigation will be the surveillance records of US and Russian satellites and radars, which should be able to identify where the missiles came from, as well as addressing accusations that Kiev fighters were shadowing the jet, etc.

If indeed MH17 was destroyed by a surface to air missile at 30,000 feet, the culprit would appear to be a BUK mobile air defense battery, a Soviet product extensively deployed across the remains of the USSR. The Russians have them - and the Ukrainian government has accused Russia of shuttling units across the border in order to do the dirty on Ukrainian military aircraft. The rebels might have captured one or more units; it's unclear whether the Ukrainian military actually disabled them before abandoning them, as they claimed. The Ukrainian government also has its own working BUK units; despite government denials that there was any need to deploy anti-aircraft batteries in the east, AP had photographs of a Ukrainian BUK battery trundling through Slavyansk in early July to protect its ATO units against potential Russian airstrikes.

The Russians have already distributed a fair amount of evidentiary chaff of varying quality, claiming that a Ukranian BUK radar was switched on at the time of the incident; Robert Parry's US defense sources are also telling him there's a suspicion that a Ukrainian BUK battery was responsible.

So, in an ordinary investigation, plenty of he said/she said, fog of war, bluster, obfuscation and the prospect that a mutually acceptable story will be sorted out months if not years down the road.

As to the "restricting access to crash site gate" the subject of much indignant huffing and a newly minted UN Security Council resolution (which Russia supported) this appears to be a canard.

Most Western journalists in the field have reported that they easily passed through rebel checkpoints and wandered unrestricted through the crash site (one journo was castigated for actually rifling through a victim's luggage to illustrate his video report), and noted that, if anybody was delaying the arrival of the international investigatory team, it was the Ukrainian government (which held 100+ international experts in Kiev until "security issues" could be sorted out). Further cognitive dissonance was assured when Kiev forces launched several attacks in Donetsk, not exactly conducive to the ceasefire intended to facilitate the investigation, and also endangering the passage of the "corpse train" that everybody was, at least a couple days ago, so worked up about.

To date, the US strategy seems to be to crank up the indignation machine by whatever means come to hand, in this case excoriating Russia for obstructions of the investigation that aren't occurring, in order to justify immediate further sanctions that would short circuit Russia's desire for a conventional, legalistic, and protracted investigation.

As of this writing, the international experts have arrived at the crash site, the rebels, after some unedifying back and forth, have coughed up the black boxes, and there seems to be little that the West can currently complain about.

But the United States is perhaps considering this unpalatable contingency.

Will it demand an immediate and intrusive inventory of Russian and rebel BUK units "or else"? Hold Russia responsible for non-appearance of rebel witnesses/suspects? Issue a pre-emptive US declaration that the culprits have been identified, coupled with a demand to produce them? Or content itself with the boilerplate declaration that Russia is not doing enough to rein in the east Ukrainian militias? We shall see.

By now, I think sanctions are an end in themselves for US Russia policy.

My outsider's impression is that the US foreign policy for Russia has been pretty much captured by doctrinaire anti-Russians in a diplomatic and military deep state that pretty much permeates and survives every incoming administration. The Russia desk has had a reasonably good run since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and I think today the prevailing idea is that oligarch anxieties about the sanctioning of their overseas assets will soon reach a tipping point (see this article about "horror of the oligarchs"), and the "Atlanticists", perhaps led by that nice Mr Medvedev, will club together against Putin's "Eurasianists" and pull the plug on his dreams of confronting the West as an equal and opposite force.

Maybe Putin will need more of a shove - he's an ex-KGB guy with multiple assets in the Russian elite and his current approvals are running over 80% - but there's an app for that: intensified sanctions.

So sanctions, and more sanctions. Sanctions for Crimea, sanctions for succoring the separatist uprising, now sanctions related to the plane crash. Sanctions that will never go away, no matter what Putin does, as long as he stays in power.

Best case, some combination of popular and elite revulsion pushes Putin from power and a new regime approaches the West as supplicant. Worst case, Russia = Venezuela, neutered by perpetual sanctions, vitriol, economic and political warfare, and subversion.

The key point, at this stage, is for the US to get European buy-in - especially from Angela Merkel, who is demonstrably less than enthusiastic about having a constitutionally dysfunctional relationship with Russia (and not enamored of the continual political heat brought by revelations of US spying) - so that the US is isolating Russia, and not the other way around.

My sense of the situation, especially from the Asian perspective, is that the US is in danger of overplaying its hand, indeed that it has a bad case of tunnel vision in which it is fixated on the goal of sticking it to Putin at the expense of US global interests.

With its almost comical insistence that "the world" is uniting against Russia (which only counts if "the world" is defined as the Atlantic democracies and their close allies and China, India, et al are excluded) and, even more damagingly, the US insistence on peddling the Russia = the world's greatest monster story even as the United States condones the catastrophic and much more bloody Israel incursion into Gaza, the US is accelerating the natural trend toward disintermediation of America in significant chunks of the global diplomatic and economic system.

The PRC occasionally comes in for mockery for its alleged hubris in wishing to elevate the yuan to the status of an international currency. However, I don't think the PRC's near term objective, or even desire, is to assume the glorious but extremely onerous burden of displacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency.

Instead, I think there are tactical as well as strategic forces in play, inspired in part by Russia's sanctions miseries as well as the PRC's own experiences with covert as well as overt US financial sanctions relating to China's Iran and North Korea transactions, which date back to the George W Bush years. The PRC approach reflects the difficulty of sustaining strict capital controls on a national currency when China's economy is increasingly open to the world; and the risk that a more freely trading Chinese currency can bring to the PRC in its current competition and incipient clash with the United States.

So the PRC internationalizes the yuan in a series of bilateral agreements with key trading partners, so that its financial transactions increasingly exit the dollar and are less vulnerable to US and Western sanctions; it tries to push its investors to look for adequate returns in friendly regions rather than dumping excess funds in Western financial centers; and it cracks down on corruption and capital flight so that its oligarchs will be less exposed to financial and legal blackmail in places like London and the United States.

And for that matter, it offers the enticement to global financial centers of profitable, high-volume trading in yuan, a fungible benefit that can be diverted somewhere else if a jurisdiction turns unfriendly.

And the Xi Jinping regime must take into account the possibility that the outrage and sanctions machine, so intensively deployed against Russia over Ukraine, will be employed against the People's Republic of China.

The United States is backing off from its stated "honest broker" position in the South China Sea to a tilt toward China's adversaries, offering the possibility of direct confrontation over the PRC's maritime claims and use of the sanctions regime to punish PRC misbehavior. Taiwan is inexorably bumping along to a political confrontation between the pro-mainland KMT and pro-independence DPP and student forces, which will offer the US government, if so inclined, a chance to ditch the One China policy and stand up to the PRC militarily and with sanctions.

And, finally, there is Hong Kong.

With that wonderful synchronicity that liberals adore (and their adversaries roll their eyes at) the three UK China-bashing prestige liberal organs - the Independent, the Guardian, and the Financial Times - all recently editorialized that Great Britain should "stand up" to the PRC on behalf of the people of Hong Kong on the issue of whether candidates for the Hong Kong chief executive should be chosen by full suffrage (instead of nominated by a pro-mainland committee).

If Xi Jinping decides now is not the time to countenance defiance of the PRC within China's borders and cracks down on the sizable number of pro-democracy activists and supporters, sanctions would appear to be the inevitable consequence.

So one consequence of the singleminded US campaign against Russia is that it is being driven into the arms of the PRC; another is that the PRC is making its ability to resist sanctions a national priority. The US Atlanticists may succeed in either subduing Russia to Western tutelage or simply expelling it from the European sphere; but what about the Pacific?

Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.