Malaysian Airlines Plane Crashes in Eastern Ukraine

Parent Cafe
61

<p>Please remember that political comments outside the realm of educational issues are not allowed.</p>

62

<p>Regarding the passports, it is also possible that they were collected fy the separatist milita, who were apparently moving freely through the site and rifling through bags, etc.</p>

<p>I wonder if they were looting. I would not be in the least surprised. I expect there will be many wallets found with no money in them.</p>

63

<p>I would no be surprised with anything at all, we are talking about people who crusify 3 y o kids, there are great autrosities happenning there currently and nobody is talking about it. But beside the point, I do not understand one fact, why the passenger’s plane was flying in no fly zone with very well known risks of what might happen and it just did.</p>

64

<p>The best analysis I’ve run into so far is from an Economist blog post. It notes: “On July 14th a Ukrainian military cargo plane, an Antonov-26, with eight people on board was brought down over the village of Davydo Myilske in the Luhansk region, a few miles from the Russian border. The aircraft was flying at 21,000 feet, well beyond the altitude range of shoulder-fired missiles, such as the Strela, used by the rebels to shoot down planes before.” The suggestion is Russia gave at least one sophisticated Buk (SA-17 or SA-10) missile to the rebels. A launcher of this type - which is a big truck - was reported seen in the area of Chernukhino, near Snezhnoye, about 12 miles from the crash site. This was reported 5 hours before the airplane was shot down.</p>

<p>The suggestion is they thought this was another military cargo plane they might try to shoot down. </p>

65

<p>There was also a Tweet (now deleted) indicating that is exactly what happened.</p>

66

<p>It was not a no-fly zone. That was discretionary on the part of some airlines.</p>

<p>Crucifying 3-yr-olds? That sounds like eating Belgian babies…just sayin’.</p>

67

<p>I heard that, due to weather in the area, the flight was about 200 miles north of its usual route; one report on CNN actually showed the routes the same flight had taken earlier in the week, along with a weather radar that showed dangerous storms in the area of those previous routes. </p>

68

<p>With regard to the aircraft flying over this region…</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/world/malaysia-flight-17-analysts/index.html?hpt=hp_c2”>http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/18/world/malaysia-flight-17-analysts/index.html?hpt=hp_c2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

</p>

69

<p>There are reports that the missile launcher belonged to the Ukrainian military and was captured by the terrorists when they took over the town on June 29th. There were some bragging Tweets or blog posts by the rebels showing photos of the launcher. The Russians did not supply the missiles, but… they supplied the terrorists with the needed weapons to take over the Ukrainian military installation where the launcher was stationed. The fact that the missiles did not come from Russia does not make Putin innocent. He needs to cut off the aid to these savages and bring to justice whoever was responsible for launching that missile. </p>

70

<p>"“That part of Ukraine is essentially ungoverned space, and when you have ungoverned space you have these kinds of calamities,” said retired U.S. Army major general and CNN military analyst James “Spider” Marks. “Sadly, we should not be surprised by this.”</p>

<p>Then again, American carriers have not flown that route for the last few months, they have accepted the fuel cost. My carrier stopped flying there in February. There are accidents waiting to happen when people don’t take action, but it certainly wasn’t unavoidable.</p>

71

<p>To amend my previous comment, it makes little sense that anyone would think this was a cargo plane, etc. because 55 planes flew over the general area that day and 300 or so were scheduled to fly over Ukraine today. </p>

72

<p>sax (#32), I couldn’t agree more. I think of this when reading about those desperate people, including young children, traveling thousands of treacherous miles from Central America to the US, in hope of assylum. Accidents of birth.</p>

73

<p>BB (#45). Unbelievable. </p>

74

<p>It’s Putin’s fault for giving weapons to crazy incompetents. I’m not sure how Putin would be expected to bring the perpetrators to justice, though. </p>

75

<p>Putin is responsible, Russia is supplying the separatists, and there is strong evidence that active Russian military are working with the seperatists, including actively fighting. Among other things, a missile system like that is not easy to use, whoever used it had been trained in its use.It could be some of the seperatists are ex military and had been trained, or more likely IMO, that they had Russian advisors there. One of the biggest problems is the weapon in question had no capability to determine if a plane was civilian or not, it was not tied into any air defense networks and lacked the capability to read transponder signals, they saw a radar blip, decided it was a Ukrainian military aircraft, and pushed the button. If the audio files that were supposed to be intercepted phone calls by the rebels, they express horror when they found the debris and realized they had killed a civilian airliner, and apparently one of the leaders of the rebels had posted on their website the phrase “we shot down a Ukrainian plane today”, there are supposedly screenshots of the site, then it was pulled down (I think it was the website, not Twitter). </p>

<p>At the very least, it is negligent homicide, firing missiles blind with only a radar image in a commercial air lane is akin to firing a rifle in the air and the bullet comes down and hits someone, doesn’t matter the intent, the person doing it is guilty for doing something so stupid knowingly. </p>

<p>As far as the theory the Ukrainians did it to try and blame Russia and gather sympathy, that one isn’t even worth talking about, because the Ukrainian military (who else would do it), would know darn well that spy satellites and later investigations likely would figure out who actually fired it, so what would they gain, the potential of being found out and the repurcussions would be immensely greater for the Ukrainians if they did this, and they know that, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to do it. </p>

76

<p><a href=“https://twitter.com/TerryMoran/statuses/490166106808913926”>https://twitter.com/TerryMoran/statuses/490166106808913926&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

77

<p>This is totally disgusting… A friend sent us an email with quotes from the Russian and British news agencies… The drunk “rebels” are looting the crash site, collecting everything of value - kids’ toys, clothes, jewelry, cash, suitcases… There are also reports that some thugs had already used credit cards belonging to the victims! Here is the CNN story confirming that: <a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/19/world/europe/ukraine-malaysia-airlines-crash/index.html?hpt=hp_t1”>http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/19/world/europe/ukraine-malaysia-airlines-crash/index.html?hpt=hp_t1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

78

<p>Hopefully, the country responsible for this incident (we all know who that is) will be held accountable for this heinous act.</p>

79

<p>Instead of waging a balme war, someone should have organized a UN force to protect the site for an international investigation. Who to blame will come out by the end of investigation. The stupidity to miss the oppotunity to secure the site busy bickering is mind boggling.</p>

80

<p>Investigation seems to mean do nothing, again.</p>