<p>“That’s why securing the site should have been a priority and send investigators/observers with an army to protect them. I am afraid the US missed an opportunity to show the leadership ensuring that. We were overly eager to pin it on Russia and started a blame game. Securing the site is time sensitive. Blame game can wait.”</p>
<p>Great idea. We could have sent in the Army and Marines to protect the observers, and taken out the rebels while we were at it.</p>
<p>Of course, that could have started World War III, but who cares about those pesky little details…</p>
<p>Marauding and homicidal thugs masquerading as freedom fighters versus teenagers etc. trying to feed and protect themselves and defenseless others, like toddlers, the elderly and the infirm. Like Flossy and Saintfan said: “Not close.”</p>
<p>Looting is looting whether it’s taking advantage of a weather disaster or man-made disaster, don’t you agree?</p>
<p>No, we don’t send our army. We call a UN meeting and go from there. Hopefully, get everyone agree to send UN peacekeepers with investigators. UN is meeting today, aren’t they? Called for by Malaysia, Netherland, and afew others. That could have come sooner with a proper leadership.</p>
<p>That’s where shoring up world opinions get important. Let Russia exercise veto power in front of the unanimous world. That wil be interesting. Far more interesting than releasing a communication record between rebels to pin Russia on this while families of victims waiting for their loved onesremains. That wasn’t exactly humanitarian, either, was it?</p>
<p>“Far more interesting than releasing a communication record between rebels to pin Russia on this while families of victims waiting for their loved onesremains. That wasn’t exactly humanitarian, was it now?”</p>
<p>It’s not one thing or the other. It’s releasing information as it’s obtained. I am sure the family members want to know who did this, and want the world to know. I would want the perpetrators to be exposed immediately. </p>
<p>No, looting in not always simply “looting,” as Walmart and other corporations said at the time, when they acknowledged that there were greater worries than complaining about desperate people trying to survive the aftermath of Katrina. I doubt if the hierarchy of Malaysian Airlines would same the same of the Ukraine rebel commandos at the crash site. Time to return to your normally scheduled thread.</p>
<p>I wasn’t talking about Walmart. Ordinary home/store owners got looted from the account I read. And it wasn’t just to survive the aftermath. It was going on during. Wasn’t there some looting going on during Sandy, too? Whenever there’s a breakdown in law and order, there are unfortunate incidents.</p>
<p>How would one go about doing this when the area in question is still a raging battlefield, dominated by Russian-backed rebels hostile to the US and Western Europe for supporting the current Ukrainian government, Russia can exercise its Veto as one of 5 permanent UN Security Council members and possibly count on support from another, and the Russian military forces are still massed not too far way across the border?</p>
<p>Rinse and repeat those questions to recruit, organize, and send in UN troops.</p>
<p>Frankly, those proposals are non-starters in the current complex geopolitical reality on the ground. </p>
<p>Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something particularly gruesome about looting the possessions of people killed in an air disaster. I think it’s several levels of awful worse than looting a Walmart.</p>
<p>In my bird brain, I am thinking we would first get the list of nationalities of passengers from Malaysia government, contact countries involved and have them spearhead the effort to gain access to the site staying absolutely neutral, call for UN meeting, assemble international team of investigators with protection details like when we send humanitarian aids to war zone. Don’t we do that all the time?</p>
<p>Well, in the KAL007 case, didn’t the Soviets essentially brag about bringing down the plane, because the aircraft had “violated” their airspace and allegedly didn’t respond to warnings? One would hope that the Russians would have taken a lesson from that tragic disaster. </p>
<p>Russians aren’t stealing the bodies, looting or shooting at the investigators. That’s the crazy Ukrainian separatists. And although Russia is to blame for giving weapons to lunatic incompetents, and for lying about it, they’re not to blame for what they are not doing.</p>
<p>“Russians aren’t stealing the bodies, looting or shooting at the investigators. That’s the crazy Ukrainian separatists. And although Russia is to blame for giving weapons to lunatic incompetents, and for lying about it, they’re not to blame for what they are not doing.”</p>
<p>Ah, aren’t many of the Russian separatists actually Russians? Or part Russians, who moved for reasons such as obtaining jobs? Aren’t they actually Russian separatists, not Ukrainian separatists?</p>