This Isn't the First Time: 5 Other Commercial Airliners That Were Shot Down

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/isnt-first-time-5-other-commercial-airliners-were-shot-down

Siberian Airlines Flight SB 1812
October 4, 2001
78 Dead
Shot down by Ukraine

A Tupolev Tu-154, the type of plane flown on Flight SB 1812 Wikimedia
Siberian Airlines Flight SB 1812, flying from Tel Aviv over the Black Sea, was shot down by a missile, killing all 78 people on board. Yevhen Marchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Security Council, acknowledged that a missile shot down the plane. "The reason for the crash could be an unintentional hit by an S-200 missile during the Ukrainian air defense exercises," he said.

Iran Air Flight 655
July 3, 1988
290 Dead
Shot down by the United States

Iranians demonstrate against the US at a mass protest for Flight 655 victims. Canadian Press/AP
Iran Air Flight 655, flying over the Persian Gulf and bound for Dubai, was shot down by an American naval warship, killing all 290 people on board. According to Navy officials, the ship, which had been exchanging fire with Iranian vessels, firedmissiles at the plane because the crew mistook it for a F-14 fighter jet. The government in Tehran didn't see the shooting as an accident, and the incident caused political ramifications that resonate to this day.

Korean Air Lines Flight 007
September 1, 1983
269 Dead
Shot down by the Soviet Union

Family of a Flight 007 passenger break down as South Korea confirms the crash. Kim Chon-Kil/AP
Headed from New York to Seoul, KAL Flight 007 was shot down by the Soviet Union near Moneron Island. After leaving Anchorage to make the last leg of its journey, the plane drifted slightly off course and edged into Soviet airspace. The Boeing 747 didn’t look too different on radar from the RC-135s that the US government used for surveillance in the area, prompting the Russians to scramble a fighter jet that fired two missiles at Flight 007, killing all 269 passengers and crew members onboard. Afterward, the Soviets claimed that the flight was on a spying mission for the United States. Soviet leader Yuri Andropov called the flight a "sophisticated provocation masterminded by the US special services with the use of a South Korean plane." Lt. Colonel Gennadi Osipovich, the Soviet pilot who fired the missiles that brought down the plane, continued to insist long after the incident that "it was a spy plane." But when the Cold War ended the Russians recanted, with Russian leader Boris Yeltsin turning over flight data and recordings to the president of South Korea.

[RobertEarl]

1. No plane is safe

we have more missiles now than we have planes.

Is that smart? That we have more missiles than planes? I don't think so.

[Capt. Obvious]

2. I remember the Iranian flight

and claims being made that Iran had filled the plane with dead people before takeoff and then forced the US to shoot it down for a propaganda coup.

[onenote]

3. True. But essentially irrelevant.

No one is connecting this shoot-down to any previous shoot-down. And no one is claiming this is a "first."

[CBGLuthier]

4. Information is Irrelevant?

Sounds like an Orwellian concept.

BTW, there really is a relevance. Notice the one common denominator in these incidents. Not one fucking person was EVER held responsible for any of them. Not in the least.

[onenote]

5. Orwellian?

I don't think you know what that means.
Information can be relevant. But not all information is relevant. For example, Asiana Airlines Flight 214, theplane that crashed upon landing at San Francisco Airport last year was a 777. That's information. It also is irrelevant to any of the issues surrounding the crash yesterday of the Malaysian airliner.

And you are right, the fact that in previous shoot down inicidents no one has been held responsible is a relevant fact. It would have been nice if that fact had actually been included in the OP.

[CBGLuthier]

6. I know what it means. Perhaps I should have suggest it sounds like a slogan from 1984

so YOU could understand.

[onenote]

7. Since you didn't write the OP, I don't know why you're defending it

especially since we are in agreement with that fact that the failure to hold anyone responsible in the crashes identified in the OP is relevant, but it wasn't a point made in the OP.

As for your equating the "thought police" with my statement that the mere fact that other planes have been shot down -- which is all that OP I responded to seemed to be pointing out -- was essentially irrelevant to the issues surrounding the shoot down of MH 17 suggests that you should re-read 1984.