Donald Trump says Russia isn't to blame for MH17, despite evidence

[uhnope]

Source: CNN


Washington (CNN)—Donald Trump doesn't believe there is enough evidence to blame pro-Russian separatists for last year's downing of a commercial airliner over Ukraine -- despite the fact that the U.S. intelligence community believes "with confidence" that pro-Russian separatists shot it down.

Trump was asked on MSNBC Wednesday about a new report from Dutch investigators that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a Russian-made rocket and warhead -- and asked what he would do as president to hold Russia accountable.



"They say it wasn't them," he replied. "It may have been their weapon, but they didn't use it, they didn't fire it, they even said the other side fired it to blame them. I mean to be honest with you, you'll probably never know for sure."


Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/14/politics/donald-trump-mh17-plane-russians/

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Trump is also a birther, don't forget

[Kalidurga]

1. Way to be tough on Russia

T-Rump and I say this with a grave heart is a bigger idiot than Mitt Romney.

[KeepItReal]

2. So the rebels/Russians that had shot down multiple Ukrainian military jets and helos

*before* MH17, were victims of a false-flag operation to make it look like the rebels/Russians used a surface-to-air missile against an aircraft in disputed airspace?

FOH, Donald Trump.

[delrem]

3. I guess Russia should be punished,

like the US was punished for shooting down Iran Air Flight 655
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

[Nihil]

6. Wonder if they will pro-rata it for the extra 8 dead?

Apparently you get the Navy Commendation Medal for directly killing 290 civilians
and the Legion of Merit for being the commander who gives the order so what medals
do you think the commander & crew of the missile battery will get for MH17?

[delrem]

16. The thing is it's being spun by the OP,

in OP after OP mind you, as being a malicious act of mass murder.
In a "two minute of hate" kind of sequence, against "Putin" and "Russia", and not being for anything.
War propaganda.

I don't think either of these shoot-downs of civilian airliners were maliciously deliberate, because that notion just doesn't make any sense.
I think the OP is using this for war propaganda and for no other purpose.

[Nihil]

17. I agree with every word of your reply ...

... and I'm glad that I'm not the only one tiring of the OP's constant
banging of the war propaganda drum ...

[truthisfreedom]

4. Wow. Just wow.

Donald knows all. The all-seeing donald is clairvoyant now.

[uawchild]

5. he has "evolved" on the issue now... lol

The Donald's more lucid advisors have since talked sense into him, he now says it was the rebels fault. lol Hey, people get to "evolve" on issues right? lol what a moran.

[Nitram]

7. Trump is probably right about one thing.

We probably will never have inconclusive proof. We've got enough circumstantial evidence to convict, but Russian-backed rebels removed evidence from the crime scene before international investigators reached the scene.

[uawchild]

8. Are countries that arm rebels responsible for civilians those rebels kill?

Of course they are. Russia shares responsibility for these deaths just as we share responsibility for the civilians killed in Syria by our moderate jihadists rebel friends that we are arming to the teeth there. But I am afraid those deaths don't count as much to our corporate media, since the dead are just Syrians, not Europeans.

[MBS]

9. Just wow. n/t

[bullwinkle428]

10. How much business is this assclown doing with Putin? ALWAYS follow

the money trail.

[seafan]

11. The propaganda machine at CNN is overheating.

CNN is at it again.

(emphasis added)

Washington (CNN)Donald Trump doesn't believe there is enough evidence to blame pro-Russian separatists for last year's downing of a commercial airliner over Ukraine -- despite the fact that the U.S. intelligence community believes "with confidence" that pro-Russian separatists shot it down.

Trump was asked on MSNBC Wednesday about a new report from Dutch investigators that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a Russian-made rocket and warhead -- and asked what he would do as president to hold Russia accountable.

Sorry, CNN, but others are looking for some actual truth.


MH-17: The Dog Still Not Barking, October 13, 2015

The Dutch Safety Board report concludes that an older model Buk missile apparently shot down Malaysia Airline Flight 17 on July 17, 2014, but doesn’t say who possessed the missile and who fired it. Yet, what is perhaps most striking about the report is what’s not there – nothing from the U.S. intelligence data on the tragedy.

The dog still not barking is the absence of evidence from U.S. spy satellites and other intelligence sources that Secretary of State John Kerry insisted just three days after the shoot-down pinpointed where the missile was fired, an obviously important point in determining who fired it.

On July 20, 2014, Kerry declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “we picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar.”

.....

The Dutch-led investigation was perhaps compromised by a central role given to the Ukrainian government which apparently had the power to veto what was included in the report. Yet, what may have spoken most loudly in the Dutch report was the silence about U.S. intelligence information. If – as Kerry claimed – the U.S. government knew almost immediately the site where the fateful missile was launched, why has that evidence been kept secret?

Given the importance of the conflict in eastern Ukraine to U.S. intelligence, it was a high-priority target in July 2014 with significant resources devoted to the area, including satellite surveillance, electronic eavesdropping and human assets. In his rush-to-judgment comments the weekend after the crash, Kerry admitted as much.

But the Obama administration has refused to make any of its intelligence information public. Only belatedly did CIA analysts brief the Dutch investigators, according to a U.S. government source, but that evidence apparently remained classified.

The second source told me that the reason for withholding the U.S. intelligence information was that it contradicted the initial declarations by Kerry and other U.S. officials pointing the finger of blame at the ethnic Russian rebels and indirectly at Russian President Vladimir Putin, who stood accused of giving a ragtag bunch of rebels a powerful weapon capable of shooting down commercial airliners.

Despite Russian denials, the worldwide revulsion over the shoot-down of MH-17, killing all 298 people onboard, gave powerful momentum to anti-Putin propaganda and convinced the European Union to consent to U.S. demands for tougher economic sanctions punishing Russia for its intervention in Ukraine. According to this source’s account, an admission that a rogue Ukrainian group was responsible would take away a powerful P.R. club wielded against Russia.

Among the organizations that have implored President Barack Obama to release the U.S. intelligence data on MH-17 is the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of mostly retired U.S. intelligence analysts.

As early as July 29, 2014, just 12 days after the shoot-down amid escalating Cold War-style rhetoric, VIPS wrote, “As intelligence professionals we are embarrassed by the unprofessional use of partial intelligence information. …As Americans, we find ourselves hoping that, if you indeed have more conclusive evidence, you will find a way to make it public without further delay. In charging Russia with being directly or indirectly responsible, Secretary of State John Kerry has been particularly definitive. Not so the evidence.”

But the release of the Dutch report – without any of that data – indicates that the U.S. government continues to hide what evidence it has. That missing evidence remains the dog not barking, like the key fact that Sherlock Holmes used to unlock the mystery of the “Silver Blaze” when the sleuth noted that the failure of the dog to bark suggested who the guilty party really was.

.............................

(Robert Parry allows unlimited use of his work at ConsortiumNews.)

Robert Parry is a longtime investigative reporter who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. He founded Consortiumnews.com in 1995 to create an outlet for well-reported journalism that was being squeezed out of an increasingly trivialized U.S. news media.

He recently was awarded the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence, as recognized by Harvard’s Nieman Foundation.

[geek tragedy]

13. Step 2(D)(i);Step2(D)(ii) Step 2(D)(v); Step 2(D)(vi)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141231641#post5

Go sit next to David Irving--he's interested in the same kind of 'truth' you and Robert Parry are peddling.

Parry's source, btw, is his own ass.

[yurbud]

12. no matter which side he takes he is not a member of the reality-based community

[Major Hogwash]

14. Well, Trump has my vote.

For the dumbest POS used car salesman who ever ran for President!!!

I might even double down later on.
I still got a little Vegas fever from the Dem debate the other night.

[yellowcanine]

15. I think it was the separatists but probably can't be proved.

Really hate to agree with Trump but he is likely correct about this one.