US outlines case against Russia on downed plane

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By MATTHEW LEE

WASHINGTON (AP) — Video of a rocket launcher, one surface-to-air missile missing, leaving the likely launch site. Imagery showing the firing. Calls claiming credit for the strike. Recordings said to reveal a cover-up at the crash site.

"A buildup of extraordinary circumstantial evidence ... it's powerful here," said Secretary of State John Kerry, a former prosecutor, and it holds Russian-supported rebels in eastern Ukraine responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, with the Kremlin complicit in the deaths of nearly 300 passengers and crew members.

"This is the moment of truth for Russia," said Kerry, leveling some of Washington's harshest criticism of Moscow since the crisis in Ukraine began.

"Russia is supporting these separatists. Russia is arming these separatists. Russia is training these separatists, and Russia has not yet done the things necessary in order to try to bring them under control," he said.

FULL story at link.



A Ukrainian investigator looks at charred debris at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17? near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine, Sunday, July 20, 2014. Rebels in eastern Ukraine took control Sunday of the bodies recovered from downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and the U.S. and European leaders demanded that Russian President Vladimir Putin make sure rebels give international investigators full access to the crash site.(AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)



Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140721/us--ukraine-plane-building_the_case-16f16d5931.html

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

1. question NOT asked: "What Did US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine?"

Does AP or WAPO bother to ask any real questions? No.
The rush to judgement sans evidence is happening again.

Robert Parry asks the question that our media doesn't ask:

What Did US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine?
July 20, 2014

Exclusive: The U.S. media’s Ukraine bias has been obvious, siding with the Kiev regime and bashing ethnic Russian rebels and Russia’s President Putin. But now – with the scramble to blame Putin for the Malaysia Airlines shoot-down – the shoddy journalism has grown truly dangerous, says Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

In the heat of the U.S. media’s latest war hysteria – rushing to pin blame for the crash of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet on Russia’s President Vladimir Putin – there is the same absence of professional skepticism that has marked similar stampedes on Iraq, Syria and elsewhere – with key questions not being asked or answered.

The dog-not-barking question on the catastrophe over Ukraine is: what did the U.S. surveillance satellite imagery show? It’s hard to believe that – with the attention that U.S. intelligence has concentrated on eastern Ukraine for the past half year that the alleged trucking of several large Buk anti-aircraft missile systems from Russia to Ukraine and then back to Russia didn’t show up somewhere.
...
So why hasn’t this question of U.S. spy-in-the-sky photos – and what they reveal – been pressed by the major U.S. news media? How can the Washington Post run front-page stories, such as the one on Sunday with the definitive title “U.S. official: Russia gave systems,” without demanding from these U.S. officials details about what the U.S. satellite images disclose?

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/07/20/what-did-us-spy-satellites-see-in-ukraine/

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

2. NY Times: After 9 Days, Ukraine Says Its Missile Hit A Russian Jet

remember that article? Maybe we need to slow down till we get real evidence, unless
we want WWIII and we WANT a nuclear war.
Cui Bono?

After 9 Days, Ukraine Says Its Missile Hit A Russian Jet
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: October 14, 2001

MOSCOW, Oct. 13— In strained language that acknowledged only a ''tragic coincidence,'' Ukraine's president, Leonid Kuchma, stated today that he accepted investigators' preliminary finding that his military accidentally destroyed a Russian airliner over the Black Sea last week with an errant missile.
...
Seventy-eight people, most of them Russian émigrés to Israel, died when the Siberian Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk exploded and plunged 35,000 feet into the sea off the Russian coast. Four minutes earlier, a Ukrainian air defense exercise fired two long-range antiaircraft missiles at a drone off the Black Sea's Crimean coast.

Russian investigators concluded on Friday that one of the missiles, an S-300, struck the drone, but that the second, an S-200, flew 150 more miles and unleashed a warhead of shrapnel balls at the airliner.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/14/world/after-9-days-ukraine-says-its-missile-hit-a-russian-jet.html

[geek tragedy]

3. The totality of the evidence is overwhelming.

It's very rare that a single piece of evidence is dispositive. But the pre and post attack behaviors, the video, the photos, the audio recordings, the social media bragging--it takes a serious lack of shame to pretend the evidence points in any other direction.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

4. Evidence? CIA analysts say SAMs in East Ukraine more likely Kiev's

Without even an investigation you are saying the "evidence" points in a certain direction?
Do you include the youtube video that was made a day BEFORE the plane was shot down?
That has been discredited with just a few clicks of a mouse?
We also had a lot of fake evidence in the runup to Iraq.

AND CUI BONO - WHO BENEFITS?

Robert Parry writes:
"What I’ve been told by one source, who has provided accurate information on similar matters in the past, is that U.S. intelligence agencies do have detailed satellite images of the likely missile battery that launched the fateful missile, but the battery appears to have been under the control of Ukrainian government troops dressed in what look like Ukrainian uniforms.

The source said CIA analysts were still not ruling out the possibility that the troops were actually eastern Ukrainian rebels in similar uniforms but the initial assessment was that the troops were Ukrainian soldiers. There also was the suggestion that the soldiers involved were undisciplined and possibly drunk, since the imagery showed what looked like beer bottles scattered around the site, the source said.

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/07/20/what-did-us-spy-satellites-see-in-ukraine/

[geek tragedy]

5. That is a Putin cheerleader writing fiction,

not reporting.

His little story is less plausible than Obama being born in Kenya.

Start with the fact that he's peddling quadruple hearsay and then proceed to claiming the US had a spy satellite focusing on that 5 meters squared area at the exact time of launch, just randomly.

[Igel]

7. "Told by one source, who has provided accurate information on similar matters..."

So that's one person.

But while he's provided accurate information on similar matters, there's something missing from that sentence. The claim that he has always provided accurate information on similar matters.

If he's be wrong half of the time, Parry's statement is still true. If he's provided accurate information 10 times out of 500, Parry's statement is still true.

One witness, who has at least sometimes been accurate in the past ...

The problem is with the uniforms that they're really very similar to other uniforms. You'd have to distinguish details of camo pattern or see the arm patch. The point being that they "look like" Ukr uniforms may be true, but that's not a claim that they're identifiably dissimilar from Russian uniforms, those of the little green men, or standard use camo in the area. Just Googled Ukr army uniform and little green men uniform and you know what? They're really similar.

It's not what Parry says. It's what he doesn't say. How often his single, lone informant has been wrong. Whether that informant says that the uniforms could look like those of some other group. Both have to have pretty strong answers before that one informant's word counts for much. (And even then, it's one informant's hearsay.)

[Cha]

6. Those in Russia watching RT see this very differently being force fed Putin Propaganda..

The conspiratorial nature of Russian Television News

"Did you know Malaysia Air Flight 17 was full of corpses when it took off from Amsterdam? Did you know that, for some darkly inexplicable reason, on July 17, MH17 moved off the standard flight path that it had taken every time before, and moved north, toward rebel-held areas outside Donetsk? Or that the dispatchers summoned the plane lower just before the crash? Or that the plane had been recently re-insured? Or that the Ukrainian army has air defense systems in the area? Or that it was the result of the Ukrainian military mistaking MH 17 for Putin’s presidential plane, which looks strangely similar?"

sufrommich http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025268574

Thanks Steve.

[freshwest]

14. OMG! That's toxic stuff there! And a lot of people bought it... And are proud of it, too.

[HoosierCowboy]

16. I'm impressed

....the Russian MSM must have hired Alex Jones as a consultant on creating conspiracy theories. Operation Jump to Conclusions was in motion before MH17 even hit the ground so the Russians were well prepared.

It was an accident of war, a friendly fire incident that happens in the world 10 times a day and is never noticed until political potential brings it in your face.

Ok Britney, Kim, Miley, shake your sweet asses at us so this entire story goes where it belongs...

[goldent]

8. I don't understand where this is headed

Someone killed a bunch of innocent people by accident. This seems to happen a lot in wars. If this is can be pinned on someone, all they can say is the it was an accident. Then what happens? Does it come down to who pays reparations?

I do think that the air travel industry will be much more conservative when flying over war zones. In hindsight, the idea that you can fly over a war zone, but only if you stay above 32000 feet, is ludicrous.

[cosmicone]

9. In February 2003

another US SOS, Colin Powell gave "convincing evidence" to the world in a UNSC meeting that Iraq had WMDs.

Enough said....

[EX500rider]

10. Therefore from now till the end of time all SOS's will be lying when their lips move?

[cosmicone]

11. It means US Secretaries of State will say anything

to move policy forward, true or not and are lacking in credibility.

[EX500rider]

17. So they are all interchangeable? No differences in integrity at all?

[cosmicone]

18. It is the hazard of the job

One is viewed as the worst common denominator and it takes a lot of work to climb out of that.

If a doctor in a medical group botches your surgery, most people wouldn't give a fair chance to another doctor in the same group.

[fbc]

12. Israel has killed more civilians than this attack during their current offensive.

And this attack probably was a legitimate error.

Yet we, as a country, support one and are outraged by the other.

[IronGate]

19. This has zero to do with this thread. nt.

[SunSeeker]

13. Wow. Didn't know about the video of the rocket launcher with the missing missile.

The evidence really is overwhelming.

Putin armed these drunks to terrorize and bring down Ukrainian aircraft. Putin should have foreseen this disaster. I hope he now realizes he needs to disarm these thugs and idiots. But alas, being a thug himself, it is hard for Putin to look at this objectively.

[dipsydoodle]

15. Taking just that element -

both BBC News and Sky News in the UK maintain the position that the video supplied by Kiev cannot be independently verified.

[SunSeeker]

20. Nobody is taking just that element.

There is a mountain of evidence pointing to Russian - backed rebels shooting this plane down, with help from Russia. The rebels no doubt thought it was a Ukrainian plane, like ones they had shot down previously. And the rebels' mishandling of the bodies adds insult to injury. They are a disgusting bunch of thugs.

The rebels/Russians don't want anything independently verified. Why else would they have been blocking access to the site by independent investigators?

Putin has brought shame to Russia. I hope he comes to his senses before more people are killed. But I'm not holding my breath.