The actions of BJ Bill Jefferson in Serbia (which were horrific, brutal, and reckless) can not be ascribed to the American people any more than we could ascribe the actions of these perpetrators to Russia at large.
This low-level civil war is a power struggle between the European Union and Moscow, and McLame/Obama involvement was unwise to begin with. Now the nation is in chaos, something like this was bound to happen, but the circumstances surrounding it are bizarre.
1) Why was this area not declared a no-fly zone by either the Ukrainian government themselves (who were conducting aerial operations in the region), or our own government, let alone the Europeans? As dumb as flying over Mosul or Syria.
2) Why did the pilot divert the flight into a warzone to avoid mild weather because he felt ‘uncomfortable’ (another idiot pilot from Malaysia Airlines)
3) Whoever manned this BUK System (if it is that), had to be very skilled, so who pulled the trigger?
The third point is the most puzzling. From what I have heard the BUK System interrogates transponders it picks up for flight information which it relays to the ground crew. Commerical jets give out different code than military jets, so why was the missile fired?
Presumable other commercial flights had flown over this region that day and in days prior, so why were they not shot down?
This is not a system that can be operated by a rookie, so if the separatists fired it, it would have to be either a Russian special forces operator or a defecting member of the Ukrainian military. Street thugs would not know where to start.
Somebody operating this system knew what they were doing, got the information relayed that it was a commercial jet, and chose to fire. But why? There is no motive here, and I can’t see how the ‘accident’ story fits unless people were drunk.
The event is tragic, especially since many many children seem to be among the dead. Its made even more distressing by the clownery of Obama giving 40n seconds to the incident before joking about Biden.
“...unless people were drunk.”
Well, we are talking about Russians.
Thank you for a refreshing insertion of sanity into a thread that inevitably will act like a flame to the more hysterical moths. Your third point is, indeed, one of the more intriguing mysteries here. And given how these things generally go (early reports are almost invariably false), I wonder how accurate our assumptions are on things like the altitude of the plane, and the capabilities of other AA systems that are strewn throughout Ukraine.
But the fact that a plane was flying over an active civil war/separatist movement is just mind-boggling. Going by the adage to never look for conspiracy where stupidity will suffice, I have to think it was just a monumentally poor decision.
re question 2: Commercial pilots do not make the decision to “divert” by hundreds of miles. They are ordered to do so by ATC or they request clearance to do so fomr ATC.
re Questin 3: the BUK functions with some interface from early warning and air traffic radars. So the operators know a target is approaching, when, altitude etc
So - who was manning Ukraine’s national ATC and what was their role in directing and communicating with this aircraft presumably via unsecure network? Why did they route that jet over that area when so many commercial routes are well to the south?
Talking pieholes on MEDia keep spouting that Russia is solely responsible because this sector is “controlled” by separatists, the territory is not controlled by Ukraine. BUT - Ukraine certainly does control its national airspace for civil aviation.
The airspace above this area could have been declared by the govt of Ukraine as a no-fly zone and commercial traffic diverted to the south- so why didn’t they do this?
Was the government of Ukraine setting up a provocation (and sending this airliner into harms way), knowing they would reap a political windfall from an incident like this?
If so, there is blame and culpability to share
bfl
Just a few minutes' difference and we could have been talking a horrible tragedy with around 455 people dead, since SQ 333 is an Airbus A380-800, the world's largest operational airliner.