[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Egyptian and French officials rushed to exclude terrorism as a possible cause for the crash of a charter plane after it took off for Paris from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

They seem in a bit of a hurry!

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[Cicero]

The usual policy. First rule out terrorism and then investigate the accident. And then, if you learn that it WAS terrorism, don't admit it, because that would be contradictory and make you look foolish.

[BradyLS]

"The aircraft had an ordinary technical failure just after take-off, which caused a loss of control and it crashed into the sea south of the airport of Sharm Sheikh," Shafik told state-run television, without specifying the nature of the failure.

Just your usual, everyday, no-fault technical failure that causes airborne vehicles to suddenly drop from the sky. Coulda happened to anybody from Chuck Yeager to Chuckie Cheese.

[Sir Gawain]

"The incident is absolutely not the result of a terrorist act, but is linked to a technical failure of the plane," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said of the disaster that officials said killed all 148 people aboard.

"Because we would never hit one of our own planes, hahahaha."

[JLAGRAYFOX]

What did you expect? A typical Clinton, Dean, Clark and "traitor/treason" Democrat response!

[Hugin]

Terrorism and technical problems are not mutually exclusive. Terrorists could certainly sabotage a plane.

[gridlock]

So they have no communication from the plane, no black boxes, no technical evidence of any kind, just a plane crashed into the ocean, and they are ready to conclude that terrorism was not involved.

What, does a terrorist incident make a different kind of splash?

[geedee]

Egypt rules out terrorism in Red Sea plane crash

Japanese rule out "alleged" participation at Pearl Harbor.

[BurbankKarl]

Unknown Islamists claim Egyptian plane attack
Mon 5 January, 2004 15:19

CAIRO (Reuters) - An anonymous caller claiming to represent a previously unknown Islamic group says they brought down the Egyptian plane which crashed into the Red Sea on Saturday, killing 148 people.

The man told an international news agency in Cairo that the Yemen-based group Ansar al-Haq (Followers of the Truth) would also attack Air France planes unless the French government drops plans to ban Islamic headscarves from state schools.

There was no way to check the claim of the caller, who said he was an Egyptian member of the group.

The Egyptian government has ruled out a deliberate attack on the Boeing 737 charter plane, which crashed shortly after take-off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. The dead included 133 French tourists.