Posted on 07/23/2004 12:03:52 PM PDT by philosofy123
I know it is late afternoon on Friday for me to get a good response to this posting, however, I am constantly thinking that the US government should come clean, and admit that they lied to us about the shoulder to air missile that hit the TWA flight 800 in the NYC harbor.
I do appreciate that they lied to protect the flying public from panicking, however, after 9/11, and after the wall to wall public education regarding fanatic Islam, it would not be harmful to day to admit the truth.
Please let me know your views?
I already got a good idea regarding TWA, I still need explanation of Egypt Air.
Same like believing the "official story" of the Vince Foster "suicide", and the list goes on.
Sheeshe, I'm starting to sound like a paranoid conspiricist, but the facts are SO evident.....
The DHL attack in Baghdad can be considered a test case for the effectiveness of a shoulder-launched SAM against an airliner.
First, the missile hit in the wing, next to an engine as would be expected of a heat-seeking missile. Second, there was no massive structural failure from the missile, instead the primary damage was caused by fire from leaking fuel. Additionally, the crew was able to maintain control of the aircraft and land safely.
Flight 800 was damaged in the fuselage so suddenly and catastrophically that the crew was unable to make a mayday call or attempt to return to land.
If 800 was terrorism, I would suspect a Project Bojinka-style bomb.
The fact that they could not confirm the presence of explosives does not mean they were never present.
At the end of the day, I do not believe this is a cover-up. No way the government could keep this secret. Somebody always talks, aways.
It never ceases to amaze me how these threads turn into a shouting match between "experts" and the unwashed. The critical fact here is that between 250 and 300 eye witnesses, some with lengthy military careers that even involved ordinance, saw a missle leave the proximity of the surface, track upward to TWA 800 with a subsequent explosion and termination of the flight.
If people can't discuss this reality without nit-picking others, I wish they'd find an unimportant thread to practice their insults on.
Now let's get off on some side issue and fight all day while the cover-up languishes for attention.
They lied about it because it would hurt Clinton politically to appear impotent in protecting the US against terrorism. The OKC bombing was blamed on right-wing talk radio. TWA 800 was blamed on a gas tank explosion, although the FAA never made one recommendation on how to prevent future explosions (ever heard of that before?)<p. Clinton was behind in the polls before OKC. George Stephanopolous stated that OKC was what won Clinton the election. Clinton blamed conservatives for it. OKC was the Rats Reichstag fire.
They DID take credit for it that day. It was reported once and then never ever EVER mentioned again.
My theory is that it wasn't hit by a heat-seeking missile. It was hit by a rolling-airframe missile (RAM) that hones in on its target by tracking its radio signature. This type of missile contains a warhead that explodes next to its target similar to a WW2-vintage flak shell. The exploding warhead would then shred the target with hundreds of small tungsten-carbide cubes that cut through the aircraft as if it were made of paper.
Not only that, but the probability of a kill with large multi-engined craft greatly increases if the aircraft is on APPROACH rather than departing. This is because an IR homing missile is most likely to hit an engine or clip a wingtip resulting in a sudden yaw or roll. An airliner would be far more likely to depart from controlled flight during the descent phase.
So ask yourself: If I'm a terrorist with a precious single-shot at an aircraft, am I not going to do everthing in my power to plan the ambush so as to maximize the probability of a kill?
I'm not defending the NTSB report; I'm merely pointing out that the ManPad theory doesn't hold water.
Uh, D1, I'm not discounting the eyewitnesses - instead, I'm simply addressing the notion that a shoulder-fired missile could have been used. There are other, much better possibilities, such as a ship-borne missile that was radar-guided, not IR guided, as another poster has pointed out. And it's hardly nit-picking to go over those kind of details.
Why would an IR missile home on a secondary heat source as small as a navigation light when it has multiple hot jet engines to go for?
Al Qaeda once took credit for shooting down a plane in Africa that was way off course and crashed well up on Mt. Kenya. A claim of credit often does not equal responsibility.
The loss of Flight 800 was just a few weeks before the Atlanta Olympics. The thought of a disrupted American Olympic games might have caused the President to worry about the impact of the crash on the November election.
When I heard the first story of the loss of Flight 800, I pulled to the curb in shock, BECAUSE it was immediately announced that the FBI was investigating. I had never heard of another crash where the NTSB didn't have the jurisdiction to investigate.
Never mind all the evidence that points to a missile attack rather than a defective fuel tank. The fuel tank theory was devised by the ubiquitous Richard Clarke, and he brags about it.
Assuming the Bill Clinton administration lied (quite a stretch, huh?) I have to wonder why the Bush administration doesn't let the truth emerge about Flight 800, OKC, Ron Brown's suspicious death, the trashing of the White House in the closing hours of the Clinton admin., and other matters that would put Clinton in a bad light. Maybe it's the same reason that the Republican Senate leadership deep-sixed any chance for a proper impeachment trial and potential conviction. Clinton knows where other "skeletons" are buried, and will bring down many others if he is brought down. That's not a guess. He promised as much during the impeachment time.
If you come forward with a theory full of gaping holes, they will immediately point them out to discredit you and distract from their own gaping holes. It might be better to not put forward a theory, but to simply point out the gaping holes in the government's case - but then they'll just ignore you because you don't have a better alternative. So it is critical to try and flesh out a couple of viable theories that cannot be shot down with a simple Google search.
Good way of putting it.
I've had occaissions where I have a dozen witnesses. 11 agree and 1 disagrees. Guess what? The lone witness turns out to be correct.
It all goes to interview techniques and isolating the witnesses from eachother until they can be properly debriefed.
Facts are critical here. If the government theory is full of holes, you don't attack it with another theory that's full of holes, or you just discredited yourself.
I think a missile is a viable possibility. But not a shoulder-fired one, for two main reasons - 1, TWA 800 was out of range, and 2, the impact was not in the engines but along the fuselage. So we don't have a boat with a couple of Islamists and a Stinger. We instead need bigger fish if it was a missile.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.