[Alberta's Child]

You raise a valid point, but your basic premise that an accidental shoot-down would be difficult to keep secret doesn't just apply to an accidental shoot-down -- it also applies to any number of other explanations involving terrorism. The number of crew members on a naval vessel who would have been aware of what happened would be dwarfed by the number of U.S. government officials who were involved in the investigation.

And yet we all know that their "investigation" was a pile of bullsh!t -- which obviously requires complicity on the part of many people. I don't know anybody who believes that nonsense about an "exploding center fuel tank."

[Ramius]

The number of crew members on a naval vessel who would have been aware of what happened would be dwarfed by the number of U.S. government officials who were involved in the investigation.

I don't agree. The investigation could have been diverted by a mere handful of people, IMO.

Part of the story that is never really questioned very hard are the a.) altitude of the plane and b.) the type of missile that a terrorist might have used.

Everybody seems to just accept that the missiles available to terrorists couldn't reasonably reach the 13,000 feet of the plane. Maybe there's something wrong that *that* part of the story.