Obvious missile. I’m not sure why some many people are so passionate about debunking this one. Must be related to national security(?)
Yep. And the general rule of thumb about lying is - as Hitler pointed out - the bigger the lie, the easier it is for the masses to swallow.
So if they tried to argue about the type of missile, etc., it would raise a lot of very precise questions that might easily trap the liars.
Therefore, instead, they call it a plane. Why? Precisely because it looks nothing like a plane. So the excuse requires a clear choice, one or the other, and no level of rational argument can apply to it because no rational argument created acceptance of the lie - after all, you can't argue someone out of something they didn't think about to begin with.
In this way, the missile-versus-airplane argument actually hides a loyalty-versus-disloyalty situation. But in this case, loyalty to whom, or what? As another poster noted, a three-star Lieutenant General ex-head of NORAD called it a missile. So it's not so easy this time to say that it's a matter of being for-or-against the government.
But it's definitely for-or-against something.
The question is, what?