Shooting down of passenger jets

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Serious question - it is probably wise to equip commercial jets with flare and chaff countermeasures.

It would be so expensive to do this that people wouldn't be able to afford to fly anymore. Additionally, the training on this is very difficult. There is a saturation issue with airline pilots and training, the more they have to be trained on (lots of maneuvering is necessary as the plane still has to evade the missiles, the flares only give it a fighting chance to get away as it confuses the missiles).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There were different circumstances in the other cases namely of mistaken identity however misinformed. But nothing you provide backs up your claim that there was less outrage for the previous incidents.

Yes, there was. During that time, there were reports in the media that Iran had put dummies in the plane that was shot down and there were really no victims on board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


Yes, there was. During that time, there were reports in the media that Iran had put dummies in the plane that was shot down and there were really no victims on board.

When we - or countries we are allied with - do something that is indefensible there are endless rationalizations and outright false explanations.

There is plenty of evidence that has surfaced - if you google it - that the shooting down of the Iranian passenger plane was at best a mistake and at worst an atrocity.

To make matters worse the commander of the ship that shot down the plane received an award.

"Despite the mistakes made in the downing of the plane, the men of the Vincennes were awarded Combat Action Ribbons for completion of their tours in a combat zone. Lustig, the air-warfare coordinator, received the Navy Commendation Medal.[21] In 1990, The Washington Post listed Lustig's awards as one being for his entire tour from 1984 to 1988 and the other for his actions relating to the surface engagement with Iranian gunboats.[citation needed] In 1990, Rogers was awarded the Legion of Merit "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer ... from April 1987 to May 1989." The award was given for his service as the commanding officer of the Vincennes from April 1987 to May 1989, and the citation made no mention of the downing of Iran Air 655."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

[Anonymous]

TO THE GHASTLY crime of shooting down 298 civilians aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on Thursday, Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine added the unspeakable insult of preventing immediate access to the crash site by forensics experts and aviation investigators. Even worse, they allowed the bodies of the victims to fester in the summer heat for two days before finally piling most of them into refrigerated train cars.

“The victims’ remains have been subject to indignities rarely seen in the aftermath of civilian airline crashes,” The Wall Street Journal reported. There were numerous accounts of passengers’ personal belongings being looted. Credit cards and cash disappeared from wallets. Sky News even aired footage of its own reporter rifling through a victim’s suitcase.

This has not quite happened before.
The thought that the murderers were on the scene first, and are still on the scene, and are going through the bodies and their personal items, among peasants, miners, reporters walking around among it all, is beyond appalling.
That is not to say that the other shot down airliners were any less of a heinous crime, as this one.
Because that is what it is, make no mistake. No matter which nationalities are on board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

TO THE GHASTLY crime of shooting down 298 civilians aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on Thursday, Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine added the unspeakable insult of preventing immediate access to the crash site by forensics experts and aviation investigators. Even worse, they allowed the bodies of the victims to fester in the summer heat for two days before finally piling most of them into refrigerated train cars.

“The victims’ remains have been subject to indignities rarely seen in the aftermath of civilian airline crashes,” The Wall Street Journal reported. There were numerous accounts of passengers’ personal belongings being looted. Credit cards and cash disappeared from wallets. Sky News even aired footage of its own reporter rifling through a victim’s suitcase.

This has not quite happened before.
The thought that the murderers were on the scene first, and are still on the scene, and are going through the bodies and their personal items, among peasants, miners, reporters walking around among it all, is beyond appalling.
That is not to say that the other shot down airliners were any less of a heinous crime, as this one.
Because that is what it is, make no mistake. No matter which nationalities are on board.

We are dealing with a war zone and to refer to those involved as "murderers" is ridiculous. Not even the critics of Russia and the Russian backed separatists have alleged that that the shooting of the plane was anything but an accident. Having said this the apparent desecration of the crash site is inexcusable.

There is a lot of criticism being leveled against Russia for its role in supporting the separatists. I wonder if people are aware that after the US shot down the Iranian passenger plane, we refused to apologize for doing so. The US did pay financial compensation to the Iranians after the Iranian government filed suit at the Hague.

There really is little morality when it comes to governments being willing to accept responsibility for wrong doing.

[Anonymous]

Well, even if I believe this was an accident, they still are murderers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, even if I believe this was an accident, they still are murderers.

Yes, I agree.
They brought down this plane on purpose; murderers in my eyes. They didn't know what plane it was, that just tells me that they are incredibly stupid as well. Just listen to that conversation: "well, then there were spies on board! - other person expresses doubt- "well what were they then doing in our sky?"
Must be spies!
I swear you can't even make shit like that up!
You shot down an airliner at 33,000 feet, you fucking moron!
It wouldn't even have reached that altitude, if it was flying locally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Serious question - it is probably wise to equip commercial jets with flare and chaff countermeasures.

It would be so expensive to do this that people wouldn't be able to afford to fly anymore. Additionally, the training on this is very difficult. There is a saturation issue with airline pilots and training, the more they have to be trained on (lots of maneuvering is necessary as the plane still has to evade the missiles, the flares only give it a fighting chance to get away as it confuses the missiles).

Well, El Al has an anti missile system on every plane, their entire airline.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Serious question - it is probably wise to equip commercial jets with flare and chaff countermeasures.

It would be so expensive to do this that people wouldn't be able to afford to fly anymore. Additionally, the training on this is very difficult. There is a saturation issue with airline pilots and training, the more they have to be trained on (lots of maneuvering is necessary as the plane still has to evade the missiles, the flares only give it a fighting chance to get away as it confuses the missiles).

It doesn't matter. There is no way a commercial jetliner is going to make effective use of flares and chaff. Not to mention that any Hamas weapon that has targeting at all will be shoulder fired.its nice to know its there but this is not iron dome on a plane. Doesn't work that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, even if I believe this was an accident, they still are murderers.

Yes, I agree.
They brought down this plane on purpose; murderers in my eyes. They didn't know what plane it was, that just tells me that they are incredibly stupid as well. Just listen to that conversation: "well, then there were spies on board! - other person expresses doubt- "well what were they then doing in our sky?"
Must be spies!
I swear you can't even make shit like that up!
You shot down an airliner at 33,000 feet, you fucking moron!
It wouldn't even have reached that altitude, if it was flying locally.

Wanna see the shit we made up when we shot down an Iranian passenger jet?

Check out this link:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2014/07/the_vincennes_downing_of_iran_air_flight_655_the_united_states_tried_to.html?google_editors_picks=true

Excerpts:

......nearly seven weeks after the event, the Pentagon issued a 53-page report on the incident. Though the text didn’t say so directly, it found that nearly all the initial details about the shoot-down—the “facts” that senior officials cited to put all the blame on Iran Air’s pilot—were wrong. And yet the August report still concluded that the captain and all the other Vincennes officers acted properly.

For example, on July 3, at the first Pentagon press conference on the incident, Adm. William Crowe, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Iranian plane had been flying at 9,000 feet and descending at a “high speed” of 450 knots, “headed directly” for the Vincennes. In fact, however, the Aug. 19 report—written by Rear Adm. William Fogarty of U.S. Central Command—concluded (from computer tapes found inside the ship’s combat information center) that the plane was “ascending through 12,000 feet” at the much slower speed of 380 knots. “At no time” did the Airbus “actually descend in altitude,” the report stated.

Adm. George B. Crist, head of U.S. Central Command, issued a “non-punitive letter of censure” to the ship’s anti–air warfare officer, but Secretary of Defense Carlucci withdrew the letter. Not only that, but two years later, Capt. Rogers was issued the Legion of Merit “for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service” as the Vincennes’ commander “from April 1987 to May 1989.”

One more shocking bit, which I didn’t know until just now: In 1992, four years after the event (and shortly after I moved on to a different beat), Adm. Crowe admitted on ABC’s Nightline that the Vincennes was in Iranian waters at the time it shot down the plane. Back in 1988, he and others had said that the ship was in international waters. It also came out that some other Navy officers had regarded Rogers as “aggressive” and found it strange that he was moving his Aegis cruiser into those waters to pursue Iranian patrol boats—overkill at best, asking for trouble in any case. The distractions of the chase, possibly combined with the fact that the Aegis radar-guided missile system was new at the time, may have led to his fatal misjudgment.

Not long after the shoot-down, Iran asked the United Nations Security Council to censure the United States for its “criminal act” against Iran Air Flight 655. Vice President George H.W. Bush, who was running to succeed Ronald Reagan as president, said on the campaign trail, “I will never apologize for the United States—I don’t care what the facts are.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Serious question - it is probably wise to equip commercial jets with flare and chaff countermeasures.

It would be so expensive to do this that people wouldn't be able to afford to fly anymore. Additionally, the training on this is very difficult. There is a saturation issue with airline pilots and training, the more they have to be trained on (lots of maneuvering is necessary as the plane still has to evade the missiles, the flares only give it a fighting chance to get away as it confuses the missiles).

It doesn't matter. There is no way a commercial jetliner is going to make effective use of flares and chaff. Not to mention that any Hamas weapon that has targeting at all will be shoulder fired.its nice to know its there but this is not iron dome on a plane. Doesn't work that way.

It helped an El Al plane when they were attacked in Kenya in 2002.
That's what set the course in motion to expand the system to their entire fleet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, even if I believe this was an accident, they still are murderers.

Yes, I agree.
They brought down this plane on purpose; murderers in my eyes. They didn't know what plane it was, that just tells me that they are incredibly stupid as well. Just listen to that conversation: "well, then there were spies on board! - other person expresses doubt- "well what were they then doing in our sky?"
Must be spies!
I swear you can't even make shit like that up!
You shot down an airliner at 33,000 feet, you fucking moron!
It wouldn't even have reached that altitude, if it was flying locally.

Wanna see the shit we made up when we shot down an Iranian passenger jet?

Check out this link:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2014/07/the_vincennes_downing_of_iran_air_flight_655_the_united_states_tried_to.html?google_editors_picks=true

Excerpts:

......nearly seven weeks after the event, the Pentagon issued a 53-page report on the incident. Though the text didn’t say so directly, it found that nearly all the initial details about the shoot-down—the “facts” that senior officials cited to put all the blame on Iran Air’s pilot—were wrong. And yet the August report still concluded that the captain and all the other Vincennes officers acted properly.

For example, on July 3, at the first Pentagon press conference on the incident, Adm. William Crowe, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Iranian plane had been flying at 9,000 feet and descending at a “high speed” of 450 knots, “headed directly” for the Vincennes. In fact, however, the Aug. 19 report—written by Rear Adm. William Fogarty of U.S. Central Command—concluded (from computer tapes found inside the ship’s combat information center) that the plane was “ascending through 12,000 feet” at the much slower speed of 380 knots. “At no time” did the Airbus “actually descend in altitude,” the report stated.

Adm. George B. Crist, head of U.S. Central Command, issued a “non-punitive letter of censure” to the ship’s anti–air warfare officer, but Secretary of Defense Carlucci withdrew the letter. Not only that, but two years later, Capt. Rogers was issued the Legion of Merit “for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service” as the Vincennes’ commander “from April 1987 to May 1989.”

One more shocking bit, which I didn’t know until just now: In 1992, four years after the event (and shortly after I moved on to a different beat), Adm. Crowe admitted on ABC’s Nightline that the Vincennes was in Iranian waters at the time it shot down the plane. Back in 1988, he and others had said that the ship was in international waters. It also came out that some other Navy officers had regarded Rogers as “aggressive” and found it strange that he was moving his Aegis cruiser into those waters to pursue Iranian patrol boats—overkill at best, asking for trouble in any case. The distractions of the chase, possibly combined with the fact that the Aegis radar-guided missile system was new at the time, may have led to his fatal misjudgment.

Not long after the shoot-down, Iran asked the United Nations Security Council to censure the United States for its “criminal act” against Iran Air Flight 655. Vice President George H.W. Bush, who was running to succeed Ronald Reagan as president, said on the campaign trail, “I will never apologize for the United States—I don’t care what the facts are.”

Hey, I'm all with you on the Iranian jet! (PP you responded to)