Tuesday, October 13, 2015

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE DUTCH REPORT ON THE DOWNING OF MALAYSIAN FLIGHT MH-17 OVER UKRAINE: QUITE LITERALLY THE WARREN REPORT OF AIR CRASH INVESTIGATIONS


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

The Dutch investigation into the downing of Flight MH-17 is most disgraceful air-crash investigation I've ever heard of, leaving out, as it does, crucial evidence. The report may be understood as the Warren Commission of aircraft-crash investigations, a nickname very suitable since it was produced by the Dutch to the exclusion of other parties under intense American pressure.

Pieces of the plane actually remain on the ground in Ukraine.

The manufacturer of the Buk system was not consulted and evidence they attempted to submit was not used.

Russian government data was ignored.

Ukrainian Air Force records were never examined.

And shabbiest of all, America's data in the form of radar tracks and satellite images were never examined because they were never offered and never demanded.

The very fact that America never offered data which we know to a certainty exists - an American spy satellite was directly overhead at the time of the crash - is a terribly incriminating fact left untouched by this "investigation."

What these folks are telling us, after a supposed year of investigative work, is pretty much what we knew on day one: the plane was brought down by someone firing some form of missile.

Contrary to some careless newspaper headlines, the report is not even conclusive about the type of missile, describing it as resembling Buk.

General readers may not know but the Buk system - a Russian-made ground-to-air system - has been produced for decades, and there are a number of versions of it.

Earlier versions of it are no longer in use in Russia, but they very much are in Ukraine. The Russian manufacturer of Buk itself conducted tests and concluded that an older version of the missile, fired from Ukraine-controlled territory, was responsible for damage they simulated in tests.

Russia has not provided the missile to separatists in Eastern Ukraine.

If American data had been examined and released, I'd be glad to embrace the results whatever they were, but there is only one plausible reason for keeping them secret: they demonstrate something embarrassing to America's coup-installed government in Ukraine.

The investigation thus has served the purpose of a government white paper or special investigation: eaten up time to reduce the public clamor over an issue and allow people to forget.


It is a shabby, shabby effort, just like so many American-induced dark acts in today's world, such as its phony war against ISIS in Syria which in truth tends to support ISIS as it does what America wants doing.