JUST the Stolen Documents/Mar-A-Lago/"Judge" Cannon Trial

[seacoaster]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

"Strongly held views are unlikely to change regarding the morality and tactical wisdom of President Trump’s decision to kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani as he traveled on a road outside the Baghdad airport after having arrived on a commercial flight. But the debate regarding the long-term impact of this act on America’s place in the world, and the potential vulnerability of U.S. government officials to similar reprisals, has just begun.

How did it become acceptable to assassinate one of the top military officers of a country with whom we are not formally at war during a public visit to a third country that had no opposition to his presence? And what precedent has this assassination established on the acceptable conduct of nation-states toward military leaders of countries with which we might have strong disagreement short of actual war — or for their future actions toward our own people?

With respect to Iran, unfortunately, this is hardly a new issue.

In 2007, the Senate passed a non-binding resolution calling on the George W. Bush administration to categorize Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as an international terrorist organization. I opposed this proposal based on the irrefutable fact that the organization was an inseparable arm of the Iranian government. The Revolutionary Guards are not independent actors like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. They are part of the Iranian government’s formal military structure, with an estimated strength of more than 150,000 members. It is legally and logically impossible to define one part of a national government as an international terrorist organization without applying the term to that entire government.

Definitions define conduct. If terrorist organizations are actively involved against us, we attack them. But a terrorist organization is by definition a nongovernmental entity that operates along the creases of national sovereignties and international law. The Revolutionary Guards are a part of the Iranian government. If they are attacking us, they are not a terrorist organization. They’re an attacking army.

The 2007 proposal did not succeed. But last April the State Department unilaterally designated the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist entity. Although more than 60 organizations are listed in this category, this is the only time our government has ever identified an element of a nation-state as a terrorist organization. And the designation was by many accounts made despite the opposition of the CIA and the Defense Department.

Which leads us to Soleimani.

The assassination of the most well-known military commander of a country with which we are not formally at war during his visit to a third country that had not opposed his presence invites a lax moral justification for a plethora of retaliatory measures — and not only from Iran. It also holds the possibility of more deeply entrenching the U.S. military in a region that most Americans would very much prefer to deal with from a more maneuverable distance.

No thinking American would support Soleimani’s conduct. But it is also indisputable that his activities were carried out as part of his military duties. His harm to American military units was through his role as an enabler and adviser to third-country forces. This, frankly, is a reality of war.

I fought as a Marine in Vietnam. We had similar problems throughout the Vietnam War because of Vietnam’s propinquity to China, which along with the Soviet Union provided continuous support to the North Vietnamese, including most of the weapons used against us on the battlefield. China was then a rogue state with nuclear weapons. Its leaders continually spouted anti-U.S. rhetoric. Yet we did not assassinate its military leaders for rendering tactical advice or logistical assistance. We fought the war that was in front of us, and we created the conditions in which we engaged China aggressively through diplomatic, economic and other means.

Now, despite Trump’s previous assertions that he wants to dramatically reduce the United States’ footprint in the Middle East, it seems clear that he has been seduced into making unwise announcements similar to the rhetoric used by his immediate predecessors of both parties. Their blunders — in Iraq, Libya and Syria — destabilized the region and distracted the United States from its greatest long-term challenge: China’s military and economic expansion throughout the world.

At a time when our political debates have come to resemble Kardashian-like ego squabbles, the United States desperately needs common-sense leadership in its foreign policy. This is not a failure of the executive branch alone; it is the result of a breakdown in our entire foreign policy establishment, from the executive branch to the legislative branch and even to many of our once-revered think tanks. If partisanship in foreign policy should end at the water’s edge, then such policies should be forged through respectful, bipartisan debate.

The first such debate should focus on the administration’s unilateral decision to label an entire element of a foreign government an international terrorist organization. If Congress wishes to hold Iran to such a standard, it should then formally authorize the use of force against Iran’s government. The failure of congressional leadership to make these kinds of decisions is an example of why our foreign policy has become so militarized, and of how weak and even irrelevant Congress has allowed itself to become in the eyes of our citizens."

[old salt]

https://www.conservativereview.com/news ... e-justice/

The death of Iranian Gen. Soleimani is about long-overdue justice

As we watched Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist groups attack our embassy in Baghdad, many were in favor of a robust retaliation for the attack. What the U.S. military under the orders of President Trump delivered last night was even more than retaliation for the attack on the embassy: It was retaliation for decades’ worth of unanswered American blood spilt by Iran’s external paramilitary forces, led by Qassem Soleimani.

We have clearly intervened in numerous Middle Eastern theaters over the years that we should never have been involved in. But at every stage, Iran has been attacking and killing hundreds of our soldiers: Sacking the embassy in Tehran in 1979, the 241 Marines killed in the 1983 Beirut bombing, the killing of 19 airmen at the Khobar Towers in 1996, or the over 600 U.S soldiers estimated to have been killed directly or indirectly by Soleimani’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during the Iraq war. More recently, Iran captured our naval ships in 2016 and humiliated our sailors in what should have been viewed as an act of war, yet Obama did nothing. Well, actually, he transferred $150 billion to Iran, so it was worse than nothing.

Trump has laid down a new set of parameters. Soleimani was reportedly disembarking from a plane at the Baghdad airport and being greeted by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the head of Kata’ib Hezbollah, when an airstrike killed them both. Kata’ib Hezbollah was the primary militia responsible for the attacks on our base near Kirkuk last Thursday and the Baghdad embassy this week. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called out al-Muhandis by name earlier this week, tweeting out a picture of him leading the attack with the militiamen.

Going forward, the best outcome is a coherent strategy in the Middle East, but the next best outcome is justice against Iran’s most potent external force that has threatened us for decades. The killing of Soleimani is justice for the blood of American soldiers on his hands, but it will hopefully also serve as a turning point in reorienting our focus in the Middle East to one of “strike and maneuver” against enemies that affect our interests, rather than holding and building ground on behalf of Islamic tribal factions in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.conservativereview.com/news ... e-justice/

The death of Iranian Gen. Soleimani is about long-overdue justice

As we watched Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist groups attack our embassy in Baghdad, many were in favor of a robust retaliation for the attack. What the U.S. military under the orders of President Trump delivered last night was even more than retaliation for the attack on the embassy: It was retaliation for decades’ worth of unanswered American blood spilt by Iran’s external paramilitary forces, led by Qassem Soleimani.

We have clearly intervened in numerous Middle Eastern theaters over the years that we should never have been involved in. But at every stage, Iran has been attacking and killing hundreds of our soldiers: Sacking the embassy in Tehran in 1979, the 241 Marines killed in the 1983 Beirut bombing, the killing of 19 airmen at the Khobar Towers in 1996, or the over 600 U.S soldiers estimated to have been killed directly or indirectly by Soleimani’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during the Iraq war. More recently, Iran captured our naval ships in 2016 and humiliated our sailors in what should have been viewed as an act of war, yet Obama did nothing. Well, actually, he transferred $150 billion to Iran, so it was worse than nothing.

Trump has laid down a new set of parameters. Soleimani was reportedly disembarking from a plane at the Baghdad airport and being greeted by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the head of Kata’ib Hezbollah, when an airstrike killed them both. Kata’ib Hezbollah was the primary militia responsible for the attacks on our base near Kirkuk last Thursday and the Baghdad embassy this week. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called out al-Muhandis by name earlier this week, tweeting out a picture of him leading the attack with the militiamen.

Going forward, the best outcome is a coherent strategy in the Middle East, but the next best outcome is justice against Iran’s most potent external force that has threatened us for decades. The killing of Soleimani is justice for the blood of American soldiers on his hands, but it will hopefully also serve as a turning point in reorienting our focus in the Middle East to one of “strike and maneuver” against enemies that affect our interests, rather than holding and building ground on behalf of Islamic tribal factions in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

[old salt]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/05/opin ... trump.html

The Long Battle With Iran

Qassim Suleimani’s death brought vindication for the many American lives he took over the years. But what comes next?

By Ryan C. Crocker
Mr. Crocker is a former United States ambassador to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Was the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, an act of war? If it was, it was a war in which the United States and Iran were already joined.

That war goes back to Lebanon in the early 1980s, where General Suleimani’s predecessors created what became Hezbollah. Iran, with Syria, helped stage the 1983 bombings of the American Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans involved in a peacekeeping mission. As a young Foreign Service officer who survived those bombings, I saw how Iran succeeded in forcing the United States to withdraw its forces from Lebanon through terrorism.

Later, as ambassador in Lebanon, I helped load the remains of two Americans killed by Hezbollah — the Beirut C.I.A. station chief, William Buckley, and Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins — on a helicopter just before Christmas 1991. In Syria, as ambassador from 1998 to 2001, I witnessed the coordination between Syria and Iran in support of Hezbollah and the close embrace of Hezbollah’s leader by President Bashar al-Assad. As ambassador to Iraq years later, I stood at ramp ceremonies honoring our service members killed by Shiite militias supported by General Suleimani.

So when his death was confirmed, it was a moment of quiet satisfaction for me: A formidable enemy of the United States was gone, and he will not be easily replaced. That is some vindication for the hundreds of American lives he had taken over the years. But what comes next?

The United States is engaged in something I call escalation dominance. This means we need to calculate how an adversary is likely to respond to a given action of ours. What are the United States’ vulnerabilities? What are theirs? Depending on the adversary’s reactions, what is our range of follow up moves? In short, how does the United States increase pain for the Iranians while denying them the opportunity to counter escalate?

In the complex context of Iran, this becomes multidimensional chess. We have forces in Iraq and Syria, as well as a military presence throughout the Gulf: in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman. These are assets, but they are also potential targets, as are the countries where they are located. We will also have to consult very closely with Israel.

Escalation dominance is not a simple measure of raw power. It is about which party is more likely to dominate in a given context, something that is a function of abilities but also determination, prioritization and patience. I learned this the hard way in Beirut in the 1980s, when the young Islamic Republic of Iran was still able to force us out of Lebanon, even while it was engaged in a brutal war of attrition against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

An attempt at escalation dominance by Iran might include threats and actions against our regional allies, sustained attacks on tanker traffic in the Gulf and direct attacks on United States installations in the region. But the options for Iran and its backers are not only kinetic. Even before the Suleimani strike in Baghdad, political parties close to Iran had floated the possibility of legislation in the Iraqi parliament demanding the departure of all United States forces from the country. On Sunday, Iraqi lawmakers passed it, and the prime minister has indicated he will sign it.

While we might be in a virtual state of war with Iran, the confrontations are taking place in Iraq, which in many ways is caught in the middle. If our embassy in Baghdad is evacuated and our ability to monitor and influence events on the ground is lost, it will be a victory for Iran. Iraqis remember that the last time United States forces withdrew from their country, the Islamic State moved in.

The United States will also have military options that it did not exercise in 1983, including direct, large scale attacks on Iran. How far are we prepared to go in an escalatory spiral? I hope the administration worked through that before the Suleimani strike.

The Trump administration will have to understand the full complexity of the conflict it just escalated, assemble and utilize a large cadre of area specialists, work closely with allies and above all, commit to seeing through to an end of what already has been a very long war. These are not attributes that have characterized the Trump presidency thus far.

But for the moment, I do take satisfaction in what happened Friday on the Baghdad airport road. Over the last several years, it seems that General Suleimani allowed his ego to overcome his judgment. The shadow commander came out of the shadows, holding news conferences and conducting media tours. This time we were waiting. It was a brilliantly planned and executed strike, killing just five — including not only the general, but also Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of an Iranian-supported militia who was implicated in the 1983 bombing of our embassy in Kuwait.

General Suleimani himself might have been proud to claim credit for the operation that killed him.

[njbill]

Btw, the idiom you are looking for is "hear, hear".

Their, their now. Everything will be OK.

[old salt]

Sources & methods.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq ... SKBN1Z829L

[old salt]

Btw, the idiom you are looking for is "hear, hear".

Their, their now. Everything will be OK.

Is that the White Nationalist hand gesture ?

[njbill]

Sometimes OK just means okay.

[old salt]

Rachel has jumped the shark. Making excuses for the Iranian shootdown. Unbelievable.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/wat ... 6395077612

[DocBarrister]

https://www.conservativereview.com/news ... e-justice/

The death of Iranian Gen. Soleimani is about long-overdue justice

As we watched Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist groups attack our embassy in Baghdad, many were in favor of a robust retaliation for the attack. What the U.S. military under the orders of President Trump delivered last night was even more than retaliation for the attack on the embassy: It was retaliation for decades’ worth of unanswered American blood spilt by Iran’s external paramilitary forces, led by Qassem Soleimani.

We have clearly intervened in numerous Middle Eastern theaters over the years that we should never have been involved in. But at every stage, Iran has been attacking and killing hundreds of our soldiers: Sacking the embassy in Tehran in 1979, the 241 Marines killed in the 1983 Beirut bombing, the killing of 19 airmen at the Khobar Towers in 1996, or the over 600 U.S soldiers estimated to have been killed directly or indirectly by Soleimani’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during the Iraq war. More recently, Iran captured our naval ships in 2016 and humiliated our sailors in what should have been viewed as an act of war, yet Obama did nothing. Well, actually, he transferred $150 billion to Iran, so it was worse than nothing.

Trump has laid down a new set of parameters. Soleimani was reportedly disembarking from a plane at the Baghdad airport and being greeted by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the head of Kata’ib Hezbollah, when an airstrike killed them both. Kata’ib Hezbollah was the primary militia responsible for the attacks on our base near Kirkuk last Thursday and the Baghdad embassy this week. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called out al-Muhandis by name earlier this week, tweeting out a picture of him leading the attack with the militiamen.

Going forward, the best outcome is a coherent strategy in the Middle East, but the next best outcome is justice against Iran’s most potent external force that has threatened us for decades. The killing of Soleimani is justice for the blood of American soldiers on his hands, but it will hopefully also serve as a turning point in reorienting our focus in the Middle East to one of “strike and maneuver” against enemies that affect our interests, rather than holding and building ground on behalf of Islamic tribal factions in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

You need to stop polluting your mind with the detritus from garbage publications like Conservative Review.

DocBarrister

[old salt]

Useful info from Forbes on the Iranian/Russian missile system used :

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremyboga ... 3e7d4c22e3

One of the basic tasks of an air defense battery is to discriminate between friendly aircraft and foe. But amid a state of high alert after Iran had launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at U.S. bases in Iraq, an Iranian air defense unit appears to have failed tragically, in a manner that some military experts contacted by Forbes found puzzling.

Western intelligence officials reportedly believe that two missiles were fired at the airliner by an SA-15 Gauntlet air defense battery, also known as the Tor M1. It’s a Russian-made, mobile, short-range system that can accompany infantry units or provide a last line of defense for key infrastructure or military installations against low-flying jets, helicopters and cruise missiles. Mounted on a tracked vehicle or on a truck, it can be operated singly or with multiple launchers networked together to a command post.

It fires a missile with a small warhead containing 32 pounds of explosives that is designed to spray its its target with metal fragments.

A properly functioning SA-15 battery would have had multiple means of identifying Ukrainian International Airways Flight PS 752 as a civilian aircraft, defense experts told Forbes. One of several head-scratchers about the incident is that radar should have shown the Boeing 737-800 was on a commonly used flight path heading northwest from the airport — if it was inbound into the country it would be more explainable for it to have been misidentified as a hostile aircraft, says David Deptula, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general who heads the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

“There are a lot of question marks as to why and how this could have happened,” he says.

The Boeing 737-800 was transmitting a unique transponder identification code. If the equipment on the SA-15 that picks that up, called an IFF interrogator, was malfunctioning, battery operators would typically look at the schedule of airline traffic through their area and see if it matched with a scheduled flight, Deptula says. Flight PS 752 was delayed by almost an hour from its scheduled departure, taking off at 6:12 a.m.

The SA-15 operators also would have considered the path and speed of the plane on radar. “Is it operating at low altitude, at high speed headed toward a sensitive area”? Deptula asks. Flight PS 752 was rising toward 8,000 feet at a relatively sedate speed of 275 knots when flight tracking data from its transponder cut out, a normal profile for an airliner, he says. “It is departing the area, climbing through medium altitude, not trying to hide its signature, looking like a routine operation.”

Complicating decision-making for the soldiers operating the battery would have been two factors: time and the high state of alert.

The SA-15’s missiles have a relatively short range of 6 miles to 7.5 miles and it can detect targets at a range of 11 to 13.5 miles. It’s unknown if Iran has integrated its SA-15 batteries with its broader air defense network. If the unit in question was operating independently, at the speed the plane was going at, the soldiers may have had a window from as little as 30 seconds to 2.5 minutes to decide whether to launch an interceptor, says Carlo Kopp, co-founder of the think tank Air Power Australia.

Given that Iran had launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at two U.S. bases in Iraq hours before in retaliation for the targeted killing of the high-ranking Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, Iranian air defense forces likely were operating under looser rules of engagement in anticipation of a potential counterstrike, as well as psychological pressure and fatigue after being on alert for the five days since his death.

“Your incentive balance sways over to shoot first, ask questions later,” says Michael Elleman, senior fellow for missile defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Exacerbating that would be their lack of experience – Iranian air defenses haven’t been tested since the Iran-Iraq War. The level of training of Iranian air defense forces is also a question mark.

Given the multiple means of detection and the distinctive flight profile of an airliner, there’s no excuse for the deadly mistake, says Kopp.

“The only credible explanation is incompetence,” he says. “There is no evidence that Iran is training its missileers any better than the Russians do,” he says, pointing to the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine in 2014, which a Dutch-led investigation concluded was hit by a Buk missile fired from a launcher that had been brought in from Russia, as well as incidents involving Russian-made and Russian contractor-operated air defense batteries in Syria.

But given the high speed and compressed timelines of modern air warfare, Elleman says we shouldn’t be surprised by what is believed to have happened to Flight PS 752.

“I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often.”

Key questions --
-- was the shooting SA-15 battery plugged into an integrated air defense system, giving the firing decision maker access to a "bigger picture" provided by multiple integrated radars ?
-- was the "shoot" decision made by a crew in the field, operating independently, or were they plugged into an integrated air defense network, blending multiple radar data, for a "bigger picture" & elevating firing authority & decision making to a higher level ?
-- was the detecting radar's IFF functioning, providing the target's transponder code, altitude & speed, tagged to the radar return, or did they just have a "skin paint" raw radar return, without the IFF data overlaid ?

Even though a mobile, deployable battery, you would think they'd be plugged into an integrated air defense network, protecting Iran's capital city.

Russian foreign military sales air defense systems are not performing well.

[old salt]

Despite numerous escalatory actions by Iran against US & allied interests in the ME,
the US has taken no actions directed toward Iranian territory that could be interpreted as threatening.

We have forces in the area, but they've been deployed in a defensive manner.

Our offensive operations have been to counter ISIS in Iraq & Syria, & just recently,
to protect US forces in Iraq & Syria from attacks by Iranian proxy Iraqi PMF Shia militias.

Given the threats, the US has acted with restraint.
If the Iranians have an itchy trigger figure, it's because of their irresponsible belligerent actions.

[Kismet]

Useful info in the video clip below from CBS's David Martin in yesterday's 8:14 pm update.
When facts emerge, it is revealing to see the benefit of the doubt our MSM gave the Iranians in their initial speculation.
So much for the benign "intent to miss" & courtesy early warning theory.
Meanwhile, they went nuts over a leaked rough draft of a planning letter by our troops under fire.

There were stunned expressions of sadness on the MSNBC talking heads today when the news of the shoot down was breaking.
The same number of souls were already lost, but there were few signs of concern when they thought they could blame Boeing.
Now they are forced to confront the malevolence of the Iranians they've been defending.
How soon will MSNBC & CNN be airing fluff documentaries on the Life & Times of General Soleimani ?
Andy Rooney would be proud of his CBS colleague David Martin. He gets it right before he speculates.

If you hate MSNBC coverage/commentators so much why is it that you are seemingly watching them all the time? Maybe you should switch to FauxNews.

Heck, even you were here speculating about "uncontained engine failure" right out of the box referencing one photo from the crash. It appears your speculation may have been incorrect as well.

[tech37]

Looks like US intel is now claiming US satellite images show the plane was shot down by a missile originating in Iran. Speculation is it is the same type of missile that brought down the Ukrainian plane over Russia/Ukraine a couple years ago.

Looks like it was an Iranian f**k up.

Think it was a MH17, a Malaysian 777 (carrying many Dutch citizens) shot down by Russian surface-to air missile battery from occupied Ukrainian territory. They had film of the truck launcher heading back across the border into Russia minus one missile.

Both CBS, WSJ and Newsweek all reporting this now

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/ir ... 020-01-09/

Also Reuters showing photos of pieces of fuselage with pitting/marks indicating possible explosion outside the aircraft (as would occur with a missile) had already attracted the attention of some investigators. Similar marks were visible on wreckage of MH17.

The thinking is that the plane was mistakenly targeted in some fashion for some reason and that the Iranians did not intend to take down a civilian aircraft.

We may never know unless the Iranians open up the investigation outside of their country

Another short straw drawn by the Ukrainians. Very tough for them. 63 Canadian citizens also on the plane.

I suspect that the press is playing games with the passenger count. From what I read two days ago, the Canadian citizens, most of them are dual citizenship - also Iranian citizens. This is not an incident where it mostly effects westerners. The Iranian population took the biggest hit I believe. This is going to be a bitter pill for the Iranian population to swallow. A real problem for the government.

Amazing how the Trumpnista grab on to this and have no trouble believing US intelligence. Suddenly not the deep state.

NY Times has posted a video (from well before the crash) that appears to show the airliner being hit by the missile, then it apparently turned around and headed back toward the airport before exploding...

https://t.co/yAuu7vWdxf

If true, that suggests that the pilots remained in some level of control...yet didn't radio in???

mdlax criticizes the actions of pilots of a civilian airliner hit by a surface-to-air missile...insufferable! What would you have done Underdog? Your credibility on this board is waning, IMO.

Really? You read me as criticizing the pilots???

Not at all, I'm just wondering how there wasn't a radio transmission if they still had some control over the plane...it said for 2 more minutes after the missile strike. Maybe the missile somehow knocked out the radio? The black box will likely have the explanation.

Come on, tech, you don't have to assume I'm a jerk and an idiot for every post.
We can disagree but let's not jump to conclusions about what each other means.

Fair enough, sorry to assume...

[tech37]

So in the last couple of days I've seen three personal attacks here on Mdlaxfan: os called him a troll, tech37 sneeringly called him "Underdog", and youath posted an insulting gif.

Get it together, Trumpistas! Back in the pre-Trump days you had actual arguments. Now it seems all you can do is hurl insults.

Insulting? He is known for lengthy posts. It was an endearing gif image for his attentions to detail.

The gif was funny, albeit in response to a very short post.... so less apt in that moment.
"endearing", well that's a stretch, but ok.

Not even sure what the "Underdog" insult even meant, so less funny. Disagree here
"troll" has been a recent favorite of OS when he's struggling for something cogent to say.
He usually recovers in due course.
Personally, I think there's only one true "troll" that frequents these threads and he's on 'leave' right now.
The rest is repartee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEVsRLhet2k

[kramerica.inc]

[MDlaxfan76]

Looks like US intel is now claiming US satellite images show the plane was shot down by a missile originating in Iran. Speculation is it is the same type of missile that brought down the Ukrainian plane over Russia/Ukraine a couple years ago.

Looks like it was an Iranian f**k up.

Think it was a MH17, a Malaysian 777 (carrying many Dutch citizens) shot down by Russian surface-to air missile battery from occupied Ukrainian territory. They had film of the truck launcher heading back across the border into Russia minus one missile.

Both CBS, WSJ and Newsweek all reporting this now

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/ir ... 020-01-09/

Also Reuters showing photos of pieces of fuselage with pitting/marks indicating possible explosion outside the aircraft (as would occur with a missile) had already attracted the attention of some investigators. Similar marks were visible on wreckage of MH17.

The thinking is that the plane was mistakenly targeted in some fashion for some reason and that the Iranians did not intend to take down a civilian aircraft.

We may never know unless the Iranians open up the investigation outside of their country

Another short straw drawn by the Ukrainians. Very tough for them. 63 Canadian citizens also on the plane.

I suspect that the press is playing games with the passenger count. From what I read two days ago, the Canadian citizens, most of them are dual citizenship - also Iranian citizens. This is not an incident where it mostly effects westerners. The Iranian population took the biggest hit I believe. This is going to be a bitter pill for the Iranian population to swallow. A real problem for the government.

Amazing how the Trumpnista grab on to this and have no trouble believing US intelligence. Suddenly not the deep state.

NY Times has posted a video (from well before the crash) that appears to show the airliner being hit by the missile, then it apparently turned around and headed back toward the airport before exploding...

https://t.co/yAuu7vWdxf

If true, that suggests that the pilots remained in some level of control...yet didn't radio in???

mdlax criticizes the actions of pilots of a civilian airliner hit by a surface-to-air missile...insufferable! What would you have done Underdog? Your credibility on this board is waning, IMO.

Really? You read me as criticizing the pilots???

Not at all, I'm just wondering how there wasn't a radio transmission if they still had some control over the plane...it said for 2 more minutes after the missile strike. Maybe the missile somehow knocked out the radio? The black box will likely have the explanation.

Come on, tech, you don't have to assume I'm a jerk and an idiot for every post.
We can disagree but let's not jump to conclusions about what each other means.

Fair enough, sorry to assume...

No worries, we're good.
I've appreciated some of your recent commentary.

[MDlaxfan76]

So in the last couple of days I've seen three personal attacks here on Mdlaxfan: os called him a troll, tech37 sneeringly called him "Underdog", and youath posted an insulting gif.

Get it together, Trumpistas! Back in the pre-Trump days you had actual arguments. Now it seems all you can do is hurl insults.

Insulting? He is known for lengthy posts. It was an endearing gif image for his attentions to detail.

The gif was funny, albeit in response to a very short post.... so less apt in that moment.
"endearing", well that's a stretch, but ok.

Not even sure what the "Underdog" insult even meant, so less funny. Disagree here
"troll" has been a recent favorite of OS when he's struggling for something cogent to say.
He usually recovers in due course.
Personally, I think there's only one true "troll" that frequents these threads and he's on 'leave' right now.
The rest is repartee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEVsRLhet2k

I'm fine with it.

[MDlaxfan76]

cogent = less than 1500 words.

Short or long, cogent means "clear, logical, and convincing".

We all struggle to make such an argument at times.
It's indeed even harder to do so with fewer words!

[a fan]

Russian foreign military sales air defense systems are not performing well.

Thank Obama and his sanctions.

It is impossible to keep up with US R&D when you have the same GDP that Italy does.

Money matters when it comes to big ticket items. Making trouble in the ME, on the other hand, can be done on a grocery store clerk's salary.