Robert Parry, who’s one of the better national security reporters out there, says there are reasons to take the media version of the Malaysia jet shootdown with a grain of salt:
So why hasn’t this question of U.S. spy-in-the-sky photos – and what they reveal – been pressed by the major U.S. news media? How can the Washington Post run front-page stories, such as the one on Sunday with the definitive title “U.S. official: Russia gave systems,” without demanding from these U.S. officials details about what the U.S. satellite images disclose?
Instead, the Post’s Michael Birnbaum and Karen DeYoung wrote from Kiev: “The United States has confirmed that Russia supplied sophisticated missile launchers to separatists in eastern Ukraine and that attempts were made to move them back across the Russian border after the Thursday shoot-down of a Malaysian jetliner, a U.S. official said Saturday.
“‘We do believe they were trying to move back into Russia at least three Buk [missile launch] systems,’ the official said. U.S. intelligence was ‘starting to get indications … a little more than a week ago’ that the Russian launchers had been moved into Ukraine, said the official” whose identity was withheld by the Post so the official would discuss intelligence matters.
But catch the curious vagueness of the official’s wording: “we do believe”; “starting to get indications.” Are we supposed to believe – and perhaps more relevant, do the Washington Post writers actually believe – that the U.S. government with the world’s premier intelligence services can’t track three lumbering trucks each carrying large mid-range missiles?
What I’ve been told by one source, who has provided accurate information on similar matters in the past, is that U.S. intelligence agencies do have detailed satellite images of the likely missile battery that launched the fateful missile, but the battery appears to have been under the control of Ukrainian government troops dressed in what look like Ukrainian uniforms.
The source said CIA analysts were still not ruling out the possibility that the troops were actually eastern Ukrainian rebels in similar uniforms but the initial assessment was that the troops were Ukrainian soldiers. There also was the suggestion that the soldiers involved were undisciplined and possibly drunk, since the imagery showed what looked like beer bottles scattered around the site, the source said.
Instead of pressing for these kinds of details, the U.S. mainstream press has simply passed on the propaganda coming from the Ukrainian government and the U.S. State Department, including hyping the fact that the Buk system is “Russian-made,” a rather meaningless fact that gets endlessly repeated.
However, to use the “Russian-made” point to suggest that the Russians must have been involved in the shoot-down is misleading at best and clearly designed to influence ill-informed Americans. As the Post and other news outlets surely know, the Ukrainian military also operates Russian-made military systems, including Buk anti-aircraft batteries, so the manufacturing origin has no probative value here.
We do know that a plane fell out of the sky in Eastern Ukraine. Somebody fired a missile from somewhere at something. Or at nothing. A Malaysia Airline airliner disappeared without a trace several months ago. About that disappearance; there is some evidence that somebody took control of that airplane and was operating it from the ground somewhere. Was the Malaysia plane suppose to be flying over the southeastern Ukrainian war zone? Or did somebody fiddle with the internal computerized controls and alter its intended course? Thereby setting up this incident. Blackops?
It is certainly feasible that the Ukraine government has Russian built missile systems. But how is it possible that such a system, manned by Ukrainian personnel, would have been operating in rebel held territory? And given the rising political and economic pressure on Putin, why has Russia not pushed this narrative if there is any truth to it?
There’s certainly a lot unexplained, and I completely agree that our failed MSM are mere mouthpieces for whatever the gummint want’s us to know or think. But I’m not sure this article adds up any better than the hog slop we’re getting in WAPO and NYT.
re ADams: didn’t our Ambassador to the UN make exactly that point: If the Russians have the data let’s see it, and BTW wouldn;t they want to make damn sure that the forensic evidence is pristine to ensure that narrative gets made? Why then do the opposite?
Oh yes, I suppose because they have no real control or authority over the pro-Russian irregulars, some of whom until 4 months ago were in the Russian Army, who are in the border region.