Who Shot Down Malaysian Flight MH17?

  
A lie gets half way around the World before the truth has a chance to put its pants on
Winston Churchill

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them
Galileo

telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

All truth goes through three phases. First it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third is is accepted as self-evident.
Schopenhauer 

Dutch Intellectuals Apologize to Putin for Lies on MH17

EDITOR'S CHOICE | 31.08.2014 | 01:29

 When a Malaysian Airlines flight carrying 289 civilian passengers was accidentally shot down in Ukraine the western press immediately accepted reports from Kiev that a rocket fired from Donetsk, a city located in the rebel sector of Ukraine blew up the aircraft.

 Only three days after the crash, Secretary of State Kerry did the rounds of the Sunday talk shows making what he deemed an 'extraordinary circumstantial' case supposedly proving that the rebels carried out the shoot-down with missiles provided by Russia. He acknowledged that the US government was 'not drawing the final conclusion here, but there is a lot that points at the need for Russia to be responsible.

The New York Times is filled with articles since the crash pointing the finger at Vladimir Putin. The Cold War is back. 


An August 7 article in the New Straits Times, Malaysia's flagship English-language newspaper, however charged the US- and European-backed Ukrainian regime in Kiev with shooting down Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 in east Ukraine. The evidence in this article is substantial So where is the truth? Intelligence analysts in the United States have already concluded that Malaysia flight MH17 was shot down by an air-to-air missile, and that the Ukrainian government had had something to do with it. This corroborates an emerging theory postulated by local investigators that the Boeing 777-200 was crippled by an air-to-air missile and finished off with cannon fire from a jet that had been shadowing it as it plummeted to earth."

 Some sections of the US intelligence have concluded that US Secretary of State John Kerry's claims that pro-Russian forces shot down the plane are lies.

 
Testimony by a Canadian-Ukrainian monitor for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Michael Bociurkiw was one of the first investigators to arrive at the crash site. Speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on July 29, Bociurkiw said: "There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really pockmarked with what almost looks like machine gun fire; very, very strong machine gun fire."

Another source the paper cited was an article, "Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts," by former Associated Press reporter Robert Parry "Given the lack of any evidence supporting US charges that pro-Russian forces shot MH17 down with a Buk anti-aircraft missile some US intelligence analysts have concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault, and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame, according to a source briefed on these findings."

The US intelligence community lacked any satellite imagery supporting Kerry's allegations, and that the only Buk missile system in that part of Ukraine appeared to be under the control of the Ukrainian military."


Propaganda Value
This lack of transparency, of course, has a propaganda value since it leaves in place the widespread public impression that ethnic Russian rebels and Russian President Vladimir Putin were responsible for the 298 deaths, a rush to judgment that Secretary Kerry and other senior U.S. officials (and the Western news media) encouraged in July 2014.

Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Once that impression took hold there has been little interest in Official Washington to clarify the mystery especially as evidence has emerged implicating elements of the Ukrainian military. For instance, Dutch intelligence has reported (and U.S. intelligence has implicitly confirmed) that the only operational Buk anti-aircraft missile systems in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, were under the control of the Ukrainian military.
In a Dutch report released last October, the Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) reported that the only anti-aircraft weapons in eastern Ukraine capable of bringing down MH-17 at 33,000 feet belonged to the Ukrainian government.
MIVD made that assessment in the context of explaining why commercial aircraft continued to fly over the eastern Ukrainian battle zone in summer 2014. MIVD said that based on “state secret” information, it was known that Ukraine possessed some older but “powerful anti-aircraft systems” and “a number of these systems were located in the eastern part of the country.”
The intelligence agency added that the rebels lacked that capability: “Prior to the crash, the MIVD knew that, in addition to light aircraft artillery, the Separatists also possessed short-range portable air defence systems (man-portable air-defence systems; MANPADS) and that they possibly possessed short-range vehicle-borne air-defence systems. Both types of systems are considered surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Due to their limited range they do not constitute a danger to civil aviation at cruising altitude.”
One could infer a similar finding by reading a U.S. “Government Assessment” released by the Director of National Intelligence on July 22, 2014, five days after the crash, seeking to cast suspicion on the ethnic Russian rebels and Putin by noting military equipment that Moscow had provided the rebels. But most tellingly the list did not include Buk anti-aircraft missiles. In other words, in the context of trying to blame the rebels and Putin, U.S. intelligence could not put an operational Buk system in the rebels’ hands.
So, perhaps the most logical suspicion would be that the Ukrainian military, then engaged in an offensive in the east and fearing a possible Russian invasion, moved its Buk missile systems up to the front and an undisciplined crew fired a missile at a suspected Russian aircraft, bringing down MH-17 by accident.
That was essentially what I was told by a source who had been briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts in July and August 2014. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts” and “The Danger of an MH-17 Cold Case.”]
But Ukraine is a principal participant in the Dutch-led Joint Investigative Team (JIT), which has been probing the MH-17 case, and thus the investigation suffers from a possible conflict of interest since Ukraine would prefer that the world’s public perception of the MH-17 case continue to blame Putin. Under the JIT’s terms, any of the five key participants (The Netherlands, Ukraine, Australia, Belgium and Malaysia) can block release of information.
The interest in keeping Putin on the propaganda defensive is shared by the Obama administration which used the furor over the MH-17 deaths to spur the European Union into imposing economic sanctions on Russia.
In contrast, clearing the Russians and blaming the Ukrainians would destroy a carefully constructed propaganda narrative which has stuck black hats on Putin and the ethnic Russian rebels and white hats on the U.S.-backed government of Ukraine, which seized power after a putsch that overthrew elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014.
Accusations against Russia have also been fanned by propaganda outlets, such as the British-based Bellingcat site, which has collaborated with Western mainstream media to continue pointing the finger of blame at Moscow and Putin – as the Dutch investigators drag their heels and refuse to divulge any information that would clarify the case.

Finally, the New Straits Times and Parry both cited retired Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko, who has pointed to photographic evidence of MH17 wreckage suggesting that cockpit panels were raked with heavy machine gun fire from both the port and starboard sides. "Nobody before Haisenko had noticed that the projectiles had ripped through the panel from both its left side and its right side. This is what rules out any ground-fired missile," Parry wrote.

  These events also constitute yet another indictment of the Western media, who have completely blacked out the investigation of the crash of MH17. Instead, the elements in the CIA and their Ukrainian proxies driving the war in east Ukraine have been able to escalate the confrontation with Russia and demonize Putin, without any of their unsubstantiated accusations of Russian involvement in the MH17 crash being challenged.

"Silence denotes consent, and the deafening silence of the Western media on the issue of Kiev’s involvement in the MH17 crash testifies to the criminalization not only of the foreign policy establishment, but also of its media lackeys and the entire ruling class."

By Niles Williamson, WSWS

The US and European media have buried this remarkable report, which refutes the wave of allegations planted by the CIA in international media claiming that Russian president Vladimir Putin was responsible for the destruction of MH17, without presenting any evidence to back up this charge.

The media coverage is a classic example of turning a tragic accident into a tidy story that fits into a Cold War tirade supported by US and EU warriors that justifies destroying the Russian economy with relentless sanctions. 

Will the truth be finally sorted out?