Generally speaking, I hate conspiracy theories, but I’ve seen some things about the twa 800 case that make me wonder. A number of crash investigators have suggested that something very unusual was going on behind theirs backs

Consider the circumstances. This was NOT an Iranian F-14 whose intentions were unknown, or an American F-14 thought to be Iranian.

It was an airliner, big plane, flying at altitude, way, way up, in a regularly used airlane, squawking it’s ID on a functional IFF, acting in no threatening manner.

The Vincennes was state of the art, with much of the training of the crew focused upon NOT shooting down that which should not be shot down. It is not their mission to start WWIII, which they could if they shot down the wrong airplane.

Ignore the BS excuses and look at the facts. Either the Vincennes was completely incompetent, not able to tell the difference between an airliner at altitude in an air lane and squawking an assigned IFF and a threatening F-14 or they were competent and following orders.

I am certain they could tell the difference between an Airbus 320 in an airlane and a hostile F-14. I refuse to believe they were so poorly trained and their equipment was so poorly maintained they were unable to recognize the differences.

Vincennes shot down that airliner by accident, mostly because they were already maneuvering violently, guns blazing away, in the middle of a surface action against Iranian gunboats. Maybe somebody made a wrong decision, thinking the airliner was a real threat disguised as a civilian craft, part of a coordinated attack. Maybe somebody just forgot to check a verifying readout before he pulled the trigger. But it was not a deliberate killing of innocents. I’m willing to believe those separatist gunners in the Ukraine made the same kind of mistake. It just makes no sense, there is nothing to gain by shooting down an airliner, but there is a lot to lose if anyone finds out you did.

In the case of KAL 007 I think the USSR really did think they were shooting down the US spook plane that regularly eavesdropped on their communications and who frequently tailgated the commercial flights in that area to disguise itself.(How do you think we “just happened” to record their tactical communications?) The airliner WAS off course for a while, in Soviet airspace, although by the time it was hit it was already in intl waters.

The U2s were guilty as charged, as were those RB-47s shot down over Siberia. I’ve got a few stories of my own I could add to the list. Believe me, both sides are good sports about it. When they truly get caught with their hands in the cookie jar, they usually keep quiet about it to spare each other the embarrassment. Too bad about the crews that manage to bail out, though.

Have you ever seen “The Bedford Incident”? Yes, stuff like that really happens. And in combat it happens all the time.

Think about it. If the US was so inept, so incompetent, so poorly equipped they would have started WWIII long before now. All kinds of airplanes would have been shot down. They shot that plane down as a provocation, a warning and on purpose. A civilian airliner at altitude with it’s IFF on does not look like an attacking F-14 and anyone who believes it does is beyond redemption.

The excuses don’t pass the smell test. Believe any nonsense you want to, swallow the pap for the masses, and ignore the facts and reality. When one is thinking backwards, justifying a previously formed conclusion, any excuse will do.

(The U2 was a weather plane, Korean flight 007 was on course, American RB-47s were in international territory, etc. and so on. “Reality” is whatever you can get Americans to believe.)

The difference is that when the Russians do it they try and blame the victim. If Putin, who must have know from the start what actually happened, had simply fessed up and stared cooperating with the West,and paid the bill, this whole incident would be forgotten by now.

Putin’s response is reminiscent of the US Congressman who claimed the Vincennes shootdown of an Iranian Airbus was actually staged by the Iranians just to embarrass us; that they had faked the plane’s IFF, or blown it up deliberately, and had seeded the ocean with corpses just to humiliate us. He pointed out as evidence that many of the bodies in photographs were nude. He did not know that bodies falling from great heights often have their clothing ripped away by the wind, as we have witnessed in Ukraine.

This incident is easy to understand, and not uncommon in the annals of friendly fire and collateral damage. Excited and inexperienced gunners, flush from several victories against legitimate targets, got trigger-happy and screwed up. Its not all that different than what happened with Vincennes. The real difference is the subsequent coverup by the command authority.

The US excuse is the standard bureaucratic bullshit, slight variations on the excuses for bombing the Chinese news agency and killing 400 civilians in a well-known air raid shelter. Always understandable, excusable, simply an oversight by nice guys doing their jobs competently.

But God help the Russians, evil bastards that they are

“According to the Iranian government, Vincennes negligently shot down the civilian aircraft: the airliner was making IFF squawks in Mode III (not Mode II used by Iranian military planes), a signal that identified it as a civilian craft, and operators of Vincennes mistook for Mode II.[4]
“According to the United States Government, the crew incorrectly identified the Iranian Airbus A300 as an attacking F-14A Tomcat fighter, a plane made in the United States and operated at that time by only two forces worldwide, the United States Navy and the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force. The Iranian F-14s had been supplied by manufacturer Grumman in an air-to-air configuration only and had no known anti-ship capabilities.[5][6]“

But Putin is even worse, he believes in Jesus.

Impeding the crash investigation isn’t right, but it sure is Russian. And Putin is a child of the 50s after all. A renewed Cold War might feel like going home to him.

I could also see a large amount of what appeared to be paper, as if the plane had been carrying lots of documents aboard.