The Russian airliner is ruling out technical problems and human error in the crash that took 224 lives in Egypt.
A Metrojet official on Monday said neither a mechanical failure nor human error could have caused the crash of its passenger plane in Egypt over the weekend that killed all 224 people on board, all but five Russian nationals.
“(The reason for the accident) could only have been a mechanical impact on the plane,” Alexander Smirnov , Metrojet's deputy director said in Moscow. He said that a technical problem would not have caused the Airbus A320-200 to break up in the air and that only an "external impact" were to blame.
"We (are) excluding technical problems and rejecting human error," Smirnov said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed that it remained too early in the investigation to draw any conclusions.
“It would be wrong to articulate any preliminary guesses or voice statements that are not based on anything,” Dmitry Peskov told Russia's RT news and other outlets Monday. “At least let the investigators produce some results first.”
James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said in Washington said a claim of responsibility from an Islamic extremist group could not be ruled out. But Clapper added that so far no physical proof of terrorism involvement had been revealed.
Investigators are focusing their probe on the theory that the plane broke up in the air, citing a debris field that stretches over 6 square miles in the Sinai Peninsula .
Metrojet said Monday that a previous problem with the plane's tail was fully repaired.
The Egyptian government appeared to quickly rule out terrorism after the plane crashed after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh for St. Petersburg early Saturday.
An Islamic State affiliate operating in the Sinai peninsula where the incident took place nevertheless claimed responsibility. Russian investigators have also dismissed that claim.
Contributing: John Bacon
DUBAI, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Iran has begun decommissioning uranium enrichment centrifuges under the terms of the nuclear deal struck with six world powers in July, Tehran's nuclear chief was quoted as saying on Monday during a visit to Tokyo.
ReplyDelete"We have started the preliminary work" on implementing the agreement, Iran's Atomic Energy Organization chief Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying by Japan's Kyodo news agency, adding that the measures include reducing the number of active centrifuge machines.
Under the July 14 agreement, Iran is to curb its nuclear program under United Nations supervision to ensure it cannot be used to make a nuclear weapon, in exchange for the removal of sanctions that have isolated Tehran and hobbled its economy.
In a separate development that appeared to confirm that implementation work had started, 20 hardline members of Iran's parliament wrote to President Hassan Rouhani to complain about dismantling centrifuges in two enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow.
"Unfortunately in the last two days some contractors entered Fordow and started dismantling centrifuges... they said they could finish the job in two weeks," Fars cited the lawmakers as saying.
Centrifuges spin at supersonic speed to increase the ratio of the fissile isotope in uranium. Low-enriched uranium is used to fuel nuclear power plants, Iran's stated goal, but can also provide material for bombs if refined much further, which the West has feared may have been Iran's latent goal.
Iran's highest authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, conditionally approved the deal last month, but the lawmakers said that beginning implementation so soon was against his directives. (Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by William Maclean and Andrew Heavens)
It Begins
Flight Radar data shows the ‘final moments’ of the doomed airliner
ReplyDeleteFlight 7K9268 lurched up and down several times in the final moments before it lost contact with the ground, according to data from the Flight Radar 24 tracking site.
The Airbus 321 climbed nearly 3,000 feet in three seconds before falling another 3,000 feet a few seconds later, the altitude data shows. It repeated the abrupt rise and fall a second time before it was lost to radar.
The records from the Sweden-based Flight Radar 24 also show the aircraft rapidly losing speed in its last minute. This data is usually very reliable, but can sometimes be affected by an erroneous message.
Alexander Smirnov, a top official at Metrojet, says its plane dropped 300 kph (186 mph) in speed and 1.5 kilometers (about 5,000 feet) in altitude one minute before it crashed into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
The flight was at a cruising speed of just over 407 knots (468 miles per hour) at the beginning of the data set. Thirty seconds later the speed had fallen to just 62 knots (70 miles per hour) - far too slow for a plane that size to remain airborne.
TELEGRAPH
Prison Raid A Failure, Executes Prisoners
ReplyDeleteISIS releases its own version of the raid in which an American commando lost his life
By James King and Chen on Oct 30, 2015 at 4:23 PM
ISIS released a video Friday with a direct message for President Obama, claiming the U.S. military raid to free 70 hostages last week failed to dent the might of the Islamic caliphate, and that ISIS losses were far fewer than among those who’d launched the attack.
“Obama, you have learned a new lesson,” a masked ISIS fighter speaking English said to the camera, standing in front of a bound hostage who was beheaded at the end of the 15 minute video. “Six of the soldiers of the caliphate faced 400 of your children, they killed and injured them by Allah’s grace. You are probably surprised by this…you did not gain anything. You returned to your bases with losses and humiliation.”
The video obtained by Vocativ was titled “The Truth of the American Landing,” and showed ISIS’ version of the aftermath of the raid on the prison in Hawijah in northern Iraq. An American commando died from wounds he sustained during the raid, which was carried out alongside Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
In one scene, an ISIS fighter amid the rubble of the destroyed compound declared the U.S. mission a complete failure. Another sifted through medical supplies, bloodied bandages and syringes that were left behind. The video ends with masked ISIS fighters executing four men in orange jumpsuits ISIS said were Peshmerga soldiers.
http://www.vocativ.com/news/245043/in-new-video-isis-calls-prison-raid-a-failure-executes-prisoners/
ISIS in AFRICA
ReplyDeleteA new video purportedly released by the African branch of the Islamic State, AKA Wilayat Gharb Ifriqiyyah, formerly known as Boko Haram, has released an amputation video. The video was released November and is titled “Establishment of the Limit Upon the Thieves.” It is the first known amputation video by the Northern Nigerian Islamic State militants.
‘Do you realize what you’ve done?’ - Vladimir Putin
ReplyDeleteNow the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq
ReplyDeleteA revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.
Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”.
Which is pretty well exactly what happened two years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.
That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.
The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners and posting atrocities online, and the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US and western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage.
READ THE DECLASSIFIED REPORT
http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf
Only in the World of Washington DC can politicians and senior military civilians take responsibility without consequence. That is on a good day. On all others there is group amnesia and a disinterested public. That is until a plane, a building or a city get taken down.
ReplyDeleteCASE IN POINT
ReplyDeleteWASHINGTON — U.S. taxpayers footed the bill for a $42 million natural-gas filling station in Afghanistan, a boondoggle that should have cost $500,000 and has virtually no value to average Afghans, the government watchdog for reconstruction in Afghanistan announced Monday.
A Pentagon task force awarded a $3 million contract to build the station in Sheberghan, Afghanistan, but ended up spending $12 million in construction costs and $30 million in "overhead" between 2011 and 2014, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found. Meanwhile, similar gas station was built in neighboring Pakistan cost $500,000.
WHILE OUR SHIT BIRDS - OUR MASTERS AND RULERS TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR DOING WHAT THEY DO BEST -WARRING ON OUR MONEY:
ReplyDeleteThe School Reform Commission on Monday authorized temporarily borrowing $250 million - and shifting another $40 million from its capital funds - just to keep the city schools' lights on through December.
As the state budget stalemate dragged into its fifth month, SRC officials underscored their dismay with what one called a seeming failure of lawmakers to do their basic jobs.
Philadelphia is among dozens of districts statewide that have had to borrow to make ends meet in the absence of state budget.
"I mean, we've elected these folks to govern," SRC Chair Marjorie Neff said after a special commission meeting. "And I guess at this point, I'm more concerned that it doesn't feel like governing is happening. That we're at this place and that you have school districts that are going to collapse sooner than Philadelphia might. And there just doesn't seem to be the urgency."
Philadelphia is banking on something close to what Gov. Wolf proposed for the district - $159 million in new money. The Republican legislature has balked at that sum.
"It is not enough to pass a budget that keeps the inadequate status quo," Neff said.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20151103_Philly_schools_to_borrow_millions_to_stay_open.html#5uBiGf7Rm4OeVEjP.99
The international space station, costing only 3 billion a year.
ReplyDeleteThe ISS is arguably the most expensive single item ever constructed.[285] In 2010 the cost was expected to be $150 billion. It includes NASA's budget of $58.7 billion (inflation unadjusted) for the station from 1985 to 2015 ($72.4 billion in 2010 dollars), Russia's $12 billion, Europe's $5 billion, Japan's $5 billion, Canada's $2 billion, and the cost of 36 shuttle flights to build the station; estimated at $1.4 billion each, or $50.4 billion total. Assuming 20,000 person-days of use from 2000 to 2015 by two to six-person crews, each person-day would cost $7.5 million, less than half the inflation adjusted $19.6 million ($5.5 million before inflation) per person-day of Skylab.
Or about 150 total, but according to deuce, that has to be financed by the chinese.
If Israel is the 100 billion dollar question and that is costing us a couple trillion, who much is the ISS costing us? 4 trillion?
Why can’t you just man up? Why is Israel the largest eternal US Welfare Queen?
ReplyDeleteYour always full of Bravado about Israel’s economic prowess and advanced technology. Man up. Pay your own bills.
Shock us. Start paying $3 billion back on an annual basis.
Show us some Israel power and some Judaic pride.
It won’t hurt.
Hell Madoff specialized in scamming Jews and beat them for $50 billion. It hardly rippled the surface of US Jewry.
PAY YOUR OWN BILLS LIKE THE BIG BOYS DO.
Wow deuce, "eternal US Welfare Queen"?
DeleteThe VAST majority of that aid is spent on over priced inferior American goods...
Hence the nature of aid.
You don't get to spend it where you want it..
Trust me. I started paying for my own clothes at 13 from a paper route and mowing lawns. Do the right thing.
ReplyDeleteStart paying back at $3 billion year to you pay back every dime. That will show us how big an bad and wealthy Israel is.
Maybe America should not fund Israel's enemies?
ReplyDeleteAmerica sells all sorts of weapons to many an arab and islamic nation...
ReplyDeletethen America gives Israel military aid to purchase weapons to stay ahead of the deals..
that military aid would almost not be needed if america stopped supporting the jew haters around the globe.
I see you don't call for egypt, or jordan, or the Iraqis or the Kuwaitis, not the palestinians to pay back any aid...
ReplyDeleteso this is a Jew thing for you?
No deuce, aid is not free, it is given for reasons.
ReplyDeleteIt comes with strings.
I personally think that aid to Israel should be cut. Then Israel can destroy the enemies of Israel without the holding back by successive american administrations.
Israel's aid is important but to a point.
DeleteWhy not look at the reason for the aid?
the US support of the Saudis? The Palestinians? The Egyptians?
Maybe the weapon systems that the US has sold the them...
No deuce you just want simplistic puffery to make yourself feel good..
Are you proud that a 19 year old palestinian stabbed a 71 and a80 year old today?
It's amazing how you always focus in on the americans killed on the USS Liberty and yet have no sympathy for the Americans murdered by the Palestinians..
Deletetell us, when arafat order the execution of american diplomats were you proud then?
Deuce: Hell Madoff specialized in scamming Jews and beat them for $50 billion. It hardly rippled the surface of US Jewry.
DeleteYou are depraved.
Find some other topic, please.
ReplyDeleteThere can't exist any topic about Israel that you haven't gone through 25 times already.
We got it, you don't like Israel.
Something on the order of 70% of REAL Americans do, though.
Carson ahead for 1st time -
ReplyDeleteMark Murray Verified account
@mmurraypolitics
Carson's 29% is the highest % to date in the NBC/WSJ poll for any Republican in the 2016 presidential race
https://twitter.com/mmurraypolitics/status/661324724895543298
Carson has said is first phone call will be to Bibi
"Our relationship is re established"
Dr. Ben Carson for President
his first phone call to Bibi-
Delete70% of the people will agree with this good idea.
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ReplyDeleteBlock Island: Meet America’s First Offshore Wind Farm
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ReplyDeleteMy joy in 14 months in watching Obama exit stage right from the White House will only be tempered by the knowledge that some other gang of liberal/progressive pricks will likely take his place.
DOJ Demands Chicago School Allow Transgender Students That Self-Identify as Female to use Girls Locker Room Without Privacy Accommodations
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ReplyDeleteIf you doubt the US is going batshit crazy,
Wesleyan University used the initialism LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM for "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, flexual,[clarification needed] asexual, gender-fuck, polyamorous, bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism".
Rather than adding a new letter every day why don't we just add some suffix that more or less all-encompassing like, for example AOATWTOJLTIAAASPOAON for "anyone or anything that walks, talks, or just lays there in a/an aggressive or submissive posture or attitude or not"? In other words, LGBTTQQFAGPBDSMAOATWTOJLTIAAASPOAON. Next, there will be lawsuits over which position each letter holds in the array.
For the unenlightened (I include myself), the Urban Dictionary provides this piece of info...
genderfuck
n. (also v.): 1. Deliberately sending mixed messages about ones sex, usually through ones dress (e.g., wearing a skirt and a beard).
It is based upon the belief/idea that either gender does not exist (but only in the context of culture) or that there are multipule genders (beyond male and female), including but not limited to transgender.
It is giving a statement of freedom for all genders in a society where gender confines people. It does not mean that a guy wearing a dress is gay...
n. (also v.): 1. Deliberately sending mixed messages about ones sex, usually through ones dress (e.g., wearing a skirt and a beard).
It is based upon the belief/idea that either gender does not exist (but only in the context of culture) or that there are multipule genders (beyond male and female), including but not limited to transgender.
It is giving a statement of freedom for all genders in a society where gender confines people. It does not mean that a guy wearing a dress is gay...
The times they have passed me by.
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ReplyDeleteThese are the people we have country's business. Is it any wonder we have no strategy in Syria/Iraq?
Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — U.S. taxpayers footed the bill for a $43 million natural-gas filling station in Afghanistan, a boondoggle that should have cost $500,000 and has virtually no value to average Afghans, the government watchdog for reconstruction in Afghanistan announced Monday.
A Pentagon task force awarded a $3 million contract to build the station in Sheberghan, Afghanistan, but ended up spending $12 million in construction costs and $30 million in "overhead" between 2011 and 2014, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found. Meanwhile, a similar gas station built in neighboring Pakistan cost $500,000.
"It's hard to imagine a more outrageous waste of money than building an alternative fuel station in a war-torn country that costs 8,000% more than it should, and is too dangerous for a watchdog to verify whether it is even operational," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in a statement. "Perhaps equally outrageous however, is that the Pentagon has apparently shirked its responsibility to fully account for the taxpayer money that's been wasted — an unacceptable lack of transparency that I'll be thoroughly investigating."
The compressed-natural gas station was designed to show the viability of tapping the country's natural gas reserves. But the inspector general determined that Pentagon's Task Force for Stability and Business Operations failed to conduct a feasibility study before launching the project.
If they had, the inspector general noted in his report, the Pentagon would have found most Afghans have little use for it. The Pentagon's own contractor stated that converting a car to compressed natural gas costs $700 in Afghanistan. The average annual income there is $690...
Watchdog: Military blew $43M on Alternative Fuel Gas Station
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DeletePerhaps it's a good thing that we as a country are way past the tipping point and will never pay back the money we owe (or anywhere close).
Roll the presses, print the money, sell the bonds, and let the good times roll. There is a sucker born every day.
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No one has even intended to 'pay back' the money......where is the money coming from, you, me ?........
DeleteNo one understands what all those figures mean anyway, certainly not Obama.
DeleteWhat did the Jews ever do for us ?
ReplyDeleteWell. I dunnknow.....but out this way we were always taught like they helped a lot in developing the atomic bomb which won the war and saved millions of lives.....
Thus making the world safe for frauds like 'The Quirster'.
Delete.
DeleteThus making the world safe...
Brought to you by the Idaho education system.
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DeleteWhat did the Jews ever do for us ?
And once again, you prove your inability to follow a theme from one stream to another. You take a question and translate it into Idahoese and in that translation you distort it. It's your MO. Another product of the Idaho education system or just another peculiarity typical of certain 'English majors', the inability to read the written word and understand its meaning? Or, perhaps, it is simply the tendency of some to view every issue through a prism of race.
The question on the table is NOT What did the Jews ever do for us ? It is, What has Israel ever done for us to justify our investment? If you must change the question, looking at the it in a more meaningful way such as On a net basis, what has Israel ever done for us to justify our investment? might make sense but looking at it through the eyes of a race-baiter does not.
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ReplyDelete1988: US warship shoots down Iranian airliner
An American naval warship patrolling in the Persian Gulf has shot down an Iranian passenger jet after apparently mistaking it for an F-14 fighter.
All those on board the airliner - almost 300 people - are believed dead.
The plane, an Airbus A300, was making a routine flight from Bandar Abbas, in Iran, to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
The USS Vincennes had tracked the plane electronically and warned it to keep away. When it did not the ship fired two surface-to-air missiles, at least one of which hit the airliner.
Navy officials said the Vincennes' crew believed they were firing at an Iranian F14 jet fighter, although they had not confirmed this visually.
No survivors
The plane blew up six miles from the Vincennes, the wreckage falling in Iranian territorial waters.
Iranian ships and helicopters have been searching for survivors but none have so far been found. Iranian television broadcast scenes of bodies floating amid scattered debris.
Iran has reacted with outrage, accusing the United States of a "barbaric massacre" and vowed to "avenge the blood of our martyrs".
President Reagan said the Vincennes had taken "a proper defensive action" and called the incident an "understandable accident", although he said he regretted the loss of life.
'Deep regret' ..........................
http://2164th.blogspot.com/2015/11/airline-blames-external-impact-for.html#comment-form
Recectly we bombed a hospital in Iraq............
ReplyDeleteWell, like Rufus says, there's 'collateral damage' everywhere....
There are plenty of incidents where we have bombed out our people.....
We set up our guys for murder in Benghazi......o, wait, that was 'caused' by an unknow 'blogger' in LA.
When Quirk fought in the Brenner air strikes were called in on the Red Cross convoys.....when he was with 'Monty' is Africa he said you wouldn't believe the chaos.......
The Italians had the best idea......they ran away......and even some of them got gunned by jerry.....
ReplyDeleteArts
Are We Too Dumb For Shakespeare?
William Shakespeare’s words have never before been changed wholesale to accommodate the intellectual laziness of a generation of artists and audiences.
David Marcus
By David Marcus
November 2, 2015
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The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is translating William Shakespeare into English. If that seems strange, it should, because Shakespeare wrote his plays in English. All 39 of the bard’s works have been assigned a playwright and a dramaturge, who will alter its text to create a present-day, modern English version they hope will be more accessible to modern audiences.
That’s not all that lies behind this dubious effort. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), in keeping with the spirit of modern theater, ensured that 50 percent of the artists involved are women and that 50 percent are people of color. I suppose one should be grateful they’re not simply dumping Shakespeare from the canon, as some have suggested. But that gratitude is mitigated by this odd desire to diversify the words of a playwright...................
http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/02/are-we-too-dumb-for-shakespeare/
Answer:
YES
With all the heavy pot smoking going on we soon will be too dumb to read the Crosswalk Signs, which may a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI mean think of it, Deuce is about to vote for a Party that finds him an emblem of 'their class enemy'.
ReplyDeleteHow bright is that ?
Not very.
What has Pennsylvania done for me lately ?
ReplyDeleteNot a thing I can think of......so I say, throw 'em to the sharks.
Same with Mississippi.... and parts of Michigan.
If you can't list 20 trillion dollar projects you've built for me lately, the heck with ya.
The Isaelis on the other hand brought drip irrigation to south Idaho....
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DeleteIt just gets worse and worse.
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You;d never have done damn thing for anyone.
DeleteYou've walked your mutt to the fire hyrant, though.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAppalachian State 4-0 171 71 7-1 310 125 4-0 3-1 W6 0-1 0-1
ReplyDeleteArkansas State 4-0 183 127 5-3 286 253 4-1 1-2 W4 0-1 0-1
Georgia Southern 4-1 201 121 6-2 292 195 4-0 2-2 W1 0-1 0-1
Louisiana Lafayette 2-1 106 88 3-4 211 223 3-1 0-3 W1 0-0 0-0
Idaho 2-3 149 177 3-5 227 319 2-2 1-3 L1 0-1 0-1
South Alabama 1-2 73 103 3-4 162 264 1-2 2-2 L2 0-0 0-0
Texas State 1-2 76 104 2-5 219 302 2-1 0-4 L1 0-2 0-2
Georgia State 1-2 71 117 2-5 183 261 0-3 2-2 L1 0-1 0-1
Troy 1-3 127 94 2-6 212 232 1-2 1-4 L1 0-1 0-1
New Mexico State 1-3 120 190 1-7 212 391 1-3 0-4 W1 0-2 0-2
Louisiana Monroe 0-4
The Mighty Vandals are right in the middle of the chase in the Sun Belt. And have been playing well. Just you wait.......we'll get a handle on that Vandal 2nd Half Breakdown Syndrome one of these years......we always put lots of points on the board, just a few less than they, is all..................
DeleteRufus claims he saved 'uncountable' lives by selling insurance.
ReplyDeleteBeats advertising.
You;ve all a bunch of hypocrites.
*************
The USS Vincennes had tracked the plane electronically and warned it to keep away. When it did not the ship fired two surface-to-air missiles, at least one of which hit the airliner.
Navy officials said the Vincennes' crew believed they were firing at an Iranian F14 jet fighter, although they had not confirmed this visually.
No survivors
Good Night
"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
DeleteWe knew a guy on the Vincennes. Competence below the radar.
The joke immediately went around they'd let that poor sucker into the control for a quck look around....