Ukrainian woman adds her floral tribute to the mountain of flowers placed in commemoration of MH17 victims at the Dutch Embassy in Ukraine. (photo: Sergey Dolzhenko/European Pressphoto Agency)
21 July 14
readersupportednews.org
n
the heat of the U.S. media’s latest war hysteria – rushing to pin blame
for the crash of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet on Russia’s
President Vladimir Putin – there is the same absence of professional
skepticism that has marked similar stampedes on Iraq, Syria and
elsewhere – with key questions not being asked or answered.
The dog-not-barking question on the catastrophe over
Ukraine is: what did the U.S. surveillance satellite imagery show? It’s
hard to believe that – with the attention that U.S. intelligence has
concentrated on eastern Ukraine for the past half year that the alleged
trucking of several large Buk anti-aircraft missile systems from Russia
to Ukraine and then back to Russia didn’t show up somewhere.
Yes, there are limitations to what U.S. spy satellites
can see. But the Buk missiles are about 16 feet long and they are
usually mounted on trucks or tanks. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 also
went down during the afternoon, not at night, meaning the missile
battery was not concealed by darkness.
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.
Relying on the Ukraine Regime
Much of the rest of the known case against Russia
comes from claims made by the Ukrainian regime, which emerged from the
unconstitutional coup d’etat against elected President Viktor Yanukovych
on Feb. 22. His overthrow followed months of mass protests, but the
actual coup was spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias that overran government
buildings and forced Yanukovych’s officials to flee.
In recognition of the key role played by the
neo-Nazis, who are ideological descendants of Ukrainian militias that
collaborated with the Nazi SS in World War II, the new regime gave these
far-right nationalists control of several ministries, including the
office of national security which is under the command of longtime
neo-Nazi activist Andriy Parubiy.[See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine, Through the US Looking Glass.”]
It was this same Parubiy whom the Post writers
turned to seeking more information condemning the eastern Ukrainian
rebels and the Russians regarding the Malaysia Airlines catastrophe.
Parubiy accused the rebels in the vicinity of the crash site of
destroying evidence and conducting a cover-up, another theme that
resonated through the MSM.
Without bothering to inform readers of Parubiy’s
unsavory neo-Nazi background, the Post quoted him as a reliable witness
declaring: “It will be hard to conduct a full investigation with some of
the objects being taken away, but we will do our best.”
In contrast to Parubiy’s assurances, the Kiev regime
actually has a terrible record of telling the truth or pursuing serious
investigations of human rights crimes. Still left open are questions
about the identity of snipers who on Feb. 20 fired on both police and
protesters at the Maidan, touching off the violent escalation that led
to Yanukovych’s ouster. Also, the Kiev regime has failed to ascertain
the facts about the death-by-fire of scores of ethnic Russians in the
Trade Union Building in Odessa on May 2. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Burning Ukraine’s Protesters Alive.”]
The Kiev regime also duped the New York Times (and
apparently the U.S. State Department) when it disseminated photos that
supposedly showed Russian military personnel inside Russia and then
later inside Ukraine. After the State Department endorsed the
“evidence,” the Times led its newspaper with this story on April 21, but
it turned out that one of the key photos supposedly shot in Russia was
actually taken in Ukraine, destroying the premise of the story. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Retracts Ukraine Photo Scoop.”]
But here we are yet again with the MSM relying on
unverified claims being made by the Kiev regime about something as
sensitive as whether Russia provided sophisticated anti-aircraft
missiles – capable of shooting down high-flying civilian aircraft – to
poorly trained eastern Ukrainian rebels.
This charge is so serious that it could propel the
world into a second Cold War and conceivably – if there are more such
miscalculations – into a nuclear confrontation. These moments call for
the utmost in journalistic professionalism, especially skepticism toward
propaganda from biased parties.
Yet, what Americans have seen again is the major U.S.
news outlets, led by the Washington Post and the New York Times,
publishing the most inflammatory of articles based largely on unreliable
Ukrainian officials and on the U.S. State Department which was a
principal instigator of the Ukraine crisis.
In the recent past, this sort of sloppy American
journalism has led to mass slaughters in Iraq – and has contributed to
near U.S. wars on Syria and Iran – but now the stakes are much higher.
As much fun as it is to heap contempt on a variety of “designated
villains,” such as Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, Ali Khamenei and now
Vladimir Putin, this sort of recklessness is careening the world toward
a very dangerous moment, conceivably its last.
No comments:
Post a Comment