Breaking: Iran admits it shot down the Ukrainian plane by mistake
I guess their lies had gotten too preposterous, and Iran authorities figured it would be worse to keep denying it than to finally admit it:
Iranian military officials have admitted that the country “unintentionally” shot down a Ukrainian airliner, killing all 176 people on board.
State TV, reading out a military statement, blamed “human error” for shooting down the plane.
How did they think they could maintain the lie, with intelligence-gathering being as good as it generally is this days? Their willingness to lie and lie and lie, and accuse their accusers of being the liars, reveals how duplicitous they are (although we didn’t need any reminders).
I guess they were also relieved that the US left has already blamed Trump for whatever errors Iran made, and that may have made it easier for Iran to admit it committed the deed.
This entire event has been tragic and terrible. Although it’s not unprecedented that a passenger plane is mistakenly shot down, this was a plane shot down by Iranians with mostly Iranian and Canadian-Iranian passengers on board. I cannot even imagine what the families and friends of the victims must feel, as well as so many Iranian people who have suffered for so long under this terrible regime.
And they say those responsible will be prosecuted. How would anyone ever know if this happens?
Also the story I saw was lacking in the usual death to America vitriol. They seem to be on their heels.
As I asked in the comments at the ‘crossfire’ story I wonder what or who led them to admit this. Shows real weakness in the form of incompetence.
Read some remarks from our military that those training in times past with these Iranians were not impressed with their level of competence. i don t imagine that the education standard has risen any. Another good reason to keep them nuclear free, dear Lord.
Spoke to soon. Foreign minister says error happened in time of crisis caused by American adventurism.
Doesn’t sound like the Great Satan more like hiking in the Grand Canyon but I guess you work with what you got.
Twitter Progressives are all busy gushing about how refreshing this Honesty is.
One-way helicopter rides before I die, Please God.
To some degree, it may have been their plan all along to admit it, but only after their social media offensive had shaped the informational battlefield for them.
I and others have been critical of their technical expertise, but one area in which the authoritarian nations are are exceptionally good is Intelligence. Iran, Cuba, Russia, and China all punch way over weight class in Intelligence and Disinformation.
Roy N:
There’s a good reason for this: Political Correctness makes many things unsayable, and eventually unthinkable.
It’s doubtless career-ending to suggest at the planning stage that it’s a waste of time attempting to civilize (say) Arabs of Afghans through ‘Nation Building’ or that trying to liberate Afghan Females will earn us the eternal enmity of all Afghan males and (quelle horreur) a large percentage of Afghan females as well.
Those who can grasp that cultural values are NOT universal and that race is NOT a social construct, and a few other evil facts will win out every time over the kind of wishful thinking games we play in the West.
Obviously, too, our Open Societies make it possible for other nations to infiltrate their people into sensitive places. The Chinese must kill themselves with laughter to think that we allow anyone not Caucasian and not having been a natural born citizen for n generations anywhere near any kind of lever of power, let alone sensitive information.
As a society, we’re in for a very rough ride unless we can do something about being ruled over by a class of people whose highest form of status signaling is to write head scratching articles in The Atlantic about why X or Y hare-brained cloud cuckoo land plan didn’t work as planned, slowly nuancing themselves toward and away from the truth and then ending with some sleight of hand which proves that only they could have untangled such a nuanced web of well, nuances.
This kind of crap is all very well in politics for public consumption, but when it corrupts the minds of the best and brightest technocrats and flag officers, we’re all doomed.
Russia…Malaysian Airline over Ukraine a few years back.
Putin still denies it. He uses conspiracy theories (like the Ukraine filled a plane with dead bodies and shot it down) pushed by the the same propaganda units that say the Ukraine hacked the DNC server.
There are plenty of Useful Idiots out there who believe it.
First, the completely innocent mistakers reference an incident when The Great Satan shot down an Iranian plane.
Then, by pure coincidence:
Then, the completely innocent mistakers bulldoze the crash site so it can’t be investigated.
Obviously, the whole thing is an innocent mistake. Case closed.
I mean, they attacked civilians before, but that was back when they had a real good reason, right?
They lied before but now all of their incentives to lie are gone, right?
I guess we’re all good now, bachem.
It’s doubtless career-ending to suggest at the planning stage that it’s a waste of time attempting to civilize (say) Arabs of Afghans through ‘Nation Building’ or that trying to liberate Afghan Females will earn us the eternal enmity of all Afghan males and (quelle horreur) a large percentage of Afghan females as well.
1. Afghans are not Arabs.
2. As for ‘civilizing’, the World Bank tracks 29 countries in the Near East, North Africa, and Central Asia.
a. There isn’t one where the life expectancy at birth does not exceed 60 years and only a few where it does not exceed 70 years.
b. The North African countries have depressed literacy rates (about 70-75% of the adult population), as do Iraq, Yemen, and Syria; Iran’s literacy rate is 85%, with illiterates concentrated in the older age groups: in the rest of the region, literacy rates top 90%.
c. The urban share of the population exceeds 60% in 20 countries and below 1/3 of the population in just two.
d. The practice of open defecation has almost completely disappeared everywhere but Morocco and Yemen.
e. There has been over the last generation a great deal of political violence here, there, and the next place. That aside, only five or six countries have even mildly elevated homicide rates (say > 3 per 100,000), and none have a rate exceeding 10 per 100,000. (The current rate in the U.S. is about 5 per 100,000; ours peaked at around 10 per 100,000 in 1980 and 1990).
f. Iraq and Syria have been charnel houses. Algeria, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and certain provinces of Turkey, Pakistan, Georgia, and Armenia have been disfigured by civil war or insurgency. The West Bank and Gaza are a chronic public order problem. Then there’s the rest of the region. Not sure any places other than Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq have suffered as did much of Europe between 1914 and 1945.
I doubt you’re going to find too many places where someone’s been sh!tcanned for denouncing ‘nation building’ in the staff lounge. (No one has a clear idea of what it is).
Afghans *or* Arabs. An obvious typo.
We’re all well-aware of why the per capita US murder rate is so high — except in places where it’s very (everybody clutch your pearls please) White.
In which of the countries you listed above would you get off the plane, jump in taxi to your hotel and then spin the taps and *drink the water*? People who can’t manage to solve the problem of potable water piped to the home in 2020 are best kept at a polite stand off distance, regardless any statistics you can find.
I’m thrilled that fewer people are taking a dump in the open…most heartening. Sadly we’re still talking about people for whole ritual purity (trigger warning) trumps actual cleanliness — so plenty of water being splashed about and not a whole lot of that soap stuff that does bad things to bacterial cell walls you know.
Oh… grant your point re 20th Century Europe. You’d think Whitey would have learned by now… although it’s arguable that good many of the smarter ones managed to get offed during the course of C20 and we’re all the descendants of REMFS and mutants who escaped the draft on medical grounds 😛
How did they think they could maintain the lie, with intelligence-gathering being as good as it generally is this days?
Russia
They may have watched the jailing of Nakoula B Nakoula and figured, hey, let’s take a page from Pres. Pseudonym’s playbook. Heck, they watched him get away with throwing Billions of dollars their way: no amount of intel gathering prevented that.
Zaphod on January 11, 2020 at 6:19 am said:
People who can’t manage to solve the problem of potable water piped to the home in 2020 are best kept at a polite stand off distance, regardless any statistics you can find.
Ohhh No?
This was before 2003….
Access to drinking water and sanitation
In the 1970s, Iraq’s population enjoyed a relatively high level of water supply and sanitation services. Over 95% of the urban population and over 75% of the rural population had access to safe potable water (12) with a daily per capita provision of about 330 liters per day.[3] Throughout the country there were about 218 water treatment plants and about 1200 compact water treatment units. In urban communities 25% were connected to sewerage systems and 50% with on-site septic tanks. Sanitation services in rural areas covered about 40%.(12) However, the country’s water infrastructure became severely damaged during the eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s, the Gulf War in 1990-1991, the resulting economic sanctions in the years thereafter and in the war in 2003.[3] As a result, many unrecognised leakages in the networks occurred which led to the necessity of rehabilitation and construction of new facilities. Another problem is the direct connection of house boosting pumps, which leads to a reduction of pressure.(13)
Access to drinking water, after (14)
urban % rural %
Tap water, piped into dwelling 96.0 45.6
Tap water, public tap 1.5 4.7
Surface water 0.5 26.1
others 2.3 23.7
Access to improved drinking water sources: 98%, urban and 50%, rural. Access to house connection: 96% urban and 46% rural.(15)
Access to sanitation, after (15)
urban % rural %
Flush and poor flush 85.0 57.0
Latrines 14.9 40.0
Others 0.2 3.0
Access to improved sanitation: 90% urban and 70% rural, Access to sewerage connection: 37%, urban and 2%, rural.
Even Iran is unlikely to admit they shot down a civilian plane, killing all, intentionally.
But when the President of the country tweets the big hint referring to one such case 30 years ago, taking credit for the ensuing attack downing a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie…. And does this just a day or two before….
How can one get to unintentional?
They didn’t kill any American servicemen, whew. They killed 176 people, though, and on a Ukraine aircraft. In a way that they could plausibly deny responsibility. The general modus operandi for 40 years now.
Finally! We get a glimpse of the IRGC-QF’s true revenge (video at link, h/t @doranimated), coming to a “Theater” of war near you!
In which of the countries you listed above would you get off the plane, jump in taxi to your hotel and then spin the taps and *drink the water*? People who can’t manage to solve the problem of potable water piped to the home in 2020 are best kept at a polite stand off distance, regardless any statistics you can find.
I visited France in 1981. We were advised to stick to bottled water. So, France was uncivilized then?
The World Bank does publish data on the prevalence of ‘basic drinking water services’ in urban areas in that region. Not sure how that is defined, brass tacks. They do not have such data for every country, but they have it for most in that region. The prevalence is placed at north of 90% most places where they have data.
I’m thrilled that fewer people are taking a dump in the open…most heartening. Sadly we’re still talking about people for whole ritual purity (trigger warning) trumps actual cleanliness — so plenty of water being splashed about and not a whole lot of that soap stuff that does bad things to bacterial cell walls you know.
I think you’ve confused Arabs with East Indians.
We’re all well-aware of why the per capita US murder rate is so high — except in places where it’s very (everybody clutch your pearls please) White.
The homicide rate in Montana is 3.2 per 100,000. That’s high for western Europe (though not so bad for eastern Europe). It’s 6.4 per 100,000 in Alaska. It’s 3.7 per 100,000 in West Virginia. Where be da hood in these places?
Art Deco:
Get out your statistical magic wand and run down the murder rate stats for counties with “indian” reservations in Montana and the murder rates, The reservations aren’t happy, cheery, places or so I’ve heard. Show your work.
Iran didn’t “unintentionally” shoot down this plane. It intentionally shot down what the defense unit thought was an incoming hostile object. How they could have decided that, given its trajectory coming from Tehran, is a question.
And now we know – – – – – IT WAS TRUMP’S FAULT.
At least that’s the way the media will see it.
With Mentus and Kai Akker (and perhaps Kate) I suggest that that Iran wanted that plane down.
Why do we not question them on veracity when they say “unintentional”.
Was this revenge for Iran Air Flight 655?
Was this Ukrainian corruption linked?
It is not common practice to bulldoze a debris field that contains personal effects of the victims (phones, papers, wallets, purses, jewelry) that are normally examined and returned to relatives or partners.
On one level, it’s an example of their barbarity, and their is not outcry to that.
Or some effect might point to a particular passenger of interest they wanted dead. Without making it look particular.
All the talk in this thread about public defecation and civility and no mention of San Francisco?
Art Deco opined:
“I visited France in 1981. We were advised to stick to bottled water. So, France was uncivilized then?”
Yes. And it still is uncivilized.
Unless something remarkable happened between the early 1940’s when ‘The Fwench’ willingly and enthusiastically handed her Jews over to the Nazis to be slaughtered and 1981, it was uncivilized.
And even today France allows Jews to be murdered if the perpetrator can prove he was ‘stoned’ when he did it.
Those cheese eating surrender monkeys have NEVER been civilized.
Ed Bonderenka, my husband suggested to me from the first moment that Iran wanted to eliminate someone on the plane. No one has suggested a passenger whom the mullahs might have wanted to eliminate. The flight was delayed on the ground for an hour and the Iranian authorities are well-known for grabbing people and throwing them in very unpleasant prisons, so why they needed to shoot down the plane is not clear to me.
On the other hand, there is also no good explanation for why air defense would have identified an object coming from its own capital, and climbing, as a hostile missile.
Yada Yada. We all know it was Trump’s fault. End of.
(just a little sarcastic)
Unless something remarkable happened between the early 1940’s when ‘The Fwench’ willingly and enthusiastically handed her Jews over to the Nazis to be slaughtered and 1981, it was uncivilized.
Thanks for the red-herring. Always appreciated.
BTW
Various parties in France managed to protect French Jews during the war, and those who perished were a low-single-digit minority. The Jews handed over were Jews who had settled in France after 1927, who were used as bargaining chips by Pierre Laval. Cold and Machiavellian.
Get out your statistical magic wand and run down the murder rate stats for counties with “indian” reservations in Montana and the murder rates, The reservations aren’t happy, cheery, places or so I’ve heard. Show your work.
The Amerindian population in Montana is about 8% of the total. Amerindians are about 2x as likely as non-hispanic whites to be under correctional supervision. The presence of a lot of Indians doesn’t explain much of the anomaly there.
Masih Alinejad, twitter: “Protests erupt against the Revolutionary Guards at Amir-Kabir University in Tehran due to authorities’ incompetence and negligence after the recent plane crash that killed more than 176 people.
Some people had claimed Iranians were united after #Soleimani’s death. Think again.”
https://mobile.twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1216004196077592579
Masih Alinejad, twitter: “‘-Students are chanting “Shameless Revolutionary Guards. Get your hands off our country”‘
Iranians are indignant with the regime after the plane crash that claimed 176 lives.”
(Video of protests at link)
https://mobile.twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1216004196077592579
Masih Alinejad, twitter: “3-More protest videos from protests in Tehran against the Revolutionary Guards.
Protests are anti-regime in character. They’re chanting ‘murderer Khamenei'(Supreme Leader).
Iranians are indignant with the regime after it compromised the lives of 176 people during a plane crash”
Art Deco, et al:
Here are statistics for murders in Montana by sex and race in 2013 and 2014 (p 39 chart). It’s interesting. In Montana, most homicides are between acquaintances and/or lovers (that’s on another page) and they are overwhelmingly committed by white people. But more of the murders are committed by women than in most places (18% of murders in Montana are by women and 14% by white women). Montana, however, has such a small population that the actual number of murder is not large: 16 in 2013 and 12 in 2014. That’s a pretty small n.
Is this a still a question of technical expertise? For something this important, you got your best guy on the radar monitor, right? Your best guy is that bad? Doubt it.
I know what their fall-back position will be:
Art Deco,
Yes, a few Frenchmen did save some Jews. Most did not.
You can say that about any European country. Even Germany had brave souls who hid Jews. That does NOT make the entire country civilized.
Perhaps, I suppose, you actually believe that a few good people make a place civilized. I don’t.
Come on, give us some EVIDENCE that the French are civilized. If they are as wonderful as you tell us there should be millions of examples from which to choose.
At the risk of getting blasted from all sides, in general, Art Deco is correct, by all measurable statistics, the world is becoming more civilized. Progress is not always constant everywhere or all the time. There are setbacks. But the trend is clear. The world is safer and healthier for humans than it has ever been and it is still improving.
It is unnecessary and offensive to write off entire groups of humans as hopeless. However, we should also recognize that some groups will get there at their own pace and time. Progress cannot be imposed or forced.
Re: the downing of the passenger jet, I speculate that the pilot was forced to take off at gun point in order to create an incident that could be blamed on Trump. I know of no rational pilot or commercial airline that would fly hours after mullahs worked ‘mourners’ into a frenzy. Delay the flight for 24-48 hours and then reassess the situation.
Roy Nathanson on January 11, 2020 at 2:18 pm said:
…
It is unnecessary and offensive to write off entire groups of humans as hopeless. However, we should also recognize that some groups will get there at their own pace and time. Progress cannot be imposed or forced.
* * *
I’m thinking of making an exception for the Democratic Party.
Aesop Fan,
They are one of those “setbacks” I mentioned. ?
A conspiracy theory generally requires a beneficiary. It’s been reported that the 1985 Gander crash which killed 250 troopers from the 101st was followed by the site being bulldozed. Who gains? Maybe the guys whose job was to keep bombs off aircraft. They’d already lost Air India earlier that year.
Some moron in DC wanted the files sealed for seventy years. I don’t know if that was upheld for very long, but its mere mention sparked discussion of who would benefit–because without someone to benefit, why bother?
The Canadian Air Safety Board thought it was icing. Which is to say, five guys voted icing and four a bomb. Flip one guy….
Point is, trying to decide who benefits in Teheran is probably the key. So that involves either “showing” somebody, or killing somebody.
Who is “shown” by this massacre? And why kill somebody this way when his disappearance is easily arranged by the regime?
As to the first, the likelihood is that the US response was not as expected but the act could not be called off. The second…why bother? Those missiles aren’t cheap. A beating to death is just good exercise.
So we’re left with the defence guys had been told to expect a US response, which didn’t come.
Any other possible beneficiaries? Without a beneficiary, we hardly have anything to talk about.
Ace-of-Spades-plagiarizer Jonah Goldberg throws dubs on your Franco-phobia:
Matzneff Flap Is a Cautionary Tale for Cultural Aristocrats
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/gabriel-matzneff-controversy-cautionary-tale-cultural-aristocrats/