Malaysian Airlines 777 shot down over Ukraine, 295 people on board.

[patrick1]

Simfan, the separatists thought they downed another Ukrainian military cargo plane and started spreading the word.  Once on scene they  realized they ed up and started backpedaling.

Horrible crash site scenes...real ugly. RIP to all.

[patrick1]

Does it really change things, though? Are we going to war because some disparate mercs. ed up?  Russia will try to spin this and create a cloud over who actually did it.  People inclined to mistrust the West will just believe the CIA did it anyway.

I forget which poster has been putting up the good articles in the other thread about the separatist factions internal infighting.  Besler and co. wanted a victory and innocent people paid the price.

[patrick1]

This apparently exists. I mean there's an actual facebook account and everything that clearly isn't made up. I guess I the chances of a person on an MH flight making a quip about it were high enough but, I mean...

You are familiar with black humor? I would say same thing.  They had quick 30 second piece on that guy on ABC a little bit ago.  

Occam's razor though.  The other MH flight is down in the ocean somewhere and these folks died a horrible death at the hands of incompetent "freedom fighters"

[patrick1]

The US military has often missed a target and killed innocent people.  Even if there is iron clad proof the rebels did it, Russia still has deniability about its support of the rebels, however implausible.  The pro Ukraine gov't West  could ramp up support and Russia may start to pull back from their rebel support, but I personally see little else happening.  Putin gets Crimea out of the whole thing, so he can still claim victory.  Now Gaza could lead into a much bigger conflict, imho.

[patrick1]

Nothing of importance will be done. We can't piss off a psychopath with nukes.

Putin is a psychopath? I think he is very, very sane and level headed. He knows when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. That is what makes him so dangerous.

You can be (and most probably are) a pyschopath and be sane and level headed.

Yes, that's what I meant. Putin is likely a very smart and calculating person with an excellent sense of risk management, but at the same time it's clear that the man is a psycho with absolutely no sense of human decency or regard for human life (say what you will about most politicians, but even the worst ones still have basic human decency and would probably not happily murder random people). And while he may not be trigger-happy with the nukes, my point holds - you don't fyck with a madman with nukes.

Putin doesnt meet the clinical definitions of this. I think it is more instructive to think of Putin's background as KGB. He was trained to kill and manipulate to advance the Soviet agenda. He has used this skill set now to advance his and in his mind Russia's interest. I'm sure he sees no distinction between the two.  Clearly Putin is a better poker player than W because he clearly could not see into his soul... He has outflanked the West on the Ukraine too.