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Jul 20, 2014 - 12:25pm PT
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Paul Craig Roberts
I've never heard of him. Fortunately.
Reading the long quotation from him, I counted at least 4 known factual errors in the first 8 paragraphs.
Perhaps I've not heard of him because he's so obviously unreliable?
Washington’s propaganda machine is in such high gear that we are in danger of losing
the facts that we do have. So what about Russia's propaganda machine and the deleted online separatist videos?
One fact is that the separatists do not have the expensive Buk anti-aircraft missile system or the trained personnel to operate it. FALSE
As I noted earlier, Al Jazeera reported a few days earlier they had captured a Buk launcher.
Another fact is that the separatists have no incentive to shoot down an airliner and neither does Russia. True Statement #1
Anyone can tell the difference between low-flying attack aircraft and an airliner at 33,000 feet. ABSOLUTE BS. Later he claims they might have thought it was a Ukraine transport, not a low flying attack aircraft. Which is it? However as I noted earlier consider one of our best anti-aircraft ships: USS Vincennes which mistook a Boeing airliner for an F-14. Wikipedia is your friend in case you don't remember 1988 as well as I do.
The Ukrainians do have Buk anti-aircraft missile systems, and a Buk battery was operational in the region and deployed at a site from which it could have fired a missile at the airliner. questionable. The nearest Ukrainian bases are many miles to the west. Ukraine is a BIG country, not some potty little place.
Wikipedia: The most capable radar, assuming it has a line-of-sight (no terrain between the radar and the target), can track targets (depending on size) as low as 100 feet (30 meters) and a far as 85 miles (140 kilometers). The most capable missile can hit targets as far as 30 miles (50 kilometers) and more than 80,000 feet (25,000 meters) in altitude. Consider that the separatists control nearly all the real estate within 50 miles of the crash site and it's within a few miles of the Russian border.
Just as the separatists and the Russian government have no incentive.... True statement #2
One Russian general familiar with the weapon system offered his opinion that it was a mistake made by the Ukrainian military untrained in the weapon’s use. Very questionable. Consider the source and the distance to main Ukraine troops.
The general said that although Ukraine has a few of the weapons, Ukrainians have had no training in their use in the 23 years since Ukraine separated from Russia. BS again. The Ukrainian military has been modernizing these weapons over the years
Wikipedia: The An-24 and An-26 aircraft, as well as the anti-aircraft artillery systems S-300 and "Buk M1", have been continually modernized, and their service life has been extended.
Ukraine has been cozy with Russia on an off several times in that period. They even have been training with Russian troops.
Wikipedia: The combined training of the Air Force of Ukraine and the Russian Air Force in the practical control of their air defense Stand-by Forces has become more systematic. Moreover, interoperability has been achieved between the forces of Ukraine and the command and control elements of the Air defense of the Russian Federation during the detecting, tracking, and neutralizing of air targets during simulated terrorist attacks. Wikipedia, Ukrainian Air Force
The general thinks it was an accident due to incompetence. "accident" is a strange thing to call a deliberate act even if the target was mistaken.
That would let off a lot of murderers.
The problem with the general’s explanation is that it does not explain why the Buk anti-aircraft missile system was deployed near or in a separatist territory. The separatists have no aircraft. It seems odd for Ukraine to have an expensive missile system in an area in which it is of no military use and where the position could be overrun and captured by separatists. True statement #3
What intended use? News reports and circumstantial evidence provide two answers. One is that the ultra-nationalist extremists intended to bring down Putin’s presidential airliner Highly unlikely
The planes were 37 minutes apart. If they were looking for Putin's plane they were completely incompetent.
The following paragraphs are just propaganda and distortions.
for example
The circumstantial evidence easiest for non-technical people to understand is the on cue news programs organized to put the blame on Russia prior to the knowledge of any facts. the propagandist accusing others of propaganda
Somehow the information got on a video and on youtube before it reached the Ukrainian government or Washington This is a surprise? And so what? It's more telling that the video was pulled down.
The evidence that Putin did it is a video made prior to the attack on the airliner. No one has claimed evidence that "Putin did it". It's easy enough to infer but there is nothing in the video I saw to suggest Russia knew about it in advance.
Indeed the entire Western media spoke as one: Russia did it. And the presstitutes are still speaking the same way. This nonsense speaks for itself.
I use absurd made up words like Republitards. Precisely because I'm expressing my own absurd and snide opinion. I'm not pretending to be a journalist.
The flaw in Putin’s diplomacy is that Putin’s diplomacy relies on good will and on truth prevailing. However, the West has no good will, and Washington is not interested in truth prevailing but in Washington prevailing. What Putin confronts is not reasonable “partners,” but a propaganda ministry aimed at him. Is this a deliberate propagandist inversion or is Roberts really this idiotic?
One more totally bogus statement:
Israel claims that its air attack and invasion of Gaza is merely Israel’s attempt to find and close the alleged tunnels through which Palestinian terrorists pour into Israel inflicting carnage. Of course there are no tunnels and no terrorist carnage in Israel. He's obviously not keeping current. There are videos all over the internet by Hamas showing their troops in tunnels. Yesterday several Hamas and IDF soldiers were killed in battles at the tunnel outlets in Israel.
Certainly the power and casualties are terribly one sided but that doesn't absolve a "journalist" from being factually accurate.
By the way, he left the WSJ in 1980
He is certainly colorful and prone to exaggeration and strange conclusions
.....all over the west. There is no democracy, there are oligarchies, some of these smaller European countries are not even run by their own governments, they are run by Wall Street... There is probably more democracy in China than there is in the west. Revolution is the only answer... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Craig_Roberts
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