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More Scud than BUK: 
Despite Fiery Rhetoric, West Beats Strategic Retreat on MH17

10/13/2015

Well, the day has finally arrived for the long-awaited (in some quarters) Dutch Safety Board frame-up on the MH17 shoot-down over Ukraine some 16 months ago. As anticipated, the report offers no new insights and relies on shaky and opaque methodology to reach its so-called 'conclusions.' 

However, despite its obvious bias and expected throwing of much shade toward the new US/Euro Hitler-of-the-Day, and despite the New York Times' hyperventilating and drooling headlines, the report actually appears to be more of a Scud than a BUK. The western MSM will weep and roar like the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are. But the report itself offers no sustenance to buttress their now-tired and unwavering claims. Every thinking person and every watcher of any CSI type real crime forensic show knows by now that when cops say something "supports the theory that..." or "is consistent with XYZ," it's code for we can't prove squat.

Yes, the report is pure bullshit. And the Russians are right to be very angry at the ongoing propaganda war wafted their way by 'journalists' who do little more than regurgitate talking points from their editors and publishers, who in turn take their lead from State Department press releases. DSB does indeed ignore any evidence that contradicts their immediate and unwise hypothesis, contrary to any methodology used by the ICAO. They ignored the Russians' raw data, though they take pains to say that their satellite imagery was 'helpful.' They don't come down hard on the Ukies for mysteriously losing the same raw data and ATC audio tapes from the same day; they don't explain why debris and even bodies were left on the ground for so long, or why Malaysia was initially excluded from the investigation. They manage to avoid the troubling failure of the US to hand over similar satellite data, which would surely shed more light on the matter, or explain the Magic Bulliet triangulation of how they arrived at their conclusion. These are all very troubling points, and it will likely be years before western governments admit the truth.

But to me at least, it looks like DSB has beat a strategic retreat on the question. Far from being the rabid bombshell many (in Russia) expected, DSB copped out on almost every issue. Predictably, they 'conclude' that it must have been a BUK missile, though their evidence is horrible and one sided. But they 'can't say for sure' who was in control of the area from which it was fired, and say flat out that this conclusion is outside their purview. Moreover, they blame the Ukes for not closing airspace and mention the 'helpfulness' of the Russian satellite data. Again, all complete crapt, but it proves a couple things: they are unwilling to go the extra mile and openly accuse Russia again. They imply that Russia did it, but openly admit they can't prove it.

Naturally, this plays neatly into the hands of the aforementioned Wild Things of the corporate press in New York, Washington, London, Amsterdam and so on. There is enough there to keep spinning their tired narrative and save as much face as possible without having to prove it. But this proves to me that the international phase of the Ukraine crisis is really over. The cracks are ever more evident in the western facadee, where the Euros are increasingly less willing to engage in the crazed Russophobia their US puppetmasters would like.

There will be no new round of sanctions, no new round of overt hostility outside of the US/Anglo bubble, and no 'counter-measures' of any real significance. The Germans are tired of the sanctions hurting their own economy, French farmers are up in arms, and now 70% of brits think that Putin is doing the right thing in Syria.

It's a different world, and this--what was supposed to be the Crown Jewel of US Russia bashing propaganda--has more or less fallen flat, after the usual growling from expected quarters and the idiocy of the US 'election' circus (what I call the Who is Willing to Bomb Russia First Club). Russia's move in Syria has embarrassed and exposed US foreign policy for what it is--basically state sponsored terrorism. The shock of the LCAM barrage launched from the Caspian Sea is still sinking in, though certain immediate steps have already been taken, such as the quiet withdrawal, without fanfare, of a US aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf (Yikes! Just how far can those missiles *go* anyway?), the CYA 'ramping up' of US attacks on ISIS in Syria and Iraq (whatever that means), and the more or less permanent puncturing of the Assad-must-go meme. 

We are not done with false flags, empty propaganda, sabre rattling and general meddling. The empire will push back. Trial balloons like the bogus CNN story of how the astonishingly accurate LCAMs landed in Iran, or how the Turks shot down a Russian plane, or how the RAF is authorized to shoot down Putin's planes over *Syria* (!) have all been popped. There will be more Gulf of Tonkins, more Iraqi WMDs, more Ghouta chemical attacks, any one of which could be used again to stir the beleaguered western 'democracies' and their masses to war. This one, I think and hope--at least for now--is a dud (rhymes with Scud).

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(c) 2015 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to danielpwelch.com. Political analyst, writer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School. Welch has also appeared in numerous television and radio interviews, and can be available for comment and analysis as his day job permits. 

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