What do we know, and how do we know it with any certainty?
The MH17 shoot-down story broke with a quote from Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko calling it a "terrorist attack." Any time someone uses the word "terrorist" to characterize anything, it's a red flag signaling manipulation. In Poroshenko's mouth, "terrorist" is also routine Kiev propaganda that always refers to the Ukrainian separatists as "terrorists," and usually "pro-Russian" as well. Despite the obvious unreliability of accepting any Kiev version of events as accurate, the U.S. government (including president Obama and vice president Biden) and American media ran with unconfirmed and unconfirmable formulations.
MSNBC especially reiterated the Kiev story about Russian missiles and how the Russians must have either done it or trained the separatists to do it. As MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and others presented it, there was no other possibility. Not even asked was the question: does the Kiev government have the same surface to air missile capability? That seems like a pretty basic question to go unasked in the midst of a story developing with little reliable evidence. Especially since the answer is that Kiev has the same missiles.
Why hasn't Kiev released air controller conversations with MH17? Kiev released dubious tapes of purported Russians taking credit for the shoot-down. Why hasn't the U.S. (or anyone else with satellites) released satellite coverage of the shoot-down? One reason, posed by Robert Parry, might be:
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.
This is the sort of careful, information-based speculation that Parry regularly takes mainstream media to task for avoiding. Using the conventional means-motive-opportunity analysis, the Kiev military quickly becomes one of the obvious suspects. Not only has the Kiev military shot down an airliner before, shooting down MH17 and blaming it on the separatists could prove useful.
Additionally, the Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, the man in charge of the military, is Andriy Parubiy, who achieved his position after the Kiev coup in February. Parubiy was among the more militarized elements of the Euromaidan protests and has a long history of neo-Nazi activity. (As Parry pointed out, the Washington Post quoted Parubiy as a source without mentioning any unpleasant truth about him.)
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