Vichnaya pamyat,
Vichnaya pamyat,
Vichnaya pamyat.

May their memory be eternal,
May their memory be eternal,
May their memory be eternal.

With the Saints give rest, O Christ, to the soul of Thy servants, where sickness and sorrow are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.

It is rather odd that two planes would just fall out of the sky at about the same time, in the same country, leaving from the same location...but...sincerely no offense Russia...stranger things have happened in post-soviet Russia.

I wanna toss this out... 1387.00 miles (2233.07 kilometers) from Moscow to Athens. 2790 miles from New York to LA. So basically we're talking about a flight from New York to St. Louis or there'bouts.

There's potential here...

Highly unlikely that they would attempt an athens attack due to the high security and the difficulty of navigating over multiple airspaces. They would (I hope) be bound to be intercepted at some point.

agrosquid -

I never said they were SMART...just that it's possible. ;)

WF: In a finite universe, pretty much anything is possible, if you wait long enough.

Question is, does Speculation add anything of substance to the discussion here?

Probably not. At the moment, there are a number of possibilities here:

* Both plane crashes were the result of Terrorism. Problem is, no Terrist Group has come forward to claim responsibility and Victory for their glorious cause.

* One plane or the other was a Terrist attack, and the other was not. Same problem.

* One plane or the other was a deliberate sabotage, but not related to a known Terrist group. Domestic non-Terrist-related sabotage has been known to happen too.

* Both planes were the result of mechanical problems. It's Aeroflot.

* One plane was a mechanical problem, and the other was contaminated fuel. See above.

There's a half dozen or so, if you tease out all the possibilities. And it is Aeroflot -- not known to be one of the world's best airlines.

Empty speculation is content-free. Early reports are almost always either Wrong in some important detail, or missing critical evidence.

At this point, the most telling datum on the matter is that no known Terrist organization is stepping forward to claim Anything at all wrt these two incidents. Those groups tend, ceteris paribus, to want to nab their PR asap -- not wait for it. And even if one does, an Actual Connection is not proven even so. There have been incidents in the past where Terrist groups have claimed "credit" for mishaps with which they had No connection at all. On one occasion, two groups made conflicting claims!

Best just to wait this one out till we get some Useful Information. Coincidences do happen. And it is Aeroflot we're dealing with here.

Coincidences happen, and it IS Aeroflot - but... two planes down at the same time, AND NO OTHERS -

That's stretching coincidence just a bit far.

J.

JLL3: No -- not really. If it happened one at a time, that wouldn't be coincidence. If it happens two at a time, that would be. Indeed, it's about the Only way it could be.

Coincidences happen. Always have; always will. Murkens specifically, but most folks generally, have trouble seeing that.

At the moment, we have no Actual Evidence that this was anything but that on which to rely, and no reason to wander around constructing hypothetical scenarios, then asserting them as Fact.

Be patient with this. Waiting is.

Well Don, speculation does add something to the conversation. If you will recall the 9/11 commission chided the entire security apparatus for a lack of imagination.

So imagination, unfettered by Don's prolixity, may indeed lead to an new idea, a kernel of truth, a synergy of thoughts that uncovers the means by which we will be attacked next.

So Don, spare us the psuedo omniscience and dream along with us.

Or not.

Not, if it's all the same to you.

If you dealt with your febrile imaginations Only as imaginations, that would be one thing.

But y'all don't do that. You invent things, then assert them as pseudo-facts and start to wander off from there into a la-la-land of What It All Might Mean, assuming it's true.

It's not true. It's not even Close to being true.

From the existence of WMDs in Iraq to the Terrist connection with the Russian aircraft, public policy formulation and discussion is marred by these ongoing assumptions with no Factual basis.

Someone's gotta be an Adult, and keep trying to focus on Reality™. If not you, I'll take a poke at it. It's working reasonably well, so far.

As for Lack Of Imagination in the intelligence failure leading up to 911, there is an important contradistinction worth making:

Prior to 911, there actually Were some Actual Facts on which to base an imaginative approach. There were Real People taking flight lessons, for example. There were Real Agents who saw that happening, and tried to report it Before 911 ever happened.

Facts, Skip -- Real Facts. Not imaginary hypotheses or suppositions.

It was less a Lack of Imagination on the part of, inter alia, the FBI et al than it was a State of Denial that such a thing could Ever happen.

Until it did.

That's not the case with the Russian aircraft, at the moment.

Nonsense Don, you've once again missed the point and I suspect you missed it because it was, well simple.

you seem to enjoy complexity and this is a simple thesis: imagining all sorts of things might just lead to a viable theory.

But of course, you have your own reality, a reality so specific to you that it seems you need to trade mark it.

So again, Don spare us the condescension and try your hand at a far flung theory.

so us what you've got.

Ah, Skip -- clearly you would just Dearly love to have a definitive finding of Terrism rfn. Unfortunately, it's simply far too soon to make such a conclusion.

It's one possibility, and it could apply to either airplane, perhaps both. It could equally apply to neither.

It's not about Leading To A Viable Theory. We are not dealing with an hypothetical here, but a Fact. The airplanes did crash. Just no question about it.

There is the potential, just at the moment, for several reasons why each of them crashed. Terrism is one reason, but not the Only one, and not even the Most Likely one at present.

The main reason for that conclusion is to be found in the modus operandi of Terrists generally. If/When they undertake a successful Terrist attack, the reasons why they undertook it in the first place tend to lead them to do the appropriate PR followup, and claim Credit and/or Responsibility for doing it. That's an embedded characteristic of Terrism in the first place, doncha see? What good is a Terrist Act if no one is appropriately Terrified when you do it?

The Chechens have disclaimed responsibility. Surely had they undertaken it, they would, as they have in the past, immediately claim the credit as Proof that they are Terrible. But in this case, they've disowned the act altogether.

Doing a Terrist attack, but not taking credit for it is counterproductive. It's undertaking a considerable Risk with no possibility of payoff. Makes no damned sense at all.

Do you perhaps have some Other Terrists who Might be responsible? After all, what good is a Terrist Act without some Actual Terrists at which to point the finger and say "There -- They did it!"

It takes a certain practice with Mental Discipline to hold such prejudgements in abeyance, while continuing to sift through the information available. I know it's an unfamiliar discipline, but practice it -- it'll do you good. It's one of the things that folks who are responsible for reacting to Disasters generally are taught -- Not to start prematurely placing blame.

Meanwhile, in Mother Russia itself, the officials there are currently looking at Terrism as a leading theory for the event. Well they should -- it's the first theory that needs to be examined.

Russia has a past history, however, of Not wanting to accept responsibility for its own, to put it bluntly, shoddy approach to things like airline safety operations and aircraft integrity generally. So for them, would the outcome be easier on Aeroflot if they could simply blame this on a sort of undefined Terrist Act, rather than slipshod operations and maintenance on their own beloved National Airline?

Allow me to suggest that yes indeed, that Could well be the case. It wouldn't be the first time that Russians have either denied something altogether or attempted to shift blame from some Official entity to something other than that.

You need not get quite that far into it, however. You need develop no "viable theory" at all. What you and others need to learn how to do is suspend your own tendency toward prejudgement, and wait until some Actual Facts are in. That mental discipline does cover a number of quite useful matters, not limited to things like Russian aircraft/airline crashes.

The phrase "rush to judgement" has its roots in precisely the sort of nonsense you are spouting here. Mature folks generally learn to get past that predisposition. But not always. We've been dealing with precisely that situation in another venue for the past 18 months, and surprisingly there are Still folks who can't move themselves past their initial error.

Maybe it'll be Terrism.
Maybe it won't.
Maybe each airline crashed for a separate reason altogether.
Maybe there was some common factor, not Terrism related, that brought them both down.

Be patient here, Skip. All may be revealed In Due Time.

Or not.

It's Russia. Ya just never really know with those folks.

In support of what I mentioned above a few hours ago, here's a source that suggests that same possibility, only this time applying it to a Terrist attack potential:

http://www.profindpages.com/news/2004/08/26/MN320.htm

Which leaves us with a Russian gubmint that isn't terribly interested in either admitting its own national airline does shoddy work, or that it is open to Terrist attacks.

The possibilities here continue to broaden.

Still and all, nothing is Really "known" at this point, one way or the other.

The terrism question, being the first one to be asked, now is shrinking in comparison to others. It's still alive, but other matters are becoming more salient to the investigation.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002015706_crash26.html

ABC is doing its part to keep all parts of the story going, while highlighting the Terrism potential:

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040826_1566.html

As I earlier suggested, now and Only now can we begin to discuss the presence of a Terrist attack on one of the Russian aircraft. It may be the case that explosive traces were found on one of the airplanes.

We also have, coming in late in the discussion, a supposed claim by a group no one had heard from previously trying to take credit for the attack. That may or may not be correct. It doesn't fit the MO of an actual Terrist group, though. They tend ftmp to have their PR effort ready to kick in immediately after the event, not wait till two days later.

Terrist groups have been previously known to be opportunistic about such things in these sorts of circumstances.

If it is a Terrist attack, then some interesting new questions arise. Since this seems to be a new group out there, how significant is it really? Is it part and parcel of the Chechen revolt, or is it some splinter group not associated with the main group that went wandering off on its own and managed to pull off downing an airplane?

Just dunno. This is the Middle East, after all, and these little ad hoc groups are oftimes less than meets the eye.

We know from our own experience that one or two people can, if luck and planning is with them, manage a Terrist attack. The scale of it almost demands folks believe that some large entity is behind it. But the technology available, along with the obvious really bad security procedures, means that in some parts of the world, an individual or a small group can successfully taken down something major. It might be the only thing that they can ever do! Martyrdom tends to be self-extinguishing when undertaken on a small scale.

But we Now finally have at least an ostensibly factual lead on which to base conjecture, rather than just letting it all hang out and assume the matter ab initio.

But note, at least in passing, that even some Russians continue to look closely at mechanical and human factors in each of these crashes, rather than buy in 100% to the Terrist theory.

Which is precisely the appropriate way to do it.

New Wrinkle

The traces of the explosive Hexogen found in one of the downed aircraft make the case somewhat more interesting than previous scenarios might indicate.

The material is manufactured at a plant in Gorny, which is closely controlled and monitored by the Russian security forces. It is not, as a general rule, available commercially anywhere, though there have been recent instances where approximately 20 lbs or so have been attempted to be sold to Russian undercover agents.

If it really is hexogen - which is enormously powerful -- then there's a question as to whether this might be an Inside Terrist, rather than an exogenous one.

Worth continuing to watch, certainly.

Correction -- The dangers of cut and paste editing:

The factory in Grony is controlled by the Russian security forces and involves breakdown and reformulation of chemical weapons.

The hexogen at Grony was brought there by two men who attempted to sell it on that site. How such a powerful explosive showed up there is open to conjecture.

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