Reaching Conclusions

"You can effectively backtrack and give a relatively high degree of confidence in the location where that missile took off from. If that location happens to be in rebel-held territory, which we all suspect it is, that would be the first point where you could point the finger of blame."
Chris Yates, aviation industry consultant, Manchester, England

"There's a buildup of extraordinary circumstantial evidence. We picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing, and it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar. We also know from voice identification that the separatist were bragging about shooting it down afterward."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry

"Audio data provided to the press by the Ukrainian security service was evaluated by intelligence community analysts who confirmed these were authentic conversations between known separatist leaders, based on comparing the Ukraine-released Internet audio to recordings of known separatists."
Statement authenticating calls, released by U.S. Embassy in Kyiv

The victims' bodies, in examination by experts, according to aviation and defence experts, could be seen to contain missile shrapnel. Expert examination of the plane parts could confirm if chemical residue is discovered on them, including the type of weapon that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Even a thorough examination of the wreckage location could render data on the manner in which the attack occurred.

  Alexander Hug, deputy chief monitor of the OSCE special monitoring mission to Ukraine, talks to a Russia-backed separatist commander during a visit to MH17 flight crash site in the village of Grabovo, east Ukraine. Photograph: Petr Shelomovskiy/Demotix/Corbis

The cockpit voice recorder would have recorded the explosive concussion of a missile hitting its target. Data recorders register altitude and position, and they would reveal the timing of a missile launch in the area, known to have occurred, and needing to be tied to the explosion on the Malaysian Air flight.

One of the recorded calls intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence services shortly after the plane was hit and came tumbling out of the sky, had a prominent rebel commander, Igor Bezler, informing a Russian military intelligence officer that his rebel forces had shot a plane out of the air. Another set of recordings from Friday also implicate rebels as they attempted emergency subterfuge and coverup at the crash site.

A Malaysian investigator takes a black box from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it is handed over from Donetsk People's Republic officials to Malaysian representatives in the city of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine Tuesday, July 22, 2014. Bowing to international pressure Monday, pro-Moscow separatists released a train packed with bodies and handed over the black boxes from the downed Malaysia Airlines plane, four days after it plunged into rebel-held eastern Ukraine. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

Neutral observers had duly given warning that the ethnic Russian separatists had most certainly had the opportunity to tamper with the debris, and had failed to secure the crash site. The souvenirs that were taken would also be useful in obscuring or simply taking away evidence.  As for the bodies of the dead; a missile from a Russian SA-11 mobile launcher [Buk] exploding at the target would hurl shrapnel into the plane, some of which would lodge in people's bodies.

"While the stated reasons for removing some of the bodies to a refrigerated train -- to protect them from wild animals and slow their decomposition -- may be genuine, the bodies, too, are evidence", emphasized Keir Giles, an expert at the Chatham House think-tank. The remains of 282 people had been reported recovered; the disparity between that number and the total of 298 on board the Boeing jet lies in the fact that some bodies might have been blown apart in the ferocity of the impact.

The refrigerated cars were finally released to travel to government-held Kharkiv from their location in the mining town of Torez, an area controlled by the rebels. There were 87 body parts, considered to account for 16 of the victims of the explosion, while the refrigerated rail cars were said to be holding 282 cadavers. That number has now been disputed, with Dutch official Jan Tuinder, in charge of preparing the bodies for transit from Kharkov to the Netherlands stating that 200 bodies only had arrived.

A members of the OSCE mission to Ukraine uses a chemical to combat the smell of decomposing bodies while inspecting along with Holland's National Forensic Investigations Team a refrigerated train loaded with the bodies of passengers in Torez, eastern Ukraine, 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, Monday, July 21, 2014. Another 21 bodies have been found in the sprawling fields of east Ukraine where Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed last week, killing all 298 people aboard.  (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

In a spirit of charity, Russia expert Andrew Weiss at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington held the view that perhaps sheer incompetence explains more than criminal intent in the matter: "There's just a lot of chaos on the ground", he stated. "Everything being messed up is part of daily life. It's not a highly ordered society. It's one thing to say it is part of a big conspiracy ... but it's not clear. It's really a mess."

He does, after all, represent an organization that represents humankind's hope that international peace may somehow prevail in the larger struggle of the world aligning and re-aligning itself, attempting to shed itself of the proliferation of tyrants and bloodlust monsters who manipulate events and issues leading to ongoing conflict. "The question is", he finished "Does that mess have some political benefits for Russia?"

Why, yes indeed; the international community remains disunited in its response to aggression by the Russian Federation of a war-mongering triumphalism focused on defeating the democratic hopes and sovereignty of a neighbour, the better to absorb those portions of its geography to its larger territorial advantage. And that is without benefit of the philosophy of charitable excuses.