Hold up.
Which Republican Senators were going to vote to impeach trump?
(Not suggesting this wasn’t a political assassination as I agree with Scott’s take.)
Apparently so:
" in the shape of a hostile aircraft"
I’m fairly sure a 737 looks nothing like an F-35 or F-18.
Iran fucked the dog on this. They knew they were doing a military action (launching missiles) and yet didn’t close their airports. Then they managed to shoot down a plane leaving their own capitol’s airport.
Eh… it’s the kind of tragedy that should never, ever have happened, but anyone who has worked with any kind of automatic system knows that no systems are fail-proof. Systems screw up constantly - especially when there are humans involved anywhere in the decision-making process (and the Iranians have basically admitted as much already, by stating that this was a “human error”).
Obviously, the Iranian authorities need to be transparent and allow the International investigators full access to the evidence, but to conclude that it was deliberate based on a system needing a manual override is to me absurd. Iran has nothing to gain from this event - on the contrary, it is liable to destroy much of the public sympathy that their measured response to Trump’s assassination actions had gained them. From a political point of view, this is a disaster.
Colossal and unforgivable human screw-up - yes. Deliberate action by the Iranians? I strongly doubt it.
Yeah, that’s definitely not the case. It makes no sense on any level.
This is more or less what the captain of the Vincennes said about Iran Air Flight 655 — that on approach it looked like an attacking F-14 Tomcat. It’s a terrible blunder, but they’re telling the truth about what they thought was happening. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have shot down the plane.
Would “the shape” in this case be referring to a visual identification, a radar signal, or a combination of things?
Most likely radar signal, but could potentially be infrared signature. Very unlikely to be a visual ID.
But I think saying “it looked like an enemy plane” is just the thing you say when you shoot down a civilian airliner accidentally, mostly because saying “either our system or our people can’t tell the difference” might be a bit off-putting.
“The demonstrably unhinged President* of the United States has assassinated one of our military leaders and is continuing to threaten us. We’re - not unreasonably - a little jumpy. Mistakes were made.” sounds like it might be close to reality.
From what I read “the shape of an enemy aircraft” is referring to radar which is not exact in how it displays an aircraft. The plane was an hour delayed in taking off so the military was under the impression that no planes would be taking off from the airport at that hour (the people at the military base in charge of the defenses were apparently not briefed on the delay nor paying attention to ATC chatter) and there was a mountain range between the airport and the military base, meaning the plane probably only appeared on radar after reaching 6k feet (so not soon before they freaked out and shot it down).
What a shitty goddam reason to die
Of course.
Sadly if there ever truly were an imminent danger I would never believe the Trump administration because they lie so frequently and blatantly.
The Trump who cried terrorist.