Thank God we're not Russia

Oh, yeah...one more bit of evidence they don't have: "witnesses heard
explosions associated with the planes going down." Same story. But
wait...there's mo

"Other witnesses told Interfax they saw the plane explode before it
crashed." No evidence there either.

"Officials said the crew of the other plane gave no indication that
anything
was wrong, but witnesses on the ground reported hearing a series of
explosions." http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040825/D84M9S800.html

Every single aviation accident since the Wright Bros. has had wintesses on
the ground who provide enormously inaccurate accounts of what they saw and
heard. This is especially true when the "testimony" is being collected by
members of the news media, all of whom are facing a deadline in a few hours
and are willing to use any quote by anyone who claims to have anything to
say.

All I'm saying is that any governement agency, in any country at all, is
going to respond in the way the Russians have. This is especially true in
the first 24 hours after the accident. They don't have anywhere near the
budget that the media do, they can't send their investigators out en masse
to troll the countryside with mini-cams and microphones, and they are a bit
more picky about who they choose to interview than the media are. It
doesn't even remotely imply that the Russian (or whatever) government thinks
the public is stupid. All it implies is that professional crash
investigators do not jump to accept the first assumption they are presented
with, that they don't rely on potentially inaccurate media reports to do
their job for them, and that any decent crash investigation takes time.


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