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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

Yes. Rather than attempt to suppress it in the West, we'd see a lot of conflicting reports, allegations of fake news, unrelated smear attempts, questioning of loyalties, and attempts to arrest whistleblowers.

The US never did admit liability for shooting down an Iranian jet in similar circumstances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

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There's a gap, between admitting to downing a plane and "admitting liability" for it, in which the US places its downing of Flight 655.

But the parallel you would need to draw here is of the former: admitting to downing the plane.

For flight 655, while they never admitted guilt, they did settle paying the victim's families "ex-gratia" a non-negligible sum. While it is not the same as directly admitting you are responible, espcecially to the victims, for most intents and purposes that counts as an admition in my books.

After the US commander of the ship murdered 290 people on flight 655, he was given a Legion of Merit.

Two sets of rules.

Throwing the word "murder" about like this is an abuse of language. Nobody, not even the Iranians, ever suggested that the crew of the USS Vincennes intended to kill civilians. The crew appears to have exercised piss-poor diligence, but it's universally recognized that they thought they were firing on a military aircraft.

There is a great observation in one of the Bellingcat podcasts on MH17.

Russia no longer denies facts. Instead they go all postmodern:

“what are facts anyway? What is truth?”

I guess Trump does this too to an extent. Except he has the press in his neck to call him out.

Russia still denies facts. Period.

This topic is about Iran.

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