Connecting the dots on MH17
Published on: Sunday, December 13, 2020
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At the crash site of MH17.
Sam Bullard describes himself as a “co-owner of a mom and pop office furniture store” in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. He is also like a modern day Sherlock Holmes, equipped with detailed knowledge of war, weapons, aircraft and military history. As he puts it, “I sit in an arm chair and follow the evidence.” He feels compelled to write on MH17 because, he says, “Until this day the blood of 298 victims cries from the ground between Rozsypne and Hrabove in the Donetsk Oblast of the Ukraine, or the Donetsk People’s Republic.” He quotes Genesis 4:8-10, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”
In this long and very detailed account published in the website, Vineyard of the Saker, on 3rd December, 2020, Sam seeks to “connect the dots that should be connected” and ask the right questions that have not been asked, and bring to light the evil actor(s) behind this most egregious act of inhumanity. “This article,” he says, “examines the existing evidence and follows where it leads from the perspective of a bad state actor. The results are unexpected but plausible.”
What follows is a survey of all recent aircraft disasters caused, sometimes deliberately, often accidentally, by “bad actors.” For instance, he cites the downing of Siberian Airlines Flight 1812 that was shot down by a Ukrainian S-200 missile in the mistaken belief that it was a drone; another of such “mistaken identity” was the Ukrainian Airlines Flight PS752. Another, Aeroflot Flight 902 was also first reported as having crashed due to disorientation in the cabin caused by a fire, but subsequently admitted as having been brought down by a missile that had gone astray. The reason Sam gives all these examples is to show what usually happens when the downing of a civilian aircraft is “accidental” and how the truth is eventually revealed.
In the case of MH17 six years have passed, and according to him, none of the possible “actors” in this case have shown, for various reasons, the desire to disclose, or to expose, the truth of what had happened. The obvious question asked, “if Russia had nothing to do with the downing, why has it, with all its advanced surveillance system data, not tell the world, unless, of course, it is guilty.” Sam answers thus: “Russia is rightly accused of holding back evidence. But the countries making accusations hope that Russia’s media have enabled Ukraine to say eventually that their army or a volunteer unit made a tragic mistake.”
Sam’s analysis which needless to say, is at variance with the Dutch JIT findings includes a large portion of what is called the “historical context” in which the incident occurred. This goes back to the “Orange Revolution” and the various states that have a hand in perpetrating the violence that led to the overthrow of the then government of Victor Yanukovych, and, eventually, the present civil war. The “historical context” also covers the various personalities, Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs and their backers in the West that played a part in the revolution that led to the breakaway of the Eastern Region of the country, the Donbass.
Having given the background, Sam next considers who the possible “actors” were, what opportunity each had, and what benefit the perpetrator could have gained from the downing. Out of these three “scores” he found, Russia scores one, the Militia scores two, and the Ukrainian government and their Western backers score all three. The “benefits” gained numbered from one to ten and are conveniently tabulated in the article. Chief among them is the “benefit” that the Western powers and Ukraine would have “gained”, but for this we have to go back to the “Southern Cauldron.”
The ten benefits that would be reaped by the Ukrainian forces would be realized if the plane had gone down in the Southern Cauldron. But that apparently did not happen. The plane had disintegrated over militia held territory, and the debris which was spread over fifteen square kilometers of ground included the crucial “black boxes.” If it had crashed into the cauldron, all the “evidence” would fall into Ukrainian hands, including the black boxes, and international pressure would be put on the militia and Russia to allow international relief forces access to the area, thereby fortuitously allowing the trapped forces to break free.
So what went wrong? According to Sam, it was the request from the Rostov ATC requesting the Donetsk ATC to ask the airliner to divert from waypoint Tamak, to waypoint RND. The new waypoint would have taken the trajectory of the airplane away from the cauldron. Sam has thoughtfully provided the maps that show the “cauldron” and the diverted path of the airliner. The sudden unexpected request had panicked the bad actor and caused them to prematurely trigger the destruction of the airliner, with the result that all the debris fell into militia held territority.
Sam also credits the government of Najib Razak in speedily arranging with the Militia leader for access to be given to the Malaysian contingent led by Col. Sakri* to the crash site, where the black boxes were properly handed over. Later, despite demands from Ukraine, the Malaysians refused to part with the boxes, until they were handed over to the British authorities at Farnborough. Despite accusations made in the Western media of belligerent and “drunken” militiamen in the area, the Malaysian team was full of praise for the rebels who helped to retrieve the bodies and kept the black boxes for the team. Sam bemoans the fact that the Malaysians had not retained control over the black boxes.
The long article also goes into the various means that could have been “used” to bring down the aircraft. Three were considered; surface to air missile, the BUK, cannon fire from aircraft in the vicinity, and lastly, bombs in the plane itself. The reader is left to choose for himself from the details given of each of the means. As Sam says, evidence is available on the “net”, and the fact that the debris was spread over a very wide area, speaks for itself.
Sam concludes, “MH17 was utterly destroyed in the air within a few seconds by one or more state actors by premeditated means that did not include an external attack. No Buk missile was launched, and even if there was a launch the external explosion of a Buk missile’s 70kg warhead isn’t powerful enough to cause disintegration with 10 seconds. Radar from the UST-Donetsk station showed no fighters within the effective range of autocannon. Air to air missiles lack the power to cause the nearly immediate disintegration in the air of a Boeing 777-200”. The significance of the time of 10 seconds is because the black boxes did not, according to the Dutch investigators, record any sign of the impending break- up of the aircraft.
To a question by a reader as to why Russia, if it has the technological means to find out the truth of the destruction, remains silent to this day, Sam speculates: “For them MH17 occurred in the context of an ongoing war with both kinetic and non-kinetic aspects. The struggle is far greater than the single incident that has riveted my attention. Russia’s leaders don’t have infinite resources, and they don’t have a megaphone that reaches as far into the West as Western megaphones reach into Russia. They must weigh the potential impact and the consequences of what they say and leave unsaid. They must choose their battles and not allow the US and Nato make those choices for them…..Russia has acted wisely and redirected the negative energy of MH17 in ways that are beneficial overall to Russia in the long run.”
In the end though it is Sam Bullard’s reason for writing this article that sticks in the minds of the readers; And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” Sam asks, “Does the Lord hear their cries?” He answers in the affirmative, confidently: “Yes, He hears them.” Hence, this article.
Sam Bullard has also written an afterword to a new book on MH17 by John Helman, entitled. The Lie That Shot Down MH17. (September, 2020). He looks forward to returning to the Ballantyne Presbyterian Church to sing in the choir after the pandemic.
- Earlier this year, on 3rd March, Col. Sakri was invited to be one of the speakers in a seminar organized by Bonanza in London. He was in attendance, but could not participate as the newly minted Malaysian government under Muhyiddin Yassin refused to give him the green light, according to the organisers. The PN government owes an explanation to the Malaysian victims of the disaster if this was true.
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