One thing of interest to me about the progress of the story of this downed Russian jet, is how at first, the Russians seemed to be intent on demanding that it couldn't be that THEIR plane could have been downed by terrorists. Now they've gone the other way.

Is this meaningful in a larger sense? My impression, is that Putin and the Russians have been trying to portray themselves as the international Masters of foreign policy and world affairs, and have been salivating every time some idiotic American or other national praises RUSSIAN efforts in the M.E., and compared them favorably with US efforts.

Essentially, there is a fierce PROPAGANDA war being waged in front of everyone, right in the middle of the actual ground wars being fought. The Russians didn't want to admit that ISIS could hit them as they did, and so denied for a long while, that a bomb could have downed their plane.

Now they've switched course, and are trying instead to build an international image of Russia as the Great ISIS conquerors, who will show poor little America "how it's done."

But watch out, so far, they've done absolutely NOTHING that the Americans and their allies haven't been doing for years now. The only difference is, that so far, no one is actively pointing out how Russia is every bit as INEFFECTUAL as the US has been, because they are having too much fun pretending that Putin is better than Obama.

Like a liter bottle of Scheppes pineapple?

or lots of mentos and diet cokes...

Let's not go inter-ballistic yet.

After careful consideration and based on the presumption that evidence of previous bombings within Russia were in fact carried out by the FSB... I feel it is not out of the realm of possibility that this attack could have been carried out by the Russians themselves.

I typed in this forum a few months ago I felt Putin wanted a scorched earth campaign in Syria to kill off as many chechens as he could and improve his sagging image at home.

Blowing up apartment buildings in Moscow validated his ethnic cleansing campaign in Chechnya and with that he has become Tsar for life..

not sure how you can make that claim, we only get the news our government allows, not the real news... Russia could have already wiped most of ISIS out and we wouldn't know...