Media drops story of apparent missile launch

[Hannah Bell]

Only days after the a Los Angeles television station reported an unexplained missile launch off of the coast of California, the American media has completely dropped coverage of the event.

The story gained national prominence after Robert Ellsworth, a former deputy secretary of defense and US ambassador to NATO, told the news station Tuesday morning that he suspected that the unidentified event Monday was a missile fired by the US military to coincide with US President Barack Obama’s trip to Asia.

The incident raises many serious questions: If it was a missile launch, who fired it? Was it a deliberate act of provocation organized by the US government, amidst rising global tensions, particularly with China? Was it carried out by sections of the military without the knowledge of the government? Is the United States government fully in control of the military and its missiles and nuclear arsenal?

None of these issues have been seriously broached—indeed, none have been broached at all—in the media. After first ignoring the report, television news outlets later treated it more as a curiosity. The print media—including, most notably the New York Times—downplayed or entirely ignored the event. The Times failed to write even a single article on the story, which was clearly national news worthy of coverage.

On Wednesday, the US Pentagon announced that it was “satisfied” with the view that the apparent missile launch was nothing more than an airplane contrail. This was the signal for the entire media to drop the event altogether. The word of the US military, as far as the American media is concerned, is the last and final pronouncement on such matters.

The apparent missile launch comes after a string of high-profile incidents involving the United States strategic missile armament. Four years ago, the US inexplicably sent long-range missile components to Taiwan. Then in 2007, a bomber carrying six thermonuclear warheads flew from North Dakota to Louisiana without clearance.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/miss-n13.shtml

[ConsAreLiars]

1. Sorry, but falling for this sort of dumbass media hyped jackassery

demeans WSWS. Whoever wrote it and whoever allowed to be posted it there should be regarded as either saboteurs or dumbass easily payed morons. Fired, or reduced to toilet cleaning in either case. Or, for the nest day, promoted to doing a follow-up on the "real truth behind the mars face image's connection to balloon boy" as a follow up. Maybe more on ghost hauntings and mice with human brains.

When WSWS posts this kind of garbage, it might as well add a banner saying "we are just a bunch of easily played corporatist pawns."

(edit to add a bit)

[TheWraith]

3. "Easily played morons" defines a lot of the content at WSWS. nt

[ConsAreLiars]

6. WSWS has a lot of great value, but letting this nonsenxe

get published through their site does more to help those who would see their many valid and valuable writers silenced. I regard WSWS as a valuable source worth reading, but this was just stupid. Other good sources also step in poo on occasion, Some even post complete lies and advocate for mass killing of Iraqis, but that doesn't men everything else there is false. A fuck-up. I hope they do some disclaimer soon. Took the NYT a few years to make some fine print "oops" for their role in that slaughter.

[Posteritatis]

13. I generally assume "liars" defines a lot of the content at WSWS. (nt)

[alphafemale]

4. I was just thinking "balloon boy"

All we need now, to complete the media circle, is for somebody to throw up on Matt Lauer

[alphafemale]

2. Maybe because it Was an airplane.

Missiles can't be filmed for 4 minutes.

[B Calm]

5. BINGO!

[Johonny]

15. that's just what aliens want you to think

[villager]

7. Jane's Defence seems to think it was a missile, too:

"Doug Richardson, the editor of Jane's Missiles and Rockets, said it might have been a Standard interceptor, the anti-missile weapon which is fitted to the US Navy's Aegis guided-missile cruisers as part of the American missile defence programme.

He said: "It's a solid propellant missile, you can tell from the efflux but they're not showing enough of the tape to show whether it's staging ."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8122177/Mystery-missile-launch-in-US-the-theories.html

But, you know, better to take the Pentagon at the word, what with their truthiness, and all...

[B Calm]

8. I spent 4 years on a guided missile cruiser (USS Albany CG10). It was

going to slow to be a missile.

[villager]

14. So the Jane's guys don't know what they're talking about?

:shrug:

[Posteritatis]

20. There is apparently an continuum between "automatically correct" and "automatically incorrect." (nt)

[Poll_Blind]

17. I agree, generally. Though the Jane's guy mainly determined it was....

...a solid-rocket missile (and in this case I'm using the word "middle" in a pretty generic way) because of the smoke or "effux" as he called it, as opposed to a condensation trail.

:shrug:

PB

[midnight]

9. This is what I never knew:high-powered missiles are regularly fired?

The cameraman indicated that the location of the incident was 35 miles off the coast of California, near a naval base from which high-powered missiles are regularly fired.

[B Calm]

10. We fired missiles out at sea, not near naval bases. If there is a naval

base in the vicinity of the sighting, then chances are it was a jet aircraft.

[canoeist52]

11. Can you feel the anger?

I can never understand the vitriol against questioning
an official story. Why do these posters care so much?
Unless.......

[tabatha]

12. NOPE it was a plane.

People from this area have seen similar things before. This is what one person posted on another site:

A blogging friend, and retired from the Air Force said this in answer to my question to him about this...

At sundown yesterday the surface wind was out of the North at about 15 miles per hour. Do you see that contrail being pushed South ? No you don’t because the aircraft that is making the contrail is probably above 30,000 feet approaching the coast from the West. The contrail stretches back to the horizon indicating relatively calm air at its altitude.

Because the aircraft is flying towards the camera it looks like it’s raising.

The setting sun and the elevated camera add to the illusion of something launched from the sea, but a check of the radar logs will show a flight approaching the coast at that time.

and another:

Lo and behold...USAir flight 808 left an almost identical contrail 24 hours later in the same location.

Enough already people. It was a plane.

http://blog.bahneman.com/content/it-was-us-airways-flight-808

I really have a problem when the left, supposed to be more scientific, is responsible for trash like the wsws article. They have just gone way down in my estimation.


ALSO, the US would NOT launch missiles in an area where planes fly. All pilots would be aware of something like that and report it.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/11/jon-stewart-on-la-mystery-missile-a-lot-of-hype.html

[Renew Deal]

16. It's not just the media

And maybe that's why they dropped it.

[Subdivisions]

18. Here you go...

http://contrailscience.com/

Also, here an image from GOES (West) of the contrial:

[tabatha]

19. That's a good explanation. Thanks. Science, science.