“And for all of his boasting & efforts to restore the Russian empire, Putin is still a very practical, pragmatic politician & he really doesn't want the nagging issue of, "Did we kill 300 innocents?," hanging around & in - from his perspective, it wouldn't cost him that much to make himself look pretty magnanimous & it seems to me that he's interested most of the time in looking good.”

Jerome Skinner, US Lawyer specialising in Aviation Litigation commenting on the Dutch Safety Board report into the loss of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on the ABC’s  730 Report – 14.10.2015.

I wonder what Jerome would have to say about the comments of then Vice-President George H.W. Bush in response to the shooting-down of the Iran Air Flight 655 by the US Guided Missile Cruiser USS Vincennes in Iranian airspace in 1988:

"I will never apologize for the United States - I don't care what the facts are. I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy." Bush used the phrase frequently & promised to "never apologize for the United States".