♪ the plane has sh crashed somewhere near the ukrain ukraine/russia border. >> pentagon officials are scrambling to figure out what happened here. >> i was in my house when i heard two explosions. i ran out and saw black smoke everywhere. >> i want to be sure of what i say. apparently, had been shot down. shot down. not an accident.

blown out of the sky. >> both ukrainians in the russian have the simon bud surface-to-air missiles capable of bringing down an airliner. >> there are many questions to be answered and we will get those answers and we will take the next steps accordingly. >> the attack on malaysian airlines flight 17. killing nearly 300 people with citizens from nine countries on border this is now an international crisis with much at stake. u.s. officials believe it was shot down surface-to-air missile but still trying to determine if it was fired from the ukrainian or russian side of the border. u.s. officials are calling it a terrorist attack and he says pro russian rebels are responsible but the separatists have denied

responsibility. the boeing 777 went down about 25 miles from the russian border. black smoke could be seen instantly after witnesses reported loud explosions in the sky. debris was visible for a span of nine miles. airline officials say they were told the route was safe before takeoff. this is a map showing all of the international flights that are avoiding the air space over ukraine following the plane crash. pro russian rebels are allowing crews into the area to help with recovery efforts and the rebels claim they have recovered most of the plane's black boxes. president obama and russian president vladimir putin spoke earlier in the day about new sanctions issued the day before. officials say putin notified president obama at the end of their call that a plane had crashed. putin expressed condolences for the victims' families in a statement but then slammed ukraine blaming them saying, in part, quote, this. i want to note that this tragedy

would not have happened if there were peace on this land and military actions had not be renewed in southeast ukraine and the state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful tragedy. white house official say president obama has been in touch with his national security and the united nations security council is scheduled to hold emergency meeting at 10:00 a.m. this morning. we have all angles of this story covered this morning. live at at moscow and amsterdam. chilling reports from the crash site, we will speak with aviation experts who know what it's like to investigate complicated crash scenes and we will tack the geo political chess match that led to this attack and now what p.m. with people who know the region west including ian brzezinski. it doesn't end there. after ten days of air strikes,

the israeli military is targeting the, quote, terrorist infrastructure of hamas with an open-ended operation and we go live to gaza and tel aviv. good morning. welcome to a special edition of "morning joe." with us on set is experienced pilot steve rattner and economic analyst. pulitzer prize winning columnist of "the washington post" and msnbc analyst, eugene robinson. the president of the council on foreign relations, richard haass. joe, we have been following this through the night, going back and forth about how to cover this story. there are so many angles at this point. >> and so many questions. more questions than answers right now. let's bring in jim miklaszewski to try to get some answers from the pentagon. jim, what is the latest overnight? >> well, you know, it was shortly after the malaysian airline was shot that intelligence figured out it was

brought down by a missile and it was likely fired from either eastern ukraine or across the border by the russians. that is the puzzle that the u.s. military officials are still trying to figure out this morning. now, it was somewhat fortuitous in that ever since last february when it appeared the russians were about to invade ukraine the u.s. had spy satellites locked in on that border area. otherwise, they may not have seen this at all. but so far, you know, the problem with these satellites and actually even with the weapon systems itself is they cannot necessarily at any given point differentiate certain aspects and details of what is going on there on the ground. can i tell you u.s. officials dismiss any speculation that this plane was brought down by a ukrainian missile saying it wasn't in the cards.

the ukrainians didn't have that system in the region. one of the most telling aspects of this is that recent intelligence had shown that the russians, which are now remassing troops on the border of ukraine, now they have 13,000 troops poised across the border from ukraine, but in recent weeks, they have also been shipping heavy artillery, tanks and these boot missile systems into eastern ukraine to hand over to those russian separatists they are fighting with the kraenian goverts. in doubt in anybody's mind the separatists who fired the missions and still trying to figure out. as one officials who explained to us whoever pulled the trigger it was definitely a russian missile system. joe? >> you talk about this buk russian missile system. when were those taken over to ukraine and the likelihood this

was an accident just like 1988 when the united states accidentally shot down an iranian airliner? >> certainly some of those missile systems were shipped over across the border from russia into ukraine the past several weeks. one of the reasons that president obama slapped stricter sanctions against the russians. obviously there was no evidence they were trying to deescalate the tensions but escalating the tensions by shipping heavy weapons into eastern ukraine at this point. could it have been an accident? even before all of the details, many u.s. military officials we were talking to said it's highly unlikely that the russian military, even the separatists, would have targeted a civilian aircraft. so that the fact that it may have been a case of, you know, mistaken identity is very high on their charts and these

missile systems, they can locate a target but they can't necessarily identify it. joe? >> all right, jim. thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. jim miklaszewski at the pentagon, stay with us, if you will. richard haass, vladimir putin, obviously, already taking a defensive tone as if he knows that the whole world's eyes will be upon him after the details of this comes out saying, well, regardless of who was responsible, this would have never happened if ukraine hadn't started hostile its once again. talk about vladimir putin and what he is likely to be facing over the next few weeks. >> well, the fact that putin actually was the one who told president obama about it suggests to me he knows he's on the defensive and tried to get out in front of this but i don't think he will be able to. increasely looks like the separatesist were involved and even if it was an accident, they have essentially been enabled and empowered by putin's policy.

it doesn't have to be, joe, if you will, a russian finger on the trig. tactically. russia enabled this -- >> and shooting planes out of the sky. >> how do the europeans react? the united states has been out in front of the europeans and putting pressure on russia. the question whether that gap closes whether or not the u.s. retreat but europeans are willing to join the united states and doing more to bolster nato. so this, to me, becomes a real moment of truth and what is interesting, if europe steps up, if the europeans finally now say, okay, putin has jumped a shark, we can't tolerate this any more, then the question for putin is does he continue to escalate or then does he finally look for an off ramp? this actually could be a critical moment in the entire

ukraine saga. >> joining us now is former chairman of the ntsb jim hall. jim, could you talk about the air space where this happened and the precision of the hit on this plane. >> well, it's my understanding that this air space was open for commercial traffic, although some airlines had chosen not to fly in this area. the precision of these missile systems, of course, are, you know, can take down one of our commercial jets without any great difficulty because we don't really have any systems, any missile systems on any of our commercial aircraft worldwide. >> steve rattner? >> so just to embellish on that a little bit. my understanding is that the ukrainians restricted this air space but only up to 30,000 feet

which is what they thought was the aircraft capability of the separatists was. this plane was flying at 30,000 feet and these more sophisticated weapons were able to reach that high. secondly, what also seems to be coming out is that this plane was flying a slightly different route than the same flight had been flying the previous nights because of weather or because of wind favor ability, who knows. it's possibly the separatists did not expect to see a commercial airline flying in that particular spot at that particular moment. >> let's take a closer look at the pro russian rebels who the ukrainian government say is responsible for shooting down the plane. the leader of the group made a personal appearance at the crash site. that is him surrounded by his army guards. they arrived to survey the crash overnight. they have denied being responsible for shooting down the plane but there is evidence that calls those claims into

questions. the rebels did, in fact, claim responsibility for shooting down two ukrainian military planes earlier in the week. ukrainian officials released a series of phone calls they allege show the group is responsible for shooting down malaysian airlines flight 17. [ speaking in foreign language ] >> a commander posted on facebook that the rebels shot down a plane and adding, quote, we did warn you, do not fly in our sky. the rebels say the released

phone calls are not legitimate. joining us from washington nbc news national security analyst and former director of the national counterterrorism center, michael leiter. >> michael, what clues are you looking at in this terrible tragedy? >> i think there are two basic intelligence questions. there's no doubt this is shot down by a radar guided surface-to-air missile so you get to the question who fired it. they don't know yet, joe, but they are going to have that develop within the next 24 to 48 hours. that will come from radar signatures. it will come from this intelligence from the ukrainians and that is narrowed down. even though not saying it yet people are pretty confident this is not shot by the russians but shot by the separatists but enabled by the russians. >> michael -- i'm sorry, go to your second question. >> the second question goes to richard's point and that is going to be the intelligence on what the russians and vladimir

putin are really thinking. is this actually a diplomatic opportunity to deescalate? he is, obviously, publicly still very tough and very strong but what is our intelligence on his intentions? does he see this as an off ramp, now realizing the situation is beyond his control? >> michael, one of the great fears in 1989, '90, '91 and '92 when anarchy seemed to be breaking out across the soviet union especially after christmas day 1991 nuclear weapons would get into the hands of spr separatists and rebels. when i heard about this news breaking yesterday i thought this is what we were worried about but on a smaller scale. a tragic scale but a smaller scale. in this case we have the leader of a very strong organized russia has is allowing the proliferation of weapons in separatists that don't even know what they have control of.

and so they are killing civilians that are just flying to vacation or to work. >> you're absolutely right. these systems, which are incredibly powerful, can shoot down planes up to 70,000 feet up to about 25 miles, they are designed to be in what is known an integrated air defense system. that comedians radar systems and command and control and identify the civilians from the military and be used wisely. this is clearly not an accurate description of the ukrainian separatist movement. it's rag tag fighting and apparently very deadly. >> we know 173 dutch citizens on the plane and nine british citizens from germany and belgium. numbers are still to be determined. do you expect, as richard haass suggested, there perhaps is a lot more diplomatic pressure

from europeans on vladimir putin to back off? >> gene, the sort answhort answ this doesn't get the europeans to stand in a more stronger way nothing will. i expect from the eu and nato assistance to the ukrainians and enhance economic sanctions. they cannot politically look at this situation and not be more closely aligned with the united states since our last round of sanctions. >> let's bring in senior fellow of the atlantic council and former deputy assistant of defense for europe and nato policy ian brzezinski. ian, thanks for being on. >> a pleasure to be here, mika. >> whether or not the russians themselves or their missile provided to separatists, what are we looking at in terms of options for the world community and particularly the u.s. now? >> mika, i think this is clearly a game changer. i was struck by the report that

u.s. intelligence now reporting that this was either fired by the separatists or by russia. this should, as richard pointed out, mobilize the europeans to take a more firm stance against russia's's invasion with ukraine and it should bolster the u.s. government to take a more firmer stance in this crisis. so we will see what happens in the coming weeks. but i think certainly increases the pressure on allied governments, european and north america, to increase economic sanctions on russia and second to provides even more military assistance to ukraine to help bring this conflict to an end. this conflict is demonstrated clearly now war can have consequences well beyond those that are immediately involved and this should be resonating deeply in the halls of europe. >> richard, i see you nodding. at this point, what do you make and you can take it to ian but vladimir putin's response defensive and almost adding fuel to the fire of what is a

tremendously horrific crisis at this point? >> vladimir putin is many things, but stupid is not among them. he has got to be worried that essentially he is empowered a group of people over whom he does not have control. he is influenced but not controlled. whether they did this accidentally or purposefully, once you empower a group of separatists or militia they can then take actions. he is seeing how russian national interests are severely compromised by what these characters did. my question for ian is essentially what does he now think putin might do? does he think it's in putin's dna essentially now to find a way to de-escalate or is putin only know, if you will, how to push, push, push. what is your sense of it? >> that's what i see. ian? >> i think putin's initial reaction is going to be to push, push, push. if you look at the kind of steady escalation of western sanctions on ukraine, it's been

responded by putin by taking more action to support the separatists. we have steadily increased economic sanctions in russia and to actually more recently build up again the russian military presence on the ukrainian border. >> you know, it's absolutely stunning when you look at the missile that was used here. i don't know if we still have jim miklaszewski at the pentagon. but this is -- the ability and precision to which this was able to -- the plane was at 33 thousand feet. >> and that is nothing for this -- >> that is what this missile is designed to do. it's designed to shoot planes out of the sky at 33,000 feet. >> and civilian airlines are sitisi sitting ducks. >> they move slower. >> not that it's going to change life much but the interesting question whether they intended

to shoot a civilian airplane out of the sky or they thought it was a ukrainian plane that happened to be wondering around in that air space. >> jim miklaszewski, what are you hearing? >> that is exactly right. these weapon systems are somewhat sophisticated but not so uniquely sophisticated, once their radar locks in, they are not going to differentiate between a civilian plane or a military plane. i can tell you some of the u.s. officials i've been talking to yesterday, even though they were certain that this was a russian weapon at the very least, how the u.s. reacts, they sounded somewhat frustrated by their inability to really take any direct, swift, punitive action against russia. they are talking about for the time being any way perhaps from the u.s. additional sanctions and maybe a diplomatic demarsh, but as many of your guests here today have said, they believe

here that the europeans do have to weigh in and finally unite against this russian influence, military influence on ukraine. >> joe? >> richard haass, i thought it was fascinating, ian's response and just talking about how putin responded to sanctions, how he responded as a crisis deepened that had actually get more aggressive. it goes back to what you've talked about for sometime. vladimir putin is the embodiment of all post-soviet resentments that putin has and where he draws his power from. they feel like crimea has been taken away from them, it's quite another when 200 civilians are blown out of the sky and killed. i think it's a bit more complicated for mr. putin and his government that is built on a foundation of resentments. >> exactly right, because at the end of the day the single most

important thing to putin shockingly enough is putin and putinism. i think he'll be tough at first. he will be his normal pushy self but if it's clear this time it doesn't work and the europeans do get serious about joining the u.s. >> are they going to get serious, richard? >> i think it will be hard for them to continue business as usual especially for the french and the dutch could take the lead here and press some of their european colleagues but if that were to happen, i think putin could decide essentially the costs outweigh the benefits and he has to tactically pull back. at the end of the day he has used ukraine to bolster his own position. if things in ukraine get to the point where they threaten his own position, why wouldn't he push back, why wouldn't he basically change course here? >> yep. we are hearing already from more leaders on this. germany's merkel, england's cameron that the perpetrators must be held responsible. >> the person i would watch here is chancellor merkel.

more than anyone else, she is now the real leader of europe. it's not france or cameron in britain, it is chancellor merkel and if she takes a muscular position, that more than anything else, will send a signal to vladimir putin. >> this would be the time to do that. jim miklaszewski and michael leiter, thank you very much. ian, stay with us, if you can. ahead, we take a closer look at the individuals and the authorities try to determine who was behind yesterday's attack. we go live to amsterdam where the plane originated and we are follow breaking news out of gaza threat under way to root out the terrorist hamas. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. ♪ the last four hours have seen... one child fail to get to the air sickness bag in time. another left his shoes on the plane...

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♪ emergency crews and reporters on the ground in eastern ukraine are witnessing a horrifying scene that is surely not to be forgotten any time

soon. "the new york times" sabrina says, in part, quote, this. headphones and computers were scattered throughout a field of sunflowers. in another field a dutch passport lay open. bodies fell from the sky looking like rags or clumps of ash. that was with some of the residents and rescue workers saw after malaysian airlines flight came to a jolting rest. trailing debris over several miles of sparsely populated ukrainian farmland. it was horrible said a separatist rebel who was part of the rescue crew. many of the victims were still in their seat belts attached to pieces of the plane and others had personal belongings nearby. a young man in blue shorts wearing nike sneakers but no pants lay with his arms and legs laying outward and his iphone by his side. here is a eyewitness accounts.

>> i heard a lot of noise in the sky and several shots and strong ba bang. >> translator: i ran out and saw black smoke everywhere. i thought the house of my nephew was hit and i ran out and everything was black, on fire. >> of course, 298 victims and, so far, 181 have been recovered. let's go now live to key efficien dkiev, ukraine. vladimir putin putting this squarely on ukraine. what are we hearing from the government there? >> reporter: mika, as you can imagine the government here is blaming pro russian separatists but aside from the fldiplomacy you're talking about there you're trying to figure out what exactly happened, the organizations for the security and corporation in europe, we are told, are their way there. they say pro russian separatists

are telling them they will will cordon off the area and they will take care of the area but the problem is this is a war zone, mika. this has happened in a war zone so these officials who are going there some officials have been kidnapped by the rebels in the past when they have been there trying to broker the actual war itself and then, of course, you have people on the ground. you have a vested interest in ensuring that the world comes to one conclusion or another about what exactly happened. so this is going to be really, really tricky and then as you, you know, laid out really poignantly amid all of this diplomacy let's not forget we are talking about those innocent passengers on board. 80 of them children, mika. at one point, we thought it was furor of them, until people realized some of the people were carried on passenger's laps so they hadn't been counted. there is only a heart breaking

human tragedy happening here. and that does go back to the diplomacy, too, because, of course, the problem for these countries and you saw the australian prime minister, you saw the malaysians and british will speak at some point. any country with sizeable number of passengers. one passenger on board this plane needs to have something to say because their people will be saying, look at what has happened. are you going to let this happen? so it is a really difficult diplomatic situation and at the heart of is a human tragedy and one of the things that is going to make it really so difficult. >> eugene robinson? >> this highlights the rebels hold territory in that part of ukraine. the ukrainian government had been trying to take it back apparently with some success we hear over here. what is your sense of how that campaign of the government in kiev of reestablishing control over the country is going?

>> reporter: well, it was seeming to prove countereffective being a little bit effective. in don yesk, i've been there and i think i've talked to you from there. the city hall there people are armed to the teeth ready to guard that town. many of those pro russian separatists have found their way there as the ukrainians have advanced so looking as it if a standoff and then the you had the russians playing kind of pocket politics from the sidelines and people talk about the russians kind of just wanting to see the country in disarray being satisfied with that diplomatically politically but the risk has always been as you have outlined in the show has always been that this would go really badly wrong that there would be a tragedy like this that putin wouldn't be able to control those russian separatists and if as what we think may have happened plays

out as to be the case, then that is going to be serious. the trouble is when you speak to those ukrainian separatists, they are absolutely determined and, by the way, for anyone who spent time in russia, you'll know the russians are proud and determined and of many them adversarial to the west at the moment so that will create itself a difficult situation that we just will wait to see what kind of diplomatic crisis plays out from this. >> we will talk more about that, richard. nbc keir simmons, thank you. details are emerging about the victims on border malaysian flight 17. 173 people from the netherlands. they are trying to determine the nationality of 20 people. the u.s. state department is working to determine if any

american u.s. citizens were on board. according to a report a hundred people were headed to an aids conference in australia including the former president of the international aids society. and in an eerie facebook post, an apparent passenger on the flight sent out there photo moments before takeoff and when translaid it read if it disappears, this is what it looks like. there are stories of people lucky to be alive after not boarding the flight from amsterdam. will listen to this woman. >> i'm feeling physically sick. i was, like, from hilton coming to the airport in the taxi and just crying. i'm just thinking i feel like i've been given a second chance. >> we're going to talk more about that. joe, that is chilling on a number of levels and including that facebook post. >> oh, the facebook post. the individual stories yesterday that i, like you, was reading

yesterday afternoon everything i could and saw "the new york times" story describing the people, souls, the lost souls, the 10-year-old boy that had a don't panic t-shirt on and the teenager that you said was in nike running shoes and had his iphone next to him with headphones or the woman whose gray hair blended in with the field and the flowers all across the field. a tragic poignant scene that really does add a human dimension. when i saw the quotes from the villagers talking about seeing body flying from the sky that looked like rags, obviously, i was taken back to what you saw and what, unfortunately, so many new yorkers saw that were down on ground zero on september

11th. it's just -- it's hard to comprehend when you're there obviously and i'm sure it's comprehend for a lot of people in this remote part of ukraine. it's a personal human tragedy that the dutch are going to feel most strongly, but i am hopeful, like a lot of people, that the rest of the europeans will stand behind them and others that want to prevent the next tragedy like this one happening. the russians have been on notice. they have put europe on notice. and at some point, they need to put humanitarian interests ahead of financial interests and they haven't done that yet, but as richard said and as you agreed all eyes right now are on germany and are on chancellor merkel. hopefully, she will take a tougher stance towards vladimir putin because he is a thug and he has empowered people who are

even more dangerous thugs than are he, more reckless. >> certainly one would think this is a defining moment. joining us now from amsterdam is nbc chuck henry. chuck, what is the latest from there? >> reporter: i'd just like to follow-up on what you were just talking about. here you put a human face on this tragedy. this morning, you know, the same mix of passengers were lined up, you know, to depart on malaysian flight to amsterdam today. the airlines didn't even change the number of the flight. people in line there nervous about getting on the plane. one man said, yeah, sure, i'm scared, i'm nervous, but, you know, i don't have the money to change the ticket. i got the ticket so i'm going on any way. but one of the things you notice if you were to go into the terminal behind me, terminal 3 there, you'd notice so many young people that are on, you know, on a vacation whether they be high school students or college students and groups.

it would have been the exact same situation yesterday. we don't know the ages of all people that were on that aircraft but i'll bet there were many that were just students that were maybe going down to kuala lumpur or further south to australia or bali or maybe north a bit. you know, i got to tell you, as one who travels a lot, it really hits you emotionally when you walk through that terminal and realize what happened here yesterday. as for the families who came out here, they have started arriving late last night and they have been put in a hotel some distance from the airport. they are given whatever they need in the way of necessities or counseling, grief counseling, something like that. there was a statement that came out late last night and we are expecting to hear more, perhaps more of the nationalities of the people that were on the plane. other than that, this is a huge international terminal and it's pretty much business as usual. >> chuck, is there any reaction from the country there yet pouring in?

>> reporter: well, obviously there are because so many came from the netherlands. you know, the bulk, at least half of the passengers aboard this aircraft and a co-chair flight with klm as was the flight that went out there today. yeah, there has been a lot of reaction but i think even more as to how the plane came down are people are asking questions about was that the best route to take? i mean, did any other plane earlier that day take the same route that malaysian airlines did over the ukraine? or did they fly as most of them do further north and avoid the air space? people are asking the question why only 2,000 feet -- or a thousand feet above the restricted air space and why didn't it fly higher and north or south and south would have taken you into crimea and that wouldn't be a good situation either. >> chuck henry, thank you so much. coming up, more coverage straight ahead here on "morning joe." intelligence experts are still trying to determine who shot flight 17 out of the sky. but this isn't the first time a

passenger flight has been shot down. we will look back at some of the other notable airline tragedies next. we will be right back. [ both ] we checked into our hotel in paris,

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welcome back to "morning joe." we are, obviously, talking about yesterday's tragedy over ukraine. steve rattner, chuck henry, nbc's chuck henry reported that a lot of questions are being raised right now in amsterdam regarding the decision of the airliner to take the route that it took. what was the pilot thinking and how did it compare it with this flight on previous days? first of all, planes have been flying over that area consistently at this period at high altitudes. the ukrainian had flights above 32,000 feet but not above them and it's a conventional route to get from europe to southeast asia. what is interesting and what has come out of the radar reports is that the same flight mh 17 when it was flying earlier in the week, was taking a route a little bit more to the south than where this flight particularly went. this pilot may have made the decision because of weather or because of winds. he may have made it for some other reason, but it is

possible, and i'm by no means are we certain, that the ukrainian separatists were surprised to see a plane flying at this particular moment. >> people on board often are on the wrong place at the wrong time. we still don't know what downed malaysia airlines flight 17 but if anything the fallout will be massive. >> there is a major tragedy in the persian gulf. >> reporter: in 1988 as the war was in full swing tengs wesions high. on july 3rd of that year the "uss vincens came under fire in the persian gulf at the same time iran air flight 655 took off from a nearby airport. american officials say the ship somehow mistook it for an enemy

f-14 even though the passenger jet was three times as big. the vincen slammed two missiles into the plane's side. >> president reagan rejects iran's claim that the u.s. shot down that airliner. >> i won't minimize the tragedy that we all know was a tragedy so i think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack from that plane. >> reporter: 290 people were dead. and while the u.s. apologized, it fed mass public protests deepening the trust of the u.s. that remains in tehran to this day. >> this is an nbc news special. shot from the sky. >> reporter: on two separate occasions, korean airlines found itself caught in the middle of armed conflicts. in 1978, one of their planes strayed over soviet air space. two of the 97 passengers on board were killed.

>> the soviet statements have totally failed to explain with how or why this tragedy occurred. >> reporter: five years later a plane flying from alaska to seoul. one missile slammed into it killing all 269 on board. among them? georgia congressman larry mcdonald. for days, russians wouldn't acknowledge the crash and, later, denied they shot it down deliberately. a claim debunked by ambassador jean kirkpatrick when she shared this with the united nations. years later, the russian pilot of the plane that downed flight 007 said he knew it was a civilian plane but believed it was on a spy mission. >> off the south coast of long island, search and rescue crews are hard at work this morning trying to recover the victims and debris of twa flight 800 use

early yesterday's crash of malaysian flight 17 came years after the day after twa flight 800 exploded after takeoff crashing into long island sound. investigators concluded an electrical spark in the fuel tank was to blame. but witnesses say they saw rising streak of light in the sky, similar to a missile, sparking endless conspiracy theories. >> at first, i saw what appeared to be an emergency flare and then as i looked at it, i realized it was a lot more than a flare. it was actually a fireball in the sky. >> reporter: for all of the confirmed shootdowns of passenger planes, there are still other downed flights whose fates have never been fully solved. still ahead in four months' time, malaysia airlines has had two flight disasters. unprecedented in aviation history. but where does this put the troubled airline? can they survive this? we will be right back with much more "morning joe." spokesperson: get a $1,000 turbocharged reward card

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when you go into an active war zone, you're concerned, first, about first and foremost about your people thaw might be putting on the ground there, but then you've got to think about the evidence and their wreckage recovery and, for sure, you want to think about those family members that have lost loved ones. the recovery of the human remains and the personal effects, that also has to be a priority too. and so there's a lot going on here and it's a real challenge for anyone, but particularly for a country in a war-torn area like this, it has got to be a double burden. >> that was former ntsb chairman deborah hersman. investigating a crash in the war zone. we are searching for answers this morning on the attack on flight 17. who was responsible? and how will the world respond? we are also following the breaking news out of israeli. stay with us. we will be right back.

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coming up at the top of the hour -- >> if it is resolved to be either separatists or russian actions mistakenly believing this was a ukrainian war plane, i think there is hell to pay and there should be. >> how should the world respond to a downing of a plane 298

civilians on the border? there is tough talk there from senator john mccain with you some are warning toward a rush to judgment. house security member peter king weighs in. the blame game is in full swing over who shot down malaysian airlines flight 17 and we will look at what could help answer some of the key questions this morning. plus, israeli launches a ground invasion of gaza. we will look at the latest of the crisis in middle east. all this and much more when "morning joe" returns. i know what you're thinking. you're thinking beneful. [announcer]and why wouldn't he be? beneful has wholesome grains,real beef,even accents of spinach,carrots and peas. it has carbohydrates for energy and protein for those serious muscles. [guy] aarrrrr! [announcer]even accents of vitamin-rich veggies. [guy] so happy! you love it so much. yes you do! but it's good for you,too. [announcer] healthful. flavorful. beneful. from purina.

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the plane has crashed somewhere near the ukraine/russia border. >> this is malaysia flight 17. it was reportedly a boeing 777. >> officials here at the pentagon are scrambling to figure out just what happened here. >> i was in my house when i heard two explosions. i ran out and saw black smoke everywhere. >> i want to be sure of what i say. apparently, had been shot down. shot down. not an accident. blown out of the sky. >> both ukrainians and the russians have the same kind of bud surface-to-air missiles capable of bringing down an airliner. >> there are many questions to be answered and we will get those answers and we will take the next steps accordingly. >> the attack on malaysian airlines flight 17. who is responsible for shooting down a passenger plane cold out of the sky, killing nearly 300

people with citizens from nine countries on border. this is now an international crisis with much at stake. >> u.s. officials believe it was shot down surface-to-air missile but they are still trying to determine if it was fired from the ukrainian or russian side of the border. >> ukraine's president is calling it a terrorist attack and demanding an individual investigation. he says pro russian rebels are responsible but the separatists have denied responsibility. malaysia flight 17 took off about into the from am sister down to kuala lumpur. the boeing 777 went down about 25 miles from the russian border. >> black smoke could be seen instantly after witnesses reported loud explosions in the sky. debris was visible for a span of nine miles. airline officials say they were told the route was safe before they took off. this is a map showing all of the international flights that are avoiding the air space over ukraine following the plane crash.

>> pro russian rebels are allowing crews into the area to help with recovery efforts and the rebels claim they have recovered most of the plane's black boxes. >> president obama and russian president vladimir putin spoke earlier in the day about new sanctions issued the day before. officials say that it was putin who notified president obama at the end of that call that a plane had crashed on his border. >> putin expressed condolences to the victims' families in a statement but then slammed ukraine blaming them saying, in part, quote, this. i want to note that this tragedy would not have happened if there were peace on this land and military actions had not be renewed in southeast ukraine and certainly the state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility for this awful tragedy. white house officials say president obama has been in touch with his national security and the united nations security council is scheduled to hold an emergency meeting at 10:00 a.m. this morning.

welcome back to "morning joe." joining us now from washington we have the moderator of "meet the press" david gregory and nbc news correspondent tom costello. we are a lot of angles here especially looking at the air space and talking about steve rattner about sort of the unspoken code of war zone air space. >> right. >> and who is responsible and what will now happen. >> you know, there's so many questions, mika. you have questions about responsibility. you have questions, obviously, about the human souls who were lost in this terrible tragedy and their stories. who was on the plane. still trying to figure out how many americans were on the plane. and, of course, there is the question we talked about last hour, the impact this is going to have on international politic, on go politics on putin and the future of these russian separatists. much to discuss, mika, but we start with you and tom costello. >> tom, bring us up-to-date on the latest and what we know

about the crash and the details surrounding where, when it happened and what we are being told so far by aviation officials. >> reporter: i think the biggest challenge the plane is sitting in rebel-held territory and as you said, there is reporting they already have the black boxes. now, the concern here is if they are in charge of this investigation or the plane is in their hands and they are the ones who shot it down, you've got to wonder about the objectivity in this particular case. we have been talking to our sources in the u.s. agencies including the ntsb. at this moment, so far, the ntsb is not headed to ukraine and could change. this is in a war zone and a military action that brought this plane down. ntsb does not want to send its people in harm's way and the ukrainian government has not obtained access to this crash site even though it's sitting in ukraine.

typicalically in a united states-built plane is involved in an accident the ntsb will go to to assist but this is a boeing 777 and this is military action and takes it to a whole different level. as for any role they would play, if they are looking for the black boxes and if the black boxes are recovered you wonder what value is there of the black boxes? we already know the plane was shot down. the black boxes will probably only tell you the speed and the heading at the time of the explosion and maybe capture cockpit discussions between the pilots in which they perhaps were talking to each other and worried about the plane coming apart. but in terms of conversations with air traffic control, that is already on tape. the air traffic control facility has that. in terms of determining what kind of a missile brought this plane down, the black boxes won't tell you that. to some extent this is really going to be dependent upon the intelligence agencies, including the united states, to say this is trajectory of that missile we spotted leaving this territory

and it bears the signature of this particular missile. >> tom, within the investigation, time is of the essence after the incident. our officials worry if too much time passes before they can get on the scene the evidence needed will get taken away. or if this from the evidence you show we will not get much information from the black box. is there a fear as days go by and they don't get to go to this scene they lose valuable evidence? >> i think that's true, regardless of who would investigate, if there is any international investigation whatsoever, then time matters. and we have already seen pictures of individuals walking through the crash scene, standing on top of the wreckage. immediately, therefore, the wreckage has been contaminated. in their what would they look for? explosives experts would come in and try to look for any traces of a signature of a missile to determine what type of a missile. but they are pretty already sure this is a buk missile.

it's a soviet air missile. keep in mind the ukraine was part of the soviet union. both sides would allegedly have this weapon. that doesn't answer who shot the missile. and all evidence right now would suggest it was, in fact, the russian-backed separatists who are responsible but there is also the fact you want to go through with a fine-tooth comb and pick up all of the pieces of the wreckage and the remains of the people who were on board so they can be returned to those families. that is going to be a very time consuming task and it really does require a level of professionalism that you've got to assume that the russian-backed separatist, these guerrillas don't have and don't care about. there are tragedies on multiple levels here. we know of the 298 people on board, half of them were dutch and we know many of them were traveling to an aids conference in melbourne, australia. these were some of the world's experts on aids, on medical

research on aids. dr. nancy snyderman and i last night were exchanging e-maleils and when she saw the list of the people on board the plane she said, oh, no. this is a body no blow on for this organization that tries to, you know, come to some sort of a medical conclusion or investigating, i should say aids and how it can be solved. >> tom costello, thank you very much. steve rattner, as we look at what happened here, tell us a little bit about war zone air space and sort of the unspoken code that makes this all the more shocking. >> i think a couple of points. i think tom laid out a lot of it but a couple of things to embellish on. first, there is an unwritten code. air space is the one thing, maybe like radio frequencies where a lot of international cooperation even among countries that don't get along and countries even at war respect air space, commercial service often into war-torn countries because they want commercial service to have a tie to the

outside world which is what part of what makes this all the more unusual. i think tom is right, the black box, while we certainly want them, are not going to be the most interesting thing here. i think the things that i would love to see would be -- i know the u.s. is working on trying to work backwards from the trajectory of many missile to figure out where it was fired from. that would be great to see. it would be great to have the conversations between the pilots and air traffic control and ukraine. they would be in radio contact and may be some interesting conversations there. so those are the kind of things that i would like. the other question i have is so you've got these very sophisticated ground-to-air missiles that may be in the hands of the separatists but somebody had to teach them how to fire them. >> exactly. >> i'm going to -- i have richard haass here, david gregory. let's talk about now the implications moving forward and the big questions moving forward. we are already hearing from world leaders who are saying the

culprits here need to be held accountable and we are looking at, obviously, what to do about vladimir putin. david? >> well, this is a huge moment obviously. an escalation in this crisis that started with putin taking crimea and if you recall, there was no penalty for that. it was like, look. we will get to that later and now diffuse what is happening in ukraine and we never did get to that later, at least not yet. maybe is there a window here for the united states and european powers to say to putin have you a mom here and just a brief moment to de-escalate what is happening in eastern ukraine to deal with what has happened in crimea or else. and i think that, right now, this is a matter not just for the european countries to ramp up economic sanctions like the u.s. has done, but for on the president, richard haass, to also begin to make a case internationally, to really step up his own leadership to make the case against vladimir putin and not just rally european

powers but whether he wants to take specific steps behind it to use the bully pulpit against him and lay out the case what he is doing. >> i agree with you, david, 100%. what is potentially different here this now could galvanize public opinion. we are not dealing with geo political abstractions what is dealing in ukraine. you are dealing with 300 innocent people lost their lives presumably because of actions taken by groups that organizations that russia enabled. this could create a context in which european governments could finally begin to move against russia with sanctions to do more for ukraine and start spending more on defense and reduce their energy dependence on russia. the president should make these cases privately and publicly but also give putin some way to back down. i think very quickly, putin has to decide whether he cuts his losses and what we should do is put tremendous pressure on him so he comes to that calculation and give him some space to back

down. >> you know, gene robinson, though, i think this story gets worse. again, all speculation, but it's educated speculation, that this story gets worse by the day for vladimir putin. they move these buk anti-aircraft missiles that are capable of shooting down planes at 70,000 feet over into this territory. it's not like they gave them an ipod and said, hey, hook this up to a laptop and we will download a lot of cool tunes for you. this is a very complicated system to figure out. i would guess that these separatists weren't sitting there manning them by themselves. is it not safe to assume they had to get help from russia? there are no, you know, quick-start manuals that come with these things. vladimir putin is going to have a lot of questions to answer. i've got to believe if they were just moved over to the territory, there had to be

russian advisers there helping them. i mean, who believe -- does anybody on this set believe that these thugs, these separatists could handle such a complicated piece of military equipment by themselves? >> well, i'd say probably not. i mean, and the only caveat there is that among the thugs are former members, some former members of the ukraine military, ukraine had these systems apparently, and so theoretically there could have been people on the rebel side who had experience with this system. nonetheless i think it seems to me more probable if you're going to give these guys this weapon system, somebody has got to come over and show them how to use it. it's not just four missiles on that one truck that we see the picture of apparently. there are other pieces of it, the radars and sort of targeting

apparatus. so it's not just that. it's a big suite of big pieces of equipment. very complicated and, you know, sophisticated enough to hit something at 70 or 80,000 feet. >> i want to bring in a member of the house foreign affairs committee and air force pilot, u.s. congressman from illinois, adam kensinger. good to have you on. looking at globally at this and hearing already from chancellor merkel, all eyes are on her as richard haass pointed out, sort of in terms of how we are going to be looking at putin. what are the options as soon as we zero in on the culprit and assuming that culprit is russia? >> yeah, i think it's pretty obvious now it's russia but this is going to be, i think, an important moment for europe. president obama and the united states has kind of led the way in terms of talking about sanctions against russia for ukraine and in terms of really trying to punish russia. the europeans have been so far

blah say about it and not because they don't see the threat russia poses but it means something for their economy and they are in a fragile state. i think this will brings merkel and europeans saying we have to do this together. the united states and europe have to do these banking sanctions together to have a real impact on vladimir putin. as tragic as this is, if we do want to see the only good thing to come out of this, maybe it's a wake-up call to the europeans that their citizens are at threat here too and we have to stand against this aggression. i think this is going to prove to be the moment that putin kind of had, oh, no, this is really bad moment, yesterday, for his movement in ukraine. >> david gregory? >> congressman, do you think the president here, beyond making his case, leads militarily? by that, i mean, using nato to send a step, whether it's movement of troops, other assets

to put in place, you know, in circling ukraine to really force this issue, or does he not have any of that kind of hand to play? >> i think he has the hand to play. the question is whether he does. i think more than just a few hundred troops around. i think it's going to be important to show the nato alliance stands with its nato partners, especially in the nato areas in circling ukraine and sends a strong message. the other thing that the president really ought to do is step up the military assistance to the ukrainian army. keep in mind, they are in the process of pushing back the separatists out of their territory. now the president has a real good position to come from and say, look. not only if this is not an internal ukrainian fight any more, this is a fight that now puts american lives and european lives in danger and this is something we have a vested interest in helping the ukrainians push out this movement in the east. and i think this is his opportunity to stand up and provide more than body armor and start to provide weaponry and everything else to the ukrainians. this could be the moment that

putin's gains in ukraine were very much reversed. >> congressman adam kinzinger, thank you very much. after ten days of air attacks, israeli has law firmed full on-ground assault on gaza. last night the operation known as protective edge began as israeli troops and tanks rolled into the northern areas of the gaza strip and while naval ships hit targets in the territory's southern regions. the open-ended attack began around 10:00 p.m. local time with the focus on destroying tunnels used by hamas to enter israeli. a spokesman for the israeli military said their goal was to pursue, paralyze, and threaten hamas militants. the gaza health ministry reports 11 individuals have been killed and 240 individuals killed since the air strikes began last week. that includes the death of 25

women and 40 children. a spokesman says israeli will, quote, pay a high price for its ground invasion but that is not deterring the military government. the military is calling up an ishl 18,000 reservists for the operation, that is in addition to the 50,000 already drafted to fight. this is the first time since 2009 that israeli troops have entered hamas-controlled territory. joe, another, obviously, massive breaking story outside our borders, but directly impacting how we move forward policy wise. >> it is. it is. richard haass, you look at this and we have seen it all before. it's such a tragedy for the palestinians. it's such a tragedy for the israelis who want no part of gaza. they turned it over to the palestinians and anybody watching thinking that they want to go back in there with boots on the ground are completely ignorant of what is going on in israeli and the israeli

politics. how did we get to this point? and is there any hope moving forward that we can somehow get the coalition government back together for the palestinians and figure out a way out of this crisis? >> well, as you correctly said the israelis did not want to take this step and felt they had no choice after hamas rejected the cease-fire and continued lobbying rockets and they found people in tunnels trying to get into israeli and cause real mayhem there. so now they have done there. israeli is strategic dilemma after going in and weaken hamas and then what? they don't want to stay there as you say. what they need to also avoid is a situation they leave and like last time, hamas rebuilds and that is the real strategic dilemma. >> how did we get there. hamas had been weakened and it appeared they were ready to join forces with the palestinian

authority who recognized israeli's right to exist. how did we move from that hopeful stage just a few months ago. >> oh, really. >> to now a situation as bad as any that we have seen there in five, six years? >> two things. one, i'm not so sure it was all that hopeful when hamas joined with the palestinian authority with fatah. it wasn't clear who had the upper hand and given hamas position historically vis-a-vis israeli not accepting it wasn't obviously to me that was a prelude to serious diplomacy. everybody knows at the same time diplomacy led by secretary kerry broke down. then you had the situations on the ground. first, the three israelis were kidnapped and killed and then the revenge killing. you had almost tribal dimension introduced into the israeli/palestinian conflict and then you had cycles of action and reaction and things began to get out of control. i think what hamas has decided that politically, their

interests are somewhat served by being the force of resistance against israeli, fatah, the other more moderate palestinians in the west bank have been essentially sidelined and, again, the real question for israeli is how does it do something that is lasting? not just hurt hamas militarily but how does it put into place a political dynamic so it will, one day, have a partner and, right now, the israelis haven't figured that out. >> the key word there i think is political. it has to be political in gaza, otherwise, it doesn't happen. >> joe? >> david gregory, john kerry has been traveling around the world over the past six months or so. obviously, desperate for breakthroughs not only in the middle east but also iran talking obviously or the russian/ukrainian conflict. but it's one disaster after another. one strikeout after another. obviously, it has to be very frustrating to john kerry, but

also for this administration with americans looking, you know, on tv and wondering what the hell is going on out there? and why we seem to have diminished influence across the globe, which, of course that is not directed to president obama. people -- strategists have been warning about this for a decade that we are not in -- we're in a multipolar world and we have less influence, still, it's having a very real impact on the president's standing with the american people right now. >> and not only his ability to manage these, but this big question of how does america project its power when it has very little interest in deploying military force around the world? and to what end in some of these areas. so, you know, you take the middle east, for instance, secretary kerry, the president, going back really to the end of the bush administration argued that if there was a failure to at least be on a track to pursue peace, that the downsides were that much bigger the longer you go.

and so that becomes one of the huge problems. i think one of the issues in the middle east, for instance is -- the question i have is you can see the -- that israeli wants to degrade hamas, but why won't it spend more time aside from the obvious which is the carnage that the military campaign could produce, why not try to really drive hamas out? you know, experts i talk to say there is more of an interest in keeping the status quo where it is with hamas in play but why not drive them all the way out? does that create a dynamic in israeli's view is even more dangerous than the one they have got? >> nks israe >> gene, you wanted to get in earlier. israeli has two choices. they either negotiate with hamas or they destroy hamas. there is no middle ground. i've been saying that for a long time and i'm very pro israeli. but the fact is this middle ground won't work. as long as you have somebody running an area that is

dedicated to your destruction, you either figure out how to move them off of that and get them -- the palestinian authority, or you have to destroy them or just continue -- >> middle ground -- they refer to it as mowing the grass basically. they come in periodically and get rid of the rocket launchers and the cycle starts again. richard haass, i think -- >> but mowing the grass kill ends up killing innocent palestinians and palestinian boys playing on the beach, which is not only bad for the israeli government, it is a scar on the israeli people who don't want to be in the business of occupation any more and you wonder how long this cycle continues. mowing the grass is not the answer. >> really quickly, richard haass. >> it's not the answer, joe, but a middle ground that is driving a wedge between hamas and the people of gaza and that means basically showing diplomacy can work with people in the west bank. that is israeli's challenge. they need to introduce a

diplomatic dimension to compliment their military dimension. >> all right. david gregory, thank you very much. we will be watching "meet the press" this sunday for sure. up next for the seeked time in four months malaysian airlines is dealing with a tragedy of epic proportions. what does the future hold for this star-crossed airline? plus, we will live to gaza with more on israeli's ground invasion which may be expanding even further this morning. we will be right back. if energy could come from anything?. or if power could go anywhere? or if light could seek out the dark? what would happen if that happens?

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emergency crews and reporters on the ground in eastern ukraine are witnessing a horrifying scene that they will surely not forget any time soon. "the new york times" sabrina says in part, quote. in another field, a dutch passport lay open. bodies fell from the sky looking like rags or clumps of ash. that was what of the residents

and rescue workers saw after malaysia airlines flight 17 came to a jolting rest in a large wheat field dotted with purple flowers and trailing debris over several miles of sparsely populated ukrainian farmland. it was horrible said a separatist rebel who was part of the rescue crew. many of the victims were still in their seat belts attached to pieces of the plane. others had personal belongings nearby. a young man in blue shorts wearing red nike sneakers, but no pants, lay with his arms and legs laying outward and his iphone by his side. two witnesses here explaining what they saw unfold. >> translator: shooting was pretty intense before that. i heard a lot of noise in the sky and heard several shots and strong bang. >> translator: i was inside my house when i heard two explosions. i ran out and saw black smoke everywhere. i thought the house of my nephew

was hit. i ran out everything was black, on fire! >> let's bring host of "andrea mitchell reports, andrea mitchell. i'm wondering how does this not spark a global conversation with multiple world leaders figuring out what to do collectively? >> first of all, the u.n. is supposed to have a security council meeting this afternoon. we heard what vladimir putin saying if the ukrainian government had not been challenging russian authority had not been protesting and creating this problem in the first place it wouldn't be an issue. the white house very late last night issued a statement saying that without even knowing all of the facts, we have to look to russian and the fact that russia is arming and training these separatists and called again on

russia to agree to a cease-fire. they agreed on a cease-fire in normandy. who planes shot down and one monday and one wednesday night. a fighter jet shot down. two ukrainian military planes shot down. we have the purported evidence of the intercepts where you hear a prominent separatist talking to a russian major and indicating that they realized that it was a passenger plane and that they had screwed up. i'm not sure the world will really respond. we saw david cameron and angela merkel today. >> i know the black boxes, steve rattner, in the hands of the separatists right now. what would they tell us that we don't already know? this is not very kind of hard to figure out in the long run, is it? >> no. it's not hard to figure out and what we are trying to figure out

is where the missiles came from and not what the black box is going to tell us. what i hear andrea saying basically we shouldn't have a lot of hope what the u.n. is likely to do and the question really going back to where we started this show an hour and a half ago is whether angela merkel and other europeans will finally step up and use the economic influence they do have, which comes at a cost to them because they depend on ukraine and russia for a lot of their energy supplies so are they willing to make that sacrifice in order to get a better result here? >> to me the real question now is whether this incident changes the political domestic political context in europe and the governments which have been reluctant to act for all of the reasons you say are going to feel their hands forced because public opinion and give them more space. there could be a really, particularly amongst the dutch people, there could be serious anger over this against putin and russia and could change the politics here. >> heinous act.

gene, real quick. i think the question is what to do about putin. some reporting his back is against the wall and you can tell from his comments he is trying to get in front of this somehow. but vladimir putin has a way of making a fool of world leaders, does he not? >> he does. my question to andrea mitchell is angela merkel in some ways is the key person and she is the leader of europe but, in reality, in the real world, it's the president of the united states has a unique position and i think a unique voice. do you expect we are going to hear from the president and we are going to see the president taking lead in this situation? >> well, some people were surprised that the president gave only a very brief comment at an event already scheduled in wilmington, delaware and went on to two fund-raisers in new york last night. given the scale of this, they did have a telephone conference

call. secretary kerry cancelled a speech he was supposed to give on middle east policy and they had a national security conference call last evening. but the fact that it was almost business as usual was quite surprising. and it just seemed that the scale of what happened here required an immediate answer. this also in the context of the 5:30 or so eastern time ground invasion by israeli contrary to american interests as well. >> andrea mitchell, thank you very much. coming up, the attack on flight 17 comes as officials are still trying to uncover the mystery surrounding flight 370. is there a way the airline recovers from these two back-to-back incidents really? keep it right here on "morning joe." [ male announcer ] every day, your mouth is building up

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it's happened now two times in the span of just four months. yesterday's crash of malaysian airlines flight 17 came as investigators are still grasping for answers on the whereabouts of malaysian airlines flight 370. the whereabouts of that flight remains one of the biggest puzzles in aviation history. [ screaming ] >> we want to know what happened! >> reporter: it's one of the biggest aviation mysteries in history. the disappearance of malaysia airlines flight 370. to this day not a single piece

of wreckage has been found. with no airline and no bodies and no crash site to work with, investigators are still trying to zero in on the southern part of the indian ocean for more clues of what really happened. saturday, march 8th, malaysia 370 departs from kuala lumpur airport to set to arrive in beijing six hours late. a half hour after departure the plane sends its last electronic transmission to air traffic control. the system is later deactivated. 15 minutes later one of the pilot says, all right, good night to ground control. those were the last words spoken by anyone on flight 370. there was no indication that there was anything wrong at the time. moments before dropping off radar. the pilots were supposed to check with vietnamese air traffic control next and never

did. the indian ocean is the modern of the bermuda triangle. five navy planes with 14 crew members were lost between bermuda, puerto rico and miami. one flight instructor reported problems with his campus and many assumed the plane lost their bearings and ran out of fuel and crew members ejected into the ocean never to be found. with flight 370 still not found and now malaysian airlines flight 17 wreckage on the ground can the company survive back-to-back passenger strategies over four months? other airlines have faced adversity to differing results. us airways had numerous crashes. two ust our four airplanes hijacked in the attacks were american airlines. one deadly crash killed scores of passengers and later in the year another flight had to make an emergency landing due to a

jammed landing gear at the nose of the plane and one airline forever scarred by a crash was valuejet. in 1997 shortly after takeoff a fire broke out on flight 92 and within minutes the plane plummeted into the everglades and killing everybody on board. the airline never recovered. unbelievable. steve rattner, your thoughts. >> look. a couple of comments. you had examples where airlines twa, pan am being the most notable went out of bounds when this happened. twa the lockerbie crash and they were privately owned airlines. this is on owned 70% by the government so so much money the airline wants to keep this airline going. i guess the traffic will be down more after this but a question for the malaysian government do they want to put enough money in this thing to keep it going until they can reconstitute in

some fashion. up next a passenger flight is shot out of the sky and raise security questions about the americans at home and abroad. congressman peter king is standing by. we will be right back. you pay your auto insurance premium every month on the dot. you're like the poster child for paying on time. and then one day you tap the bumper of a station wagon. no big deal... until your insurance company jacks up your rates.

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because no matter your destination good maintenance helps you save at the pump. get our multi-point inspection with a synthetic blend oil change, tire rotation, brake inspection and more for $29.95 or less. get a complete vehicle checkup only at your ford dealer. it looks like it may be a terrible tragedy. right now, we are working to determine whether there were american citizens on board. our first priority and i direct my national security team to stay in close contact with the ukrainian government. the united states will offer any assistance we can to help determine what happened and why. and as a country, our thoughts and prayers are with all of the families of the passengers, wherever they call home. >> that was president obama speaking out about flight 17 yesterday.

apparently we are going to be hearing more from the president today on this. with us now we have a member of the house homeland security committee and subcommittee u.s. congressman from new york, peter king. joe, big questions, obviously, is surrounding security moving forward, given this was an act of terrorism. >> you know, the further we get away from an incident like 9/11 the more we think we are immune to incidents like 9/11 after peter king, after the soviet union fell. some declaring the end of history. no, history just got a lot messier. how safe are american air passengers? i know right after 9/11, a lot of us were concerned about -- about planes being shot out of the sky from people hiding at the end of runways. how safe are americans from not incidents just like this, but from being shot out of the sky? >> joe, safer than on 9/11.

act a practical matter it's almost impossible to equip civilian aircraft with anti-missile defenses. that is sort of the unwritten rule we have. the unwritten rule is that civilian airliners are supposed to be exempt from this. fa the israeli planes, i know are equipped against that. the cost of that would be phenomenal and very little instances of it. what we saw here was state terrorism or state orchestrated terrorism by the ukrainian and separatists. on the larger issue of airline security this could be a wake-up call to the europeans because just as far as basic everyday security on airlines, a number of european countries are not as concerned as america is and we often have to fight to get passenger manifest, to have them provide the scrutiny of passengers going on the flights because the further we get from 9/11, a number of countries,

including the europeans and certainly countries in the middle east, are not as determined as we are and, now, with all of these foreign fighters in syria who have european passports who can fly to the u.s., this may be a wake-up call to realize out vulnerable we still are. as far as protecting against missile attacks like this, to me russia has to bear the responsibility. we can't be arming and equipping every passenger flight in the world. it would be impossible. >> what is our next step towards russia and vladimir putin? >> i think we have to -- first of all, take this very seriously obviously. i would like to follow up on what andrea said before. i'm trying not to be partisan but we need more leadership from the president. he gave this as a passing speech in delaware and went on to tell jo biden jokes and take usually shots at republicans which is fair game but not on this day and then to new york for two fund-raisers. i can't imagine eisenhower or

president reagan doing that today. i think we should even consider the idea of even at least temporarily suspended landing rights for air flights in our airports and in europe. and other allies we have around the world. at least hold it as a threat against putin to realize this is not just an accident. this isn't just something that happened. he is at least is negligent on this. >> congressman king, this is gene robinson. >> yeah, gene? >> is there a cautionary lesson for this? people talking about giving heavy weapons to moderate rebels in syria and perhaps even anti-aircraft weapons. is this a cautionary lesson for us as we think about how to help people who share our values against people who don't share our values, but what might happen if weapons fall into the wrong hands? >> yeah, gene, that is something you always have to keep in mind. i don't think we have ever given any nonstate organization the type of weaponry that the

ukrainian separatists appear to have had here. as far as syria i've been a long time supporting us arming moderate elements among the syrian rebels. among the syrian rebels, but i tell you i think that time has passed. i think there's just so much infiltration by isis into these groups, and i agree with you on this. i think it would be too risky to give any type of heavy weaponry at all to these groups in syria. i think the time has passed for that. >> congressman peter king, thank you very much. still ahead we'll go live to the two places where emotions are understandably high this morning. amsterdam where the malaiysian flight originated and kuala lumpur where the flight was headed. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. [ female announcer ] we help make secure financial tomorrows a reality for over 19 million people. [ mom ] with life insurance, we're not just insuring our lives... we're helping protect his. [ female announcer ] everyone has a moment when tomorrow becomes real. transamerica.

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with us now from amsterdam, the origin point of malaysia flight 17 is nbc news's chuck henry. chuck, obviously a great shock to the netherlands. what's the reaction in amsterdam today? >> reporter: well, obviously it is one of grief. this is where the families of those killed have been gathering to mourn. in fact they have been doing so. i'm outside terminal 3, the check-in counter for malaysian airlines is just to my right up there but behind me is a hotel where they now are. a couple of new things since we last spoke. we now learned that many of those relatives want to go to

the crash site in ukraine. apparently malaysian airlines has responded by saying they will make a charter plane available to take them to ukraine. however, the ukrainian government says, no, it's not time to bring them in yet. this is just -- this is the newspaper here. i don't know if you can see it. the headline is "in shock." this is the newspaper in the netherlands. do you have another one there? yeah, let me see this one. this is the death toll. so you can see that. this is how they're reacting to it here. now, we've also learned that the 20 -- but the 20 people that are unaccounted for, the reason for that, according to the airline, these individuals were in transit. so apparently for some reason it becomes more difficult to identify their nationality. i'm not quite sure why that is. they could have been coming from north america here and then moving on.

we also understand about 60 individuals from malaysian airlines and the government of malaysia are going to moscow to somehow assist in the investigation as well. so that's pretty much the situation here. oh, there is one other thing. we mentioned earlier there was no outward sign of the tragedy that had occurred here. since we last spoke, within the last hour, flowers, people are bringing flowers now and putting them outside where the check-in counter is for malaysian airlines. not very many, but they're starting to arrive. >> all right, chuck henry, thank you so much. stay with us, we have much more on this developing story and the breaking news out of israel as well. back live in just a moment. at every ford dealership, you'll find the works! it's a complete checkup of the services your vehicle needs. so prepare your car for any road trip by taking it to an expert ford technician. because no matter your destination good maintenance helps you save at the pump.

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the plane has crashed somewhere near the ukraine-russia border. >> this is malaysia flight 17, 1-7, amsterdam to kuala lumpur. >> officials here at the pentagon are scrambling to figure out just what happened here. >> i was inside my house when i heard these two explosions. i ran out and saw black smoke everywhere. >> i want to be sure of what i say. apparently have been shot down. shot down, not an accident. blown out of the sky. >> both ukrainians and the russians have the same kind of buk surface-to-air missiles that are capable of bringing down an airliner. >> there are many questions that need to be answered, and we'll

get those answers and we will take the next steps accordingly. >> the attack on malaysian airlines flight 17. who was responsible for shooting down a passenger plane cold out of the sky, killing nearly 300 people? with citizens from nine countries on board, this is now an international crisis with much at stake. u.s. officials believe it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile but are still trying to determine if it was fired from the ukrainian or russian side of the border. ukraine's president is calling it a terrorist act and demanding an international investigation. he says pro-russian rebels are responsible, but the separatists have denied responsibility. malaysian airlines flight 17 took off around noon from amsterdam to kuala lumpur. the boeing 777 went down about 25 miles from the russian border. black smoke could be seen instantly after witnesses reported loud explosions in the

sky. debris was visible for a span of nine miles. airline officials say they were told the route was safe before takeoff. we've got a map showing all of the international flights that are now avoiding the airspace over ukraine following the plane crash. pro-russian rebels are allowing crews into the area to help with recovery efforts and the rebels claim they have recovered most of the plane's black boxes. unclear what they can produce in terms of information at this point. president obama and russian president vladimir putin spoke earlier in the day about new sanctions issued the day before, and officials say it was putin who notified president obama at the end of their call that the plane had crashed. putin expressed condolences to the victims' families in a statement, but then slammed ukraine, blaming ukraine, saying in part i want to note that this tragedy would not have happened if there were peace in this land. if the military actions had not been renewed in southeast ukraine. and certainly the state over whose territory this occurred

bears responsibility for this awful tragedy. white house officials say president obama is in touch with his national security team and the united nations security council is scheduled to hold an emergency meeting at 10:00 a.m. we'll hear more from the president soon today as well. welcome back to "morning joe." joining the table along with me and joe we have "new york times" columnist and pulitzer prize-winner, nicholas kristof. in seattle, retired four star army general barry mccaffrey joins us as well. joe, we're looking at so many different questions, but this will be given the evidence that we have and the type of weapon used, probably will be able to determine where this happened, where it came from and exactly who did it. >> we certainly will. and of course i think most experts have concluded that regardless of whether it came from the pro-russian separatists or from russia itself, it's bad news for vladimir putin, this

breaking over the wires right now, mika. vladimir putin has called for a cease-fire from both sides. we'll see how that happens. let's go to seattle right now and talk to general mccaffrey. general, a lot of shock yesterday and dismay over what happened. you're surprised, though, and some of the comments i heard coming from you was that the pilot was over this war zone in the first place. expand your thoughts there. >> well, you know, you look back on the last couple of months, there's been more than a dozen aircraft shot down. this was an active air defense combat zone. there were two aircraft down the last couple of days. so it's still surprising to me given the nature of the weaponry that was in the region, this sa-17, that thing will get up to well in excess of 50,000 feet. so it's surprising -- as i understand it, australia's quantus airlines diverted their flights 400 miles to the south

of it. you'd think sheer caution would lead commercial aviation to back off the region. >> so what is your best -- your best guess based on all your years of experience of what the people on the ground who fired this missile were thinking? >> well, it seems to me these anti-aircraft systems, guided missile systems work pretty well under part of a larger setup, part of an anti-aircraft b brigade. in this case you have a self-propelled armored vehicle with a missile on it, and they can acquire their own targets and fire. and i think probably you've got an incompetent group with missiles shooting from inside the ukraine area. by the way, normally i.r. satellite systems get the launch of a missile almost immediately.

normally we see the trajectory and see the launch point. in addition, we can see through elint radar intercepts fairly clearly, so at some point we're going to definitely be able to pin down where it was fired from. also the national security agency, i assume, we've been focused on the region a long time, probably has exhaustive sweeps of the radio traffic. so there's no hiding this thing. at some point we're going to be able to demonstrate pretty reliably what happened. >> so you have, nick kristof, vladimir putin blaming ukraine. give me the perspective of the ukrainian people as this unfolds, given all that has happened in their country of late. >> well, they obviously blame putin for creating the mess in the first place and they're fundamentally right. i think the evidence overwhelmingly points to separatists, but in any case, it is putin who created that

separatist movement. this was something that he and russia conceived of, financed, armed, supported every step of the way. so it seems to me completely implausible to blame anybody -- >> i would think -- hold on, joe, sorry. i think if the world community doesn't come to ukraine's defense at this point -- >> i think this may end up being helpful for ukraine. i think there is going to be international outrage, it is going to force putin to back off a little bit and give a little bit more space to ukraine to try to resolve this. there may be also a humanitarian corridor to deal with this. the cease-fire can perhaps be expanded to a broader peace but it's coming at a terrible, terrible price. also if you look at putin's statement, he is not denying that separatists shot the plane down. it seemed a very defensive statement that sort of acknowledged that he was blaming them. >> definitely. joe? >> yeah, he has been defensive

from the very beginning. i suspect things are only going to get worse pr-wise for vladimir putin in the coming days. steve rattner, as we look at the list of the nationalities of those poor, innocent victims of the malaysian flight yesterday, the question i keep having, i had it yesterday afternoon, i had it last night, i have it this morning, why do we still not know if there were americans on the flight or not? it's not that hard to look at the list of people that were on those flights and figure out what their nationalities are based on their passports. why do we still not know whether there were americans on that flight or not? >> i'm not sure we even know why we don't know. but the fact is and i think the point was made earlier in the show, the europeans simply and the asians certainly simply don't operate to the same standard of scrutiny, security, precision, that we operate to in terms of our passenger manifest and in terms of our security of the planes, in terms of what we view as the tsa's

responsibilities. and so it just takes them more time to sift through their records. in addition, my understanding is a lot of these passengers were in transit which for some reason that i understand affects how much they know about exactly who was on that plane. it just goes to the fact that it's not a tight operation over there when it comes to things like passenger manifests. >> you know, also earlier reports indicating up to 80 children on the plane, a lot of them in their parents' laps, little children. i don't know how this could be worse but that makes it worse. i want to bring into the conversation faa licensed commercial pilot anthony roman. anthony, thank you for coming in. what are your thoughts piecing together what we do know about this plane that was shot down? >> well, i think as important as it is to know who is responsible for this terrible tragedy, it is more important to realize that security for commercial airlines

and civil transport is nowhere near where we need to be. your earlier guest, congressman king, was absolutely correct in saying we are safer after 9/11 than we were before. but we are nowhere near as safe as we need to be. airport perimeter security, airport security procedures, airline procedures require a complete revamping. airline routes, why are we still flying near sensitive airspace, disputed airspace. rebel activity and active war zones. it's remarkable. i don't know of any airline pilot who is comfortable with these routes. so there's a lot of work that still needs to be done. >> gene. >> i'm just wondering, could you even speculate how the pilot ended up flying over a war zone? why was that not automatically

off limits, as apparently it was made off limits for other airlines? >> well, it should have been off limits. in april, as early as april of this year, the european aviation authority issued warnings to its member states to avoid the eastern ukraine, crimea area. that wasn't followed by malaysian airlines. in may of this year the faa issued similar warnings and since this tragedy is prohibiting american air carriers from flying over this war zone. >> steve, real quick. >> certainly that's all accurate but let's make the point that even the u.s. did not actually ban flights over this area. the only part of this area that we banned flights over was crimea because the russians and ukrainians were fighting over who was in control of air traffic control. so we're a little late to this party too. we can't just blame malaysian

air and say they didn't have the right procedures. we want to take a closer look at the pro-russian rebels who the ukrainian government claims are responsible for shooting down the plane. last night the self-proclaimed leader of the group made a personal appearance at the crash site. that's him. we have a photo that we want to show you surrounded by his security guards. they arrived -- that's him in the middle there -- to survey the crash site overnight. the pro-russian separatists have denied being responsible for shooting down the plane but there is evidence that calls those claims into question. the rebel did claim responsibility for shooting down two ukrainian military planes earlier in the week and ukrai ukrainian officials released a series of phone calls between a rebel commander and fighters that they allege show the group is responsible for shooting down malaysian airlines flight 17. [ speaking foreign language ]

>> a commander also posted on the russian version of facebook that the rebels shot down a plane and adding, quote, we did warn you, do not fly in our sky. the rebels, however, say the released phone calls are not legitimate. joining us now from moscow, nbc news correspondent jim maceda. jim, i'll just throw the first question to you and you can take it from there. vladimir putin has been urging for negotiations on both sides. i guess i'd love for you to envision what that would look like and what exactly planet is he on? >> reporter: i'm sorry, one more time. >> what planet is he on given

the fact that he is in some way at least very, very connected to what happened here? >> reporter: right. well, i think you're seeing vintage vladimir putin, what got him to the point where he's at right now. he's been in sticky situations not quite like this one before, and he's always managed to survive because he's always stuck to his main strategy, which has been to project for his people here, 80% of these people love him because he projects strength, he projects someone who is a peacemaker. that's what all the rhetoric is about. surrounded by war mongers that he can't control unless he's got complete support of his people. all that happening at the same time as he behind the scenes is using proxies to destabilize a country he's very interested in controlling. this time ukraine. he does that simultaneously.

as i've said in my reporting for months now, you never know which vladimir putin is coming to the table, because there really are two of them. vladimir putin the peacemaker and vladimir putin the war maker. if i could make a quick point, mika, it's easy to get lost in the who done it aspect of what is now being described as a mass murder, but we can't forget that we're talking about 300 individuals who lost their lives. this could turn out to be one of the most terrible cases of mistaken identification of an aircraft ever. just as a reminder, here today in moscow, we saw mourners in large numbers in the streets. they were laying flowers outside the malaysian and dutch embassies. almost 200 victims, remember, were dutch or malaysian. still unclear if any americans were onboard but we're hearing also, and this is very important, that there were at least 100 top hiv researchers on

that plane. they were heading for a conference in australia and the loss, we understand, has shaken the profession. back to you. >> so, nick kristof i'll let you take it to jim, but something interesting, we were talking about ukrainian separatists perhaps being responsible, isn't the better term kremlin surrogates? how should we be characterizing this? >> i sure think they're kremlin surrogates. these were people created and supported every step of the way. that conflict exists because of the kremlin. >> right. >> jim, one question. you know, the -- it's been because of the ukrainian crisis that putin has been able to ride this incredible wave of 80% popularity ratings. and i wonder if the shootdown of this plane is going to affect his domestic political situation in ways that perhaps will put more pressure on him?

>> reporter: nick, i think the only way that's going to happen is if people feel the pinch. the 70% or 80%, as you know so well, of russians who support everything he does and everything he says will continue doing that until the price of oil drops significantly, until inflation goes high, until there's a threat to these people's livelihoods, and then there could be a very, very quick change. unfortunately so far we're in the third stage now, the third wave of sanctions and they only seem to be making vladimir putin angrier and more vitriolic when it comes to u.s. foreign policy. it just hasn't hurt enough people yet. now, that could happen over time, but so far with the price of oil at $110 a barrel, there's just no reason for the budget to

shrink or people's confidence to shrink in their leader. >> jim maceda, thank you. steve rattner, you have a question for general mccaffrey. >> yeah, general, as we were listening to that tape of the rebel commander explaining what happened or what didn't happen, whatever, i was struck by the possibility that they did not even know that they had shot down a civilian plane or weren't even trying to shoot down a civilian plane. it almost sounded like they thought they had shot down another ukrainian plane, which as we know they had already shot down two during the week. i wonder if you had that same impression. not that it would change much of the facts but at least we know the motives and what was going on. >> i don't think there was any question no one in his right mind thought they would politically or militarily benefit from downing an airliner like this. so they had a target acquisition. they had no idea it was a level flight prerecorded transponder for a commercial plane. there's no reason they wouldn't have known it was a commercial flight if they were part of an

organized competent air defense organization. that argues again for the separatists. something else, steve, if i may add, the soviets for throughout their military history always plan every operation with a deception operation. they call it maskarova. it's interesting to me watching this fella putin who's so ham fisted with these operations that are so transparent in the modern era, where people have iphones, can take pictures, where commercial satellites can look at the ground. but the russians, and putin in particular as an old kgb guy, this whole thing is a massive deception operation. he provided sophisticated air defense weapons to separatists in eastern ukraine and almost undoubtedly that's what's happened, they have downed a commercial airliner and now they're scrambling to cover it up. >> exactly. >> isn't it also possible that the separatists didn't get this

sa-11 system from russia -- >> kremlin surrogates. >> but rather obtained it from the ukrainian military itself. that this was originally a ukrainian system that they then took over. >> oh, yeah, that's a valid comment. the ukrainian national government also has these weapons also, so those are the kind of things that ought to be pinned down and i'm sure they will be in the coming weeks. >> general mccaffrey, thank you so much. nick kristof, stay with us if you can. a man who may know more about the region than anyone else, david ignatius will weigh in on the downing of malaysian airlines flight 17 as well as the breaking news out of gaza. and it's the second time in four months that loved ones are grieving after a tragedy on a malaysian airlines flight. we'll go live to kuala lumpur where flight 17 was heading. we'll be right back.

all right, let's go to nbc news correspondent miguel almaguer who's in kuala lumpur. there's going to be a little bit of a delay as we toss to you but that's where the intended destination of flight 17 was. miguel? >> reporter: mika, good morning. government officials just wrapped up a press conference a short time ago, but little new information came out. this is, though, the gathering point where folks have come to learn more about the 295 souls who were aboard that plane. men, women and children who were coming from all over the world. one by one, family members arrived at the kuala lumpur international airport. they came here looking for answers, but instead inside this

terminal only heart break and overwhelming grief. the arrivals board still showed flight mh-17. perhaps the only comfort for these families now is each other. >> i'd like to offer my sympathies and condolences to the families of those who lost their lives. our heart go out to those who have been affected by this tragedy. >> reporter: family members expecting a loved one on the malaysian airlines flight were escorted into a private room. >> pray for them. >> reporter: the scene at this airport today, an eerie reminder of what happened here just four months ago. this is where families gathered after malaysia airlines flight 370 went missing over the indian ocean. danica weeks' husband, paul, was one of the 239 aboard. >> it's just shocking and i can't believe they lost another

plane. we need to know why and i hope malaysia is more forth coming with the families than they have been with us. >> reporter: today the malaysian prime minister wasted for time speaking out, appearing on television before dawn. >> this is a tragic day in what has already been a tragic sear for malaysia. the flights passengers and crew came from many different countries, but today, regardless of nationality, we are all united in grief. >> reporter: grief etched on the faces of so many here in kuala lumpur yet again. this morning we have learned one woman who lost her brother on malaysian airlines in march lost her stepdaughter just yesterday. mika. >> that's unbelievable. miguel almaguer, thank you very much. unthinkable to lose someone on

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there does seem to be some growing awareness that it probably had to be russian insurgents. now, how we determine that will

require some forensics, but then if there is evidence pointing in that direction, the equipment had to have come from russia. >> all right. welcome back to "morning joe." joining us now columnist and associate editor for "the washington post," david ignatius. david, as we follow this breaking news on the malaysian plane that went down in ukraine, you've been looking at the past in terms of consequences of planes that were shot down. there have been kind of interesting things, results that you've found. you've dug into that. tell us about it. >> mika, in the minutes after we first got news yesterday afternoon about this apparent shootdown of the malaysian jet, i found myself looking back in history at two similar incidents where passenger jets were downed by military fire, and there are very interesting consequences. the first was at the height of the cold war in july, 1983. a korean airlines flight 007 was

flying over a military testing area of the old soviet union. it was tracked by soviet jets and shot down. the cockpit conversation later captured is quite chilling. target destroyed says one of the pilots. it led to a period of intense anger in america and i think introspection in moscow about how this could have happened. as we know, the pathway from 1983 to the late '80s was one of ever-increasing deescalation, relaxation of tensions. it's possible that this disaster began the process. a second really remarkable incidence is in 1988 when the u.s. navy, a u.s. navy guided missile destroyer stationed in the persian gulf accidentally shot down an iranian passenger airliner over the gulf, thinking that it was an iranian military aircraft. all of the civilians on board that plane were killed. it was a terrible, terrible

tragedy but it led ayatolli toa step back from the war and decide he was ready for peace. what i've been looking for in this crisis is any evidence that russian president vladimir putin looking at this nightmare that's happened is prepared to step back from the brink. his first statement yesterday was truculant. this is basically their fault, it's a war zone. today's statement calling for cease-fire, expresses a bit more remorse. a bit more of the sense of the horror of what's happened. you will hope that he will see that this process that he was involved in of supplying arms to the rebels, an ever more intense battle, had led to this hideous situation, the deaths of so many innocent people, and maybe he's gotten a slightly new perspective on it. one can only hope so. >> richard, i think this is really the next conversation. >> i see two conversations. >> yeah. >> one conversation with the

europeans about putting pressure on russia. the other is exactly what david is talking about. i actually if i were working in the administration, i would send an envoy very quietly to talk to mr. putin and to basically have a conversation not just about ukraine but about the future of u.s./russian relations and there could be an opportunity here to begin a process of, if you will, a post-crimea, post-ukraine relationship with russia. it would require russia agreeing to certain limits on what it does in ukraine. almost like the cuban missile crisis, when we quietly take out the jupiter missiles from turkey, we might need to quietly or not so quietly give russia some fig leaf in order to give putin an excuse to walk back from ukraine, but we ought to quietly explore this. sometimes tragedy has with it opportunity. this ought to be one of those moments. >> it is a pivotal moment. there's no other way to look at it. we want to get to the other big story of the day. ten days of air attacks -- after

ten days of air attacks, israel has now launched a full-on ground assault on gaza. last night the operation known as protective edge began as israeli troops and tanks rolled into the northern areas of the gaza strip while naval ships hit targets in the territory's southern regions. the attack began around 10:00 p.m. local time with the focus on destroying tunnels used by hamas to enter israel. a spokesman for the israeli military said their goal was to pursue, paralyze and threaten hamas militants. at least 11 palestinians have been killed and at least 240 individuals have been killed since the air strikes began last week. that includes the deaths of 25 women and 40 children. a hamas spokesman says israel will, quote, pay a high price for its ground invasion but that is not deterring the israeli government. the military is calling up an additional 18,000 reservists for

the operation. that's in addition to the 50,000 already drafted to fight. this is the first time since 2009 that israeli troops have entered hamas-controlled territory. david ignatius, i'll throw it back to you. it's hard to determine what a pivotal moment is in this conflict, which is just never-ending. having said that, what are your thoughts and insights as to how this proceeds? >> i think you raise precisely the question that's troubling israeli commanders and political leaders, which is what is our strategic objective in this latest war in gaza. what is it that we're trying to accomplish? the previous operations have gone in and taken down the hamas military infrastructure, cleaned out to some extent the missile caches that they have and two or three years later the israelis come back. the discussion i've been hearing from israelis is, is there some

pathway that israel can take that will lead to a change of administration in gaza. hamas is now very unpopular. it has brought nothing but ruin to the people of gaza. hamas no longer has allies anywhere. syria is gone as an ally. the egyptian government and mohamed morsi, the muslim brotherhood government gone. so they really are isolated. if ever there was a moment to think how do we end up with a different status quo after this military operation that is less threatening to israel and, frankly, less threatening to palestinians, this is it. in my conversation with israelis i just don't hear much clarity. >> nick kristof, how do you get there? >> david, i think you've been covering the region back to the 1982 invasion of lebanon. i mean we've seen this movie before, haven't we? between the '82 invasion, between the 2006 invasion and the 2008 led in gaza, it begins

with a great deal of popularity at home, a sense of we have to do something and it ends in tears or ends without even any results except a lot of dead palestinians or dead lebanese. >> i think nick has summed up the tragic aspect of this for both israelis and arabs. the thing that the israelis have discovered in each of these operations is that no matter how little people have left, you know, their homes can be pounded, their basic daily lives can be miserable. if they think that they're holding on to their dignity in a struggle, they tend to persist. and so somehow i think the transfer in gaza, if you were to envision it, needs to be a political transfer. hamas has not performed for palestinians, they see that. so is there some process that could get under way with sponsorship internationally, maybe with some help from the u.s., that would lead to a

change of government in gaza. >> so richard haass, how does the israelis and perhaps in concert with others change the political calculus in gaza for palestinians? >> it's ironic that hamas got voted into power. i think they should get voted out of power. if i were advising the israeli government, i would say put out a big political initiative about the future of gaza, maybe the future of the west bank at the same time. put it out there and challenge hamas to let the people of gaza vote freely and fairly. get international observers there. my hunch, as david said, is hamas would lose. they are wildly unpopular. the people of gaza are paying an enormous price for what? for the greater glory of hamas so it can show it's a resistance organization? but resistance towards what end? they can't deliver. if the israelis put forward a serious political initiative that shows you can get more through diplomacy than you can through arm resistance, i think hamas essentially is

marginalized. it's something also for fatah to run with. this is a political opening. they set the stage with what they're doing militarily, they can't achieve it solely through military force. they need the political complement to their strategy. the question is whether netanyahu can and will introduce it. >> richard haass, thank you so much. david ignatius, thank you as well. coming up, the downing of malaysian airlines flight 17 causes a big sell-off on wall street. will the markets be able to rebound today? business before the bell is next. i make a lot of purchases for my business.

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first on the news during the 11:00 hour of the plane being down and then later, just exacerbated by the fact that we learned of the ground invasion in gaza. what we saw on wall street, the s&p 500 stock market had its worst sell-off in three months. the dow dropped 160 points. that was the worst performance in about two months. and importantly a key measure of volatility, which here on the street we call the fear index, spiked 30%. the biggest spike in several years. and it's especially notable, given the fact that this year has been very strong for the markets. it was record after record after record. so these kind of shocks from geopolitical tensions really have the potential to knock this market down. the question going forward today and what traders are going to be thinking about is, is it really enough to hurt the global economy and are the certainties large enough it could actually start to hurt corporate america and corporate earnings which are also very much in focus today. the other thing we're going to

be watching of course is oil because the price of oil yesterday did surge 2%. went back above $100 a barrel. it's about $103 here in the united states. it had its biggest one-day jump since back on june 11th and that was when the uprising in iraq was occurring, so that of course could be a huge concern when it comes to the impact on the economy, higher oil prices. but so far it does look calmer here today on wall street. obviously plenty of uncertainties there and we'll be following the news. >> all right, rattner. >> this is a movie we've seen before. any time you have something like this happen around the world the market gets scared and for all the right reasons sara said. but history would tell you absent some escalation of this conflict, the market will return to some normalcy, oil prices will recede, the market will discount this as not being the biggest factor in its future. >> unless something else happens. >> absolutely. >> cnbc's sara eisen, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> have a good weekend. >> you too.

up next, plenty of details are already emerging about what happened to malaysian airlines flight 17 but we still do not know what happened to malaysian airlines flight 370. we'll look back at that flight and other mysteries in the air. we'll be right back.

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it's happened now two times in the span of just four months. yesterday's crash of malaysian airlines flight 17 came as investigators were still searching for answers and what

exactly happened to malaysian airlines flight 370. the whereabouts of that flight remains unsolved. [ speaking foreign language ] >> we want to know what happened. >> it's one of the biggest aviation mysteries in history, the disappearance of malaysian airlines flight 370. to this day not a single piece of wreckage has been found. with no airplane, no bodies and no crash site to work with, investigators are still trying to zero in on the southern part of the indian ocean for more clues of what really happened. saturday, march 8th, malaysia 370 departs from kuala lumpur international airport set to arrive in beijing six hours later. there were 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board. a half hour after departure, the plane sends its last electronic transmission to air traffic control. the system is later deactivated. 15 minutes later, one of the

pilots says, "all right, good night" to ground control. those were the last words spoken by anyone on flight 370. there was no indication that there was anything wrong at the time. moments before dropping off radar. the pilots were supposed to check with vietnamese air traffic control next. they never did. for that star-crossed malaysian airlines flight the indian ocean has become the modern day version of the infamous bermuda triangle. the legend there began in 1945 when five navy planes with 14 crew members were lost between bermuda, puerto rico and miami. one flight instructor reported problems with his compass and many assumed the planes lost their bearings, ran out of fuel and the crew members ejected into the ocean, never to be found. with flight 370 still not found and now malaysian airlines flight 17's wreckage on the ground, can the company survive back-to-back catastrophic passenger tragedies over just four months? other airlines have faced

adversity to differing results. in the 1990s, u.s. airways had a number of mechanical issues and numerous crashes. two out of the four airplanes hijacked in the 9/11 attacks were american airlines. in 2011 iran air had one deadly crash that killed scores of passengers, and later in the year another flight had to make an emergency landing due to a jammed landing gear at the nose of the plane. and one airline forever scarred by a crash was valujet. in 1996 shortly after takeoff, a fire broke out onboard valujet flight 592. within minutes the plane plummeted into the everglades killing all 105 passengers and 5 crew members onboard. the airline never recovered. but as you pointed out, steve rattner, malaysia airlines is owned in part by the government. >> yes. >> so it has a good possibility of surviving. >> yeah, as long as the government wants to put money in, it can certainly survive and

perhaps even recover from this. >> what do you think is left out? what is like a haunting question to you looking at this now or does it all make perfect sense in terms of what happened. >> what happened in this most recent? >> yes. >> look, i think the biggest question is who did it and where did they do it from and what role did the russians have in training and equipping them, because i think that will animate a lot of the responses that we make as the west, whether it's europe or the u.s. once we know what actually happened, i think then we know who to hold responsible and how to do it. >> and nick kristof, do you see a transformation in tone or choice of words on the part of vladimir putin as he watches this unravel before his eyes as well? >> well, it's encouraging that today he's a little less irresponsible than he was yesterday. i mean i think maybe there is some hope that he will now be forced to back off a little, the politics of embarrassment will be more effective than sanctions were. >> and eugene robinson, the world community and how the

united states moves forward dealing with russia. richard haass said tragedy can be opportunity. >> exactly. i'll be waiting to hear today not just what we hear from european leaders but what we hear from the president of the united states, because this could be a pivotal moment in u.s./russia relations. coming up, key moments in the days ahead as new details continue to emerge in the crash of malaysia flight 17. we'll be right back. my motheit's delicious. toffee in the world. so now we've turned her toffee into a business.

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as we look ahead to continuing coverage throughout the day here on msnbc, a quick look at what we know is going to happen. the u.n. security council is set to hold an emergency meeting on the tragedy in ukraine at 10:00 a.m. this morning. this afternoon at 1:00 white house press secretary josh earnest is expected to give the daily briefing. clearly he'll be talking about that as well. it's unclear if president obama will keep his plans to leave for camp david later today but i do know we'll be hearing from him. eugene robinson, from everything that we've learned today so far what can we expect from the president as he navigates forward, especially pertaining to our relationship with russia? >> you know, i'm not sure. that's why i await it so eagerly because he could go one of a number of different ways but he could see this as an opportunity to use the cliche to hit that reset button.

to alter our relationship with putin if that's possible or at least make that sort of attempt. and we'll see what happens. >> and there's a couple of things going on, nick kristof, and the president just for the record has had briefing calls after briefing calls with the national security adviser, with the national security staff, with secretary kerry talking about gaza where he's operating on two fronts here carefully. >> yeah, i mean absolutely. and i think here he has a chance to use new intelligence, which i'm sure the united states has accumulated on who launched that missile and put pressure on europeans to put pressure in turn on putin. >> but i think he's also going to be spending a lot of his day finding out where the europeans are. what he ultimately says we don't know is going to depend on what kind of support he has from the europeans and what they're willing to do and not willing to do. >> that does it for us on "morning joe." our coverage continues after a short break with chuck todd right here on msnbc.

no break here. hundreds of civilians dead as a passenger jet is shot out of the sky over eastern ukraine. can a real crash site investigation happen in the middle of a war zone? president obama first learned about the crash during a phone call with none other than vladimir putin, but there's still big questions about who fired the missile. also this morning, a ground invasion in gaza by israeli forces. the first time it's happened in years and israel's prime minister declares that the operation could end up expanding significantly. good morning from washington. it's friday, july 18th, 2014. this is "the daily rundown." bizz busy morning obviously. we begin with the crash of malaysian airliner 17. it was shot down killing all 298 people on board. two big things going on today. the first focus is on getting into the crash site and second will