Unfortunately we all put value on human life. We say we don't but some people matter more to us than others. You happen not to find the AIDS researchers worth more than another random person. But given a circumstance where one of your loved ones is killed, you will supply more value to their life than say an AIDS researcher. I think the thing Obama is doing here (and no i am not an Obama supporter) is trying to humanize the situation. If you give a back story to the victims it makes the event more personal; honestly it is a well played political move now he can bend america to do whatever he wants against Russia.
example; what brings out more emotion:
"298 people were killed yesterday in a plane crash in Ukraine" or
"298 people were killed yesterday, including several AIDs researchers among children and families embarking on vacation, when their plane was shot down over Ukraine"

Do you think there would be as much news coverage in the US if the entire flight was filled with Muslims returning to Indonesia? Having Americans die makes it more it could have been us on the plane.

What Obama is doing here is utilizing "AIDS Researcher" as a political tool. It's repulsive. It matters not the profession of the passengers - we should be outrages whether it was a plane load of AIDS researchers, or a plane load of pig farmers.

Well I don't think Obama thinks that, but it is a good way to give the worst possible image of Russia and motivate European nation to actually act against Russia to stop our 21rst century Hitler from continuing his conquest. I don't understand how this obvious dictator that Putin is can do so much without any military reaction against him... Do we not learn from our past mistakes of letting Hitler do anything he wanted just because we did not want to upset him or start a war this soon after WW1?

I'd rather hear Obama and other nations distort reality to stop him rather than hear them say "Oh my god this is the 21st century a country should not expand his territory by force" but then keep selling him weapons and keep buying his gas... First Georgia, no reactions, now Ukraine, no reactions...

Malaysian flgith for a couple weeks, and couldn’t tell you who was on that flight. So Obama’s special attention to “The AIDS Researchers” has a political motive.

sorry -- we heard about the prio Malaysian flight fora couple weeks.

"but it is a good way to give the worst possible image "

And there you go...."worst possible image"....because "AIDS Researcher" > "pig farmer" in the average sheeple's eyes....

@Braillard I agree
@Krellin - I agree it is repulsive but unfortunately it's a time tested way of rallying an issue. Every tragedy needs a poster child.

It matters not...Obama is a weak coward. The plane could have held Democrat top leadership and, while Obama may have expressed more vocal outrage, the null response would be the same in the long run. Everyone knows this…which is why the plane was shot down to begin with.

@Krellin- If there were no AIDs researchers then Obama would have went down the line selecting people he thought would evoke more emotion until the bottom rung. It actually surprises me; normally people focus on children in these situations, because children are "innocent" so it makes for a better poster child.

Putin has his finger on the launch button to nuclear war. Hitler didn't have that kind of destructive power. While I'm no fan of Obama, I can honestly say that you can't expect the US or the rest of the world to respond to Putin as we responded to Hitler. Putin has the ability to do a hell of a lot more damage in minutes than the entire German army did in the entirety of WWII.

@Krellin- I agree Obama's foreign policy is lack luster. I do think if he took advice from his military advisers and pursued the same acts he does now with military backing he would be far more effective.

@Draugnar - I feel mutually assured destruction still applies here. With the added fact that the United States has built and proven to have capabilities to detonate enemy ICBMs in mid flight. So if anything here Russia is on lower ground. I do agree with the caution but caution is different then appeasement.

Fuck Obama. Fuck Russia. Fuck AIDS. Fuck it all.

Actually, fucking AIDS might not be the best idea. Might be side effects.

AIDS researcher > scum sucking Engineer head hunter that adds nothing to society.

I'm ok with it

krellin, I think you are too clever to understand how most people work. Masses have to be influenced in order to win, and their is no just or moral way of doing this.. During WW2, the US army made a lot of this kind of manipulation of the truth to be able to keep up the war effort...

Draugnar I agree Putin has a powerful weapon but I don't believe he is mad, he would never use it because that would mean the destruction of the planet.. that is actually my point, we do not learn from the past. He is now going to use two major history facts to his advantage : Restart a cold war, that all western powers fear because we have been taught to do so and test the reaction of countries that could stop his plans.

I read that if it wasn't for Hitler's stupidity, Germany could have won the war by starting it a few years later as most of the generals wanted... because they would have built a better army without anyone reacting.

The similarities really strike me : Russia is a country that is on the "looser" side of the cold war and has been slowly but surely rebuilding his power and has been letting a single man drive the whole country for years.
the way Russia treats artists and opponents is very disturbing !

Fine. What if they were cancer researchers?

In the end, no matter their age, occupation, social status in this world, when you boil it down they were all people like you and me. They left behind friends and family members whose grief I cannot even begin to understand. It's wrong to overlook this fact and define and rank the victims, categorizing the loss of any one of them as greater than the loss of any other.

I'm not ok with it. Unfortunately, playing on words to make people feel a certain way is what politicians do. And Obama is a politician. But that being said, to my knowledge, nobody here on this site is a politician. So I don't know why we're arguing about this.

Commander…it isn’t about the AIDS researchers…it’s about AIDS…Liberal code word for “Homosexual”….it’s an LGTB outreach to get teary-eyed about dead AIDS researchers. Gotta read the politics behind the statement. Keep in mind…PUTIN HATES THE GAYS…

Draug - not looking for a fight with Russia by any means. Back in the good old cold war days, we had all sorts of glorious proxy wars to fight to prove our mettle and our technology...just sayin'...

I thought Obama was smart to not sabre-rattle in his speech, and has clearly instead left that up to his United Nations and Pentagon people...the political fallout is far less if THEY talk that tough, tough talk that SHOULD be directed towards Russia (and we don't know what we said to Putin one on one in that phone call) but I like the seeming decision for Obama to project calm and leave the aggressive tone to those other parties.

krellin, you yourself would have to admit--Obama is NOT very good at sounding like the tough guy...talking to a chair or no, Clint Eastwood he ain't! ;) Obama's always been far better, as a communicator, at being a light-hearted "nice guy" or being a sort of calm speaker...he's not like Teddy Roosevelt or Dwight Eistenhower, people that could sound a lot firmer, or heck, even Richard Nixon, who could pull off the sabre-rattling.

So I like his seeming decision (politically motivated though it undoubtedly was) to project calmness and leave the more aggressive tones to the people who frankly do it better. Better he play to his strengths and not embarrass himself--and us--by trying to sound like something and someone he isn't, rather than have him pull off a phony "tough guy" act and have Putin call him on it...THAT would cost us a lot of momentum in this case.

"Back in the good old cold war days"--

SAID NO SANE PERSON EVER... LOL

Obi - like it or not, the cold war were prosperous times, much of it, and viscious proxy wars kept the world from a far deadlier fate.

I'm not arguing that at all, I'm saying no sane person would refer to them as "the good old days," for just that reason.

And we weren't so prosperous in the 1970s with a stagnant economy, oil shortages and Vietnam, to say nothing of Watergate.

Eh I can see his point. The knowledge these experts had could easily have been the breakthrough into curing an incurable disease which causes many fatalities every year. So while the individual experts lives are equal to any other life, the knowledge lost could easily be worth more lives then everyone who's died in a plane crash in the last 10 years. Who knows though, there's no way to know for sure, maybe their deaths will inspire one of their living colleagues to find a cure they wouldn't have otherwise. Unlimited possibilities.

@Kallen - Edi Birsan come shere occasionally and besides being a god in the Diplomacy world, he is also a politician holding I think a councilman's seat.

Obi - the cold war is my childhood - it was the good old days, and, as I said, prosperous times for many. You can't go through life with some demented warped idea that the cold war was al doom and gloom.

From an emotional standpoint as a child it was not much different than the CONSTANT doom and gloom you children suffer under, with the constant assertion that every breath you exhale, and every cow fart, is literally going to detroy the world no less than a major nuclear war.