Sen. John McCain said Thursday that while he is not yet "concluding this is a bomb" that brought down a Russian passenger jet over
Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, "there certainly is significant reason for suspicion."
"Just on the face of it, planes made by Airbus do not break up at 30,000 feet," the Arizona Republican told
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on her noon news program.
"As we all know there was a so-called heat flash. That could have been a lot of things, but generally speaking, it means some kind of explosion took place."
He conceded that the flash could have been a fuel explosion, but in his view, it is unlikely.
McCain also said overseas airports don't have the same levels of security, especially where the crashed plane took off, that the United States or other places in the world have.
Russia only started its airstrikes against targets in Syria on Sept. 30, Mitchell pointed out, not giving much time for the insurgents to mount such an attack, but McCain said that there have been people from all around the world coming to join ISIS.
"One of the areas that our intelligence agencies have always been worried about is these bomb makers," said the senator. "In fact, we have gone out of our way to try to eliminate them. And we all know that that is probably one of the most vulnerable places for them to carry out these acts of terror."
It will be interesting to see if Russia retaliates against ISIS, he continued, as "most of their effort so far has been against the moderates, in order to present us with the unacceptable choice of Bashar al-Assad or ISIS."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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