Yeah, but I'd still like to know where the first plane went.
Here is my theory, and it's just a theory. The Malaysian airline that is "lost" was piloted by a Muslim who had been "radicalized". His co-pilot was also Muslim. He was smart and he wanted to do something big. So he flew the plane past the "handoff" point for air traffic control, then shut off the tracking system, locked the cabin door, flew up to 40,000 feet + and depressurized the plane (he and his co-pilot would have oxygen masks that are much better than the little plastic cups for the passengers which are only designed to work for 10-15 minutes while the pilot gets the plane down to a breathable air altitude). Nobody could "charge the cabin" because if they did they would be leaving their oxygen supply. So the pilot just kept the plane at a very high altitude until the passenger/crew O2 ran out and they all died (similar to what accidentally happened to the golfer, Payne Stewart, some years back). Then he flew the plane down lower where pressurization wasn't that big of an issue.
So then he had a plane (nearly) full of fuel and had a plan to do some damage. Some British royalty were vacationing in the reachable area, I believe Michelle Obama and her daughters were in China at the time, and there are other worthy targets for a 777 (big plane - long range). We will likely never know. He was going to pull another 9/11 and use the aircraft as a suicide bomb.
So our military assets in the area (Diego Garcia and others) were likely tracking all the planes and figured out very quickly what was going on. They knew that the plane was just full of dead people and one or two terrorists...so they shot it down. Of course they couldn't PROVE that all the folks onboard were dead and that would be a pretty hard sell in the International media, so they got the Brits to come up with a fake lead from Satellite intel and got the Aussies to agree to go off on a wild goose chase in the wrong area. They (navy) used the time to sneakily scour the real crash site and pick up every bit of floating debris they could. We have navy assets in the area and submarines can help.
If my theory is correct, we didn't really do anything wrong...the passengers and crew (except terrorist pilots) were dead already when we shot it down. But we certainly won't admit to it
note: the increase in altitude after the tracking system was turned off has been documented in early news stories.