On September 11, Izvestia published the full transcript of the unprecedented Moscow news conference held September 9 following the shootdown of Flight 007 and delivered by the Marshal of the Soviet Union and other defense and political leaders.

Note the response to the following question:

How could it happend that a civilian plane was shot down?

"I presume that you are familiar with the Soviet government statement. The Soviet side made every possible effort to get the plane to land at a Soviet airfield. But the intruder sutbbornly ignored all warnings by Soviet planes and made no contact. It behaved in the same way as the crew of another South Korean airliner that violated the Soviet Union's airspace in the airea of Karelia in 1978. The handwriting is the same. Moreover, this plane maneuvered, tried to escape from the Soviet fighters, and circumvented the zones of Soviet air defense missile forces. How could this have beeen a peaceful plane?

After all possibilities to get the intruder-plane to land had been exhausted, an order was issured, and the Soviet pilots fulfilled their duty."

In the '78 use of force on a civil airliner the Soviet pilot reported it to be a civilian airliner but was ordered to use deadly force to force a landing by ground controllers. In the '83 attack the Soviet pilots had difficulty intercepting the plane and said, "They don't see us." just minutes before attempting to fire rockets.

As you can see the basic idea with the Soviets was, "It's off-course and intruding into our airspace and disbodient, so we have every right to shoot it down." Terrorists have a similar belief that rules (religious as opposed to state rules) allow them to target disobeyers with death. This position was never challenged after the 1978 shootdown of KAL flight 902 despite Senator Schmitt's valiant attempts to bring the issue forth in the interest of public safety, international relations, and good commonsense.