BBM
And herein lies the difference. The world is used to the way the NTSB and other major agencies for transportation safety handle these sorts of investigation. There is no such centralized agency handling this investigation.
In a typical NTSB handled crash, they get a tremendous amount of info, very little of it is pertinent to the actual event and much of it seemingly conflicts. They sift the information and release it only when it becomes vetted and verified and proven to be pertinent to the event.
What we are hearing is the unfiltered, unvetted and seemingly conflicting data that normally we wouldn't hear. Different agencies within Malaysia saying different things due to different motivations. Of course the military does not want to give out too much info. Of course the airline wants the terrorism angle to be spotlighted (it takes the blame away from them). Of course the government actually has little clue.
So, what appears to us as utter chaos is indeed that, but really in most investigations the data is very chaotic, we just don't get to see much of it undigested and summarized neatly.
Is Malaysia over its head on this? Most likely. Have they asked for assistance - yes - they actually asked the US to look over the radar reports early on (I think by Monday at the latest). Is the US blabbing every little detail - NO! They are very, very quiet. I think this is truly a difficult mystery, the right people are working on it, and because of the unique problems posed by the part of the world it is located in, the investigation is definitely sub-par. China would have the best resources to figure it out, but politically it is isolated here. The US is having to tread lightly because of the same sensitive political reasons.
Try to imagine if a Cuban military jet crashed off the coast of Florida in 1970. How much info about what the US tracked, and what Cuba tracked would be shared with an investigation. Would we want them to know what we were capable of detecting? Would they want us to know? Now picture this, with 5 nations, none of which are best of buddies...