OT somewhat. China, our aircraft, delays.

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
Date: Tue Apr 10 10:17:54 2001

At 05:29 PM 4/9/01 -0600, clint wrote:
>
>
>>
>
>China's definition of the boundary of their nation isn't the same
>as ours (in the US). IIRC, they claim 200 miles of ocean, and we
>claim 50 miles of ocean. I may be wrong on the numbers, but the
>idea is correct.
>
>Put the shoe on the other foot... If China was flying a plane with
>the sole purpose of intercept our communications traffic within OUR
>territorial waters, you can be certain a pair of US fighters would
>force them out, or crash them, or probably even shoot them down.

    BULLSHIT! The Cubans regularly fly along and even into our borders. The
North Koreans do the same in Korea. The East Germans did the same in
Europe. The Russians did the same in the North Atlantic, Bearing Sea and
other places. And there are a good number of other examples that I could
name. We routinely intercept and fly along with them but to my knowledge we
NEVER crashed into one mush less shot one down. Another good example are
the antenna laiden "fishing boats" from Russia and other coutries that
regularly patrol just off our shores. When have we ever crashed into or
shot at one?

>
>Why do we, as Americans, feel we can do whatever we want, whenever
>we want? We didn't learn our lesson when the U2 was shot down over
>Russia? We didn't learn our lesson in the Bay of Pigs fiasco?

   This isn't the same thing at all. The EP-3 was over international water.
Even if the chinese claim a 200 mile territorial limit, the fact remains
that the EP_3 was not over any of their land mass. That makes this very
different from the Bay or Pigs or U-2 incidents.

   Joe
Received on Tue Apr 10 2001 - 10:17:54 BST