I am unable to present any evidence or details, so you just have to take my word for this. The intelligence was spot on. There was nothing there, and that’s what the intel said, loud, clear, and repeatedly. Bush and his advisors chose to ignore it.
Earl
I’ll take your word for it.
Wait a minute … you wrote “it was a response to an armed attack on US cities and the US government that killed several thousand American civilians inside our borders.” as a justification for the invasion. That excuse was rebutted nearly instantly and retrieving it from the sewer to use in an argument is an outrage.
If you had written “Hawks justified the invasion by making the claim that Iraq supported the 9/11 attackers and possessed weapons of mass destruction (beyond those the US helped them produce)” your statement rebutting my comment might hold water, but it doesn’t. Revising history and posting false claims will never justify the Iraq invasion.
Bush is not just an idiot, he is a war criminal.
We’ll just have to wait and see what else China does in the South China Sea. I have a feeling that China will continue to get away with gradual encroachments in its neighbors’ territories.
I wish the press would get over this 12 mile thing, if you reclaim a reef you dont get a 12 mile zone.
Singapore that won an ICJ case for Pedra Branca ( Horsburgh Light) but didnt get any water nor expected to I’m sure.
He was not a madman when USA supported him in the war against Iran then??
For those not familiar with the dispute over Pedra Blanca:
China has now navalized their Coast Guard, not a big concern for warships conducting FONOPS, but of great concern for fishing boats and small patrol craft of neighboring states.
Where does it say “to the Navy”?
This is what it says:
That doesn’t mean the CG vessels will be turned into heavily armed Naval vessels, or that they will be manned by Navy personnel.
first one with guns just commissioned
Where did I say “to the Navy”? I said navalized. We can navalize our Coast Guard too, but they don’t go and paint their ships grey. But they do set aside their law enforcement functions and become military in nature. This is what is happening here. Remember, the Chinese have a unified command structure, which is why they have a “People’s Liberation Army Navy”. Now their Coast Guard is functioning as just another branch of the same machine. And military people solve problems differently than law enforcement, or to use the idiom: “when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. The Chinese just got a lot more hammers to deal with all the nails in the SCS.
Weaponizing competition??:
This is a political organ that oversees both the Army, Navy, Air Force and Police. It ensures that the Communist Party have control of the military, (and now also the Coast Guard) much like the Congress does in the US.
It also ensure that Xi Jinping have final say so in all military matters and mattes of sovereignty, not risking that some civilian entity strikes out on it’s own.
Was there a danger of the Chinese Coast Guard going rogue? Things must be worse over there than I thought.
Not that I know of, but it is nice to tie up loose ends.
Why do you read anything sinister into anything Chinese, while the USN go around projecting it’s military power with impunity everywhere?
I don’t read anything Chinese as sinister, I read things like scrapping term limits for Xi, consolidation of forces under his command, in conjunction with rhetoric like this as sinister:
It is a very large mistake to think that China works the way Western countries do, or follows their own published organization charts. If you don’t have the (disambiguated) names of the individuals involved in a particular topic, your observations will be as connected to reality as discussions of what a character in a movie should have done.
Cheers,
Earl
Does this sound much different from what American politicians and Presidents say on a regular basis?
That is VERY true and a VERY common mistake. China is not a western country, with a very different culture, history and mindset. They follow a very different calendar, not the 2-year election cycle and quarterly reporting season that is hampering USA from any meaningful advanced planning and strategy.
Goes much deeper than the planning cycle. Interpersonal relationships outweigh organizational and legal constraints by a wide margin. If you don’t know who you are talking about, you don’t know what you are talking about.
Cheers,
Earl
Oh yes, I have attended many meetings, dinners and drinking sessions in China and know the importance of Guanxi:
http://leadacrosscultures.com/blog/68-understanding-guanxi-business-relationships-human-relationships-and-personal-relationships-as-an-integral-part-of-asian-culture.html
For those who do not know Chinese business culture, here is a few advices:
PS> If you are going to China for business meeting, learn to love Mao Tai.