Taiwan getting even closer to buying US Harriers

a reply to: Zaphod58

Yup.

Just after the Vietnam War (our version, there have been so many...and oddly enough, go much the same way, every time...). I don't recall any more recent then that.

a reply to: seagull

The most recent was two years ago. Chinese vessels looking for oil rammed some Vietnamese fishing boats in the area. There was at least one other recent one in the 90s I think.

originally posted by: Sammamishman

originally posted by: intrptr

Threatening to invade and actually invading are two completely different things.

Yes but that's not what you asked was it?

"Is China threatening to invade Taiwan?"

If the threat is there, it would be foolish to ignore that threat wouldn't it?

China isn't conquering nation after nation, the US is. But uses the manufactured (China) threat as justification for actually occupying foreign countries. Taiwan was utilized by the US military to defeat Japan, bomb Vietnam with B52s… the bases are still there, the 12000 foot runways are still there, the US will go back in a heart beat.

Warmongers will tell you the US military isn't occupying Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, or anywhere else (allied) puppet governments exist waiting for that cash assistance, and a base.

a reply to: intrptr

How exactly are these predominately democratic countries being controlled by us again? Are we telling them what to do over AOL IM?

Well it's impossible for the USA to be occupying Taiwan because there are officially like 0 US servicemen on duty there. The amount of people the USA has in Japan is not enough to be considered a martial occupation, how exactly do a couple tens of thousands of troops control millions upon millions. The Philippines legally belonged to the US and the US granted freedom, because they didn't want it. You must smoke a lot of pot and not get out of the house much.

a reply to: intrptr

These are the formally stated goals of China with regard to territorial disputes. Providentially, this post came out today for our discussion.

US government is the one surrounding China . Its official, too. Called Asian Pivot…

you think that means rainbows and flowers, lol.

Its not because they really see boogy men behind every bush. They aren't really afraid, they would resort to nuclear war in a heart beat.

Since thats so crazy, they make it sound like they are expanding the Empire for the good of others and lessening the world threat by others, when really they are hiding behind those statements because its really the US government that is the one threatening the world.

China knows this. So does Russia and every other country that isn't yet 'in the fold'.

If they defend themselves its a crime, if the US takes them over its democracy.

Deutschland Ubbe Alles!

a reply to: intrptr


Do you know anything about history? If you want to know what happens to peaceful countries who don't take the proper steps to defend themselves from their more powerful neighbors than I suggest you look at the Blitzkrieg of WWII. Ask the thousands of basic infantry and horse-driven calvary units of non-German Europe. France was the only one with tanks that had a chance, unfortunately they put their trust in the Maginot line, which the Germans simply went around, and flushed right into Paris. History has proven you wrong, every time. There is not one instance in history that supports any of your claims.

a reply to: intrptr


Watch this; I know you have time to.


Blitzkrieg 101-third link on a google search of "Initial Blitzkrieg WWII"

Couldn't they just surround it with a naval blockade complete with subs...?

First, use cruise missiles to take out obvious problem targets, then carpet bomb the entire island. Then, send in 100,000 combat troops.

I mean, if they threw a massive arsenal and bulk at it -- Taiwan would surely make them pay dearly, but it wouldn't last long under massive pressure like that.

I think Taiwan's allies are pretty much the only thing really keeping them truly safe.

If China was smart, they'd be playing the espionage game and sending in deep cover, long-term assets (ala "The American" tv show kind) to infiltrate the government and slowly move Taiwan in a pro-China direction from within. Why use force when you can just change the mindset of the entire population over a generation or two?

a reply to: Caughtlurking

The history of the Third Reach is very similar to whats happening right now.

You seem to have forgotten history or were taught some re written version of it. You know, the one written by the victors?

Name a weapons system deployed by the US today that hasn't its early roots in Nazi Germany? Leave out the anti religious fervor (jews then vs muslims now), the Reich Fire (vs. 911) used to invoke war powers and a police state, stripping citizens of civil liberties?

How about bypassing the League of Nations isolating Poland into private talks, like the US is doing with Iran?

A history of manipulation, lies and treachery from beginning to end. Guess how it will end today, too? No empire has ever conquered the whole world. Not for lack of trying on the part of vain, power hungry and greed driven control freaks.

So yah, re-arm, talk peace and prepare for war….

a reply to: Caughtlurking

Read, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I know you won't make time to. The best book on the subject of Hitlers twisted deception, plotting against his own people. I'm currently re reading it, thats how I'm making these comparisons.

a reply to: intrptr

Do you actually fact check, or just make it up as you go along? There were no B-52 missions from Taiwan during Vietnam. They flew from Thailand and Guam. They flew some tankers from Taiwan but that was it.

originally posted by: crazyewok
I love it the UK designed them and built them and we sold or scrapped them all before its replacement was even active.....

Yet the USA still use them and Taiwan want them.


Another failure of the UK goverment

sold for the price of just ONE of their US-made replacements www.dailymail.co.uk...

74 of the planes are to fly again for the US marines many of the jets had been recently upgraded, and the US already had pilots who could fly them.

Harrier jump jets are to be sold to the United States Marine Corps for £34 million after more than £1 billion has been spent on them in the last decade.

www.telegraph.co.uk...

Another great buisness deal by the government

a reply to: Zaphod58

Zaph.

We have a troll.

Let's not feed it.

He/she/it doesn't know the subjects being discussed and does not care to. The thrill of annoying us is everything, really.

a reply to: MystikMushroom
Taiwan's air defense would make Saddam's in GW1 look like spitwads.

a reply to: intrptr
Ok the B-2 bomber has nothing to do with Nazi Germany. They had a few years on us at the end of WWII in research but their manufacturing and industrial capacity limited all of their newest technologies to what we would call a LRIP. We simply took their few years of research and their scientists and put them into our system. If you ask me there was no other just way for those men to pay their debts to the free world than to advance it.

What you seem to forget is that the US has always been the good guy, even when mistakes were made with policy and reasoning, we never fought an innocent tyrant. And if you are ignorant enough to think that Saddam's fall was the basis for todays problems in the Middle East than you'd be sorely mistaken. The Middle East owes all of it's problems to the way that France and the UK decided to withdraw. Setting up nation states based off of maps from antiquity. Churchill is one of the few that saw it coming, and everyone thought he was a warmonger, instead he was just wise.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
That's how one of our greatest generals felt about war, he realized it was folly but he wouldn't sit idly by either. There will always be war, just hope you're on the winning side and that that side has a semblance of justice.

a reply to: Caughtlurking

You can only keep up an air defense for so long. You tend to run out of munition after a while, and China can expend a vast amount of dummy drones to keep them wasting missiles and AA flack.

And you can pummel an island nation with sea-based guns for weeks if you want. Go all WWII style on the metro areas near the sea.

Taiwan would exhaust itself long before China would. China could throw wave after wave of useless decoy crap at Taiwan and overwhelm their air defenses in order to sneak in real assets to take that air defense out.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

China currently has no way to move enough forces fast enough to invade. Even if they took out the defenses they'd have to get people on the ground, and doing it a few at a time won't work.

a reply to: MystikMushroom


Except China's navy has no boats that are capable of a constant barrage of big guns on an island, China's air force is also mostly outdated aircraft that wouldn't survive day 1 with Taiwan. China could conceivably keep producing and eventually overrun, but not before NATO, Australia, and every other ally assembled a fleet size unseen in almost 100 years. I also really don't think Taiwan would run out of weapons so quickly, they produce plenty of advanced weaponry domestically. An amphibious assault by the Chinese would make the Bay of Pigs look less like a blunder and more like extremely successful.

a reply to: Caughtlurking

Exactly, it's the allies that Taiwan has that keep China at bay.