nap-107500 China Balloon
021023 ===
I had decided that I would waste no more time on the China balloon issue, there are bigger fish to fry. But after watching the media circus this morning I have to add one last post.
First on MSNBC they were going on about all of the sophisticated spy equipment being recovered, and how we should just let the intelligence agencies make the decisions as to what was best for the country.
Then, on CNN they tell us that the equipment was unsophisticated, and little intelligence of value could have been captured. They also say that only a portion of the payload has been recovered, and no real information has been obtained yet.
The Democrats are furiously defending Biden and the Republicans are furiously placing all blame on Biden. Biden is the President. In the end the responsibility was his.
I have lost all patience with people saying is should or should nt have been shot down. There is no reason for it to have been shot dow. Biden said it was too dangerous to shoot it down in Montana, “What if it hit a shcool?”. Who is he trying to fool. If we can put a man on the moon we should be able to shoot down a balloon in one of our least populated states without hitting a balloon.
The biggest question I have is why did we shoot it down at all? Why not puncture it and let it slowly descend. After it got low enough a sky crane helicopter should be able to catch it on a grappling hook and lower it safely. Intelligence would have a complete, undamaged payload to investigate.
This should not be a Republican or Democratic issue. It is a US national security issue of great importance to all Americans.
Instead of stupid hearings into Biden’s laptop the Republicans and Democrats should be looking into why this fiasco happened. What we need is not blame, but to find out what went wrong and to fix it so this never happens again.
020723====
Once again the US shows ‘an abundance of caution’ and allows a Chinese survalence maneuverable balloon to float over the US. A spokesman for the militry says it poses no physical or military threat to ‘people on the ground’. He emphases this over and over.
They acknowledge it is maneuverable, has violated US airspace and theat they know it is a surveillance balloon.
Instead of shooting it down we should just poke a small hole in it so it comes down slowly. We could then retrieve the undamaged equipment to determine what the real purpose was, how it was capturing the information and what information was captured.
The spokesman said that action has been taken to prevent any intelligence being gathered. How can they be sure? Under no circumstances should this baloon b allowed it to leave US airspace.
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The State Department says that this is ‘unacceptable’ and they that they have sent a ‘stern’ message to China.
Yet even though ‘this is unacceptable’ but we do nothing about it.
If nothing else this incident proves to China (and the world) that while the US is not a toothless tiger it is a paper tiger, unwilling to confront aggressors physically, but only with words and paper resolutions.
After seeing how well sanctions have worked to stop Russian aggression in Ukraine and stopping North Koran nuclear missile development, maybe the US will get threaten China with sanctions.
You have to wonder how China, Russia, or North Korea would react to a balloon from the US over their territory.
==== References ===
020323 – Fox News
020423 – My FB post replies