(Iraqi)Officer says China aided air defenses

Washington Times ^ | Con Coughlin

[milestogo]

LONDON

[Frank_Discussion]

If this sort of stuff is true, and more stories like it come to light now that Saddam is captured, well, the sh!t is going to hit the fan.

[Jim Cane]

Chinese military advisers played a key role in helping Iraqi air defenses withstand coalition air strikes in the months preceding Operation Iraqi Freedom, an Iraqi colonel says.

Apparently, Chinese air defense strategy is something you can purchase at WalMart for bottom dollar.

[Laserman]

This is just the start of the kind of information that will be coming out over the next few months. All the countries that opposed the war- France, Russia, Germany, and China- feared that their duplicity would be revealed. With Saddam's capture they must be sweating buckets wondering what he will tell.

[marty60]

Well we can add this to the Things legacy. The Thing and Chicoms. I wonder if The Thing and the Things wife could be tried for murder of our troops with their selling of tech to the chicoms.

[templar]

With Saddam's capture they must be sweating buckets wondering what he will tell.

The Chicoms won't be. We're dependant on them and they know it.

[tallhappy]

This has been well documented. The Chinese communists built fiber optic defense networks for them.

It apparently is of little concern to the Bush administration which has decided to call the communists our partners in diplomacy and effusively praise them actually prop up China's communist regime and support communist China over democracy and freedom.

[vanmorrison]

I beg to differ. The Chinese Communists are orders of magnitude more reliant on the US than we may be on their cheap goods. I am dumbfounded when I see how we continue to let these Chinese bastards get away with their treachery towards the US. I have decided to place anything from the PRC at the top of my boycott list, right up there with France and Germany. I just wish more Americans would do the same. Forget the Waltons!

[GingisK]

...sh!t is going to hit the fan...

Won't change anything. Don't forget that Red China is more favored than Taiwan is at the White House.

[Laserman]

We may want their help with N. Korea, and we may get lots of cheap goods from them, but I don't see where we are "dependent" on the Chineese for a lot. Why do we need them?

[Adder]

Look at the tags on nearly everything you purchase. We "need" them because they make everything and we don't anymore.
Of course the argument might be advanced that if they didn't make it we would make it again. Doubtful when there is the Phillipines and other Asian nations.

[Hat-Trick]

Lt. Col. al-Dabbagh, whose revelations about Saddam Hussein's battlefield weapons of mass destruction capabilities were revealed exclusively last week in the Sunday Telegraph,....

Hmmmm...I don't recall hearing anything about these revelations in the U.S. mainstream media. Curious.

Hat-Trick

[templar]

...but I don't see where we are "dependent" on the Chineese for a lot. Why do we need them?

Among other things, we don't have a source for all of the consumer goods that are 'fueling' our economic 'recovery' and are nescessry for our daily life (don't believe me? Just go through your house and take all the chinese goods, including clothes, computers with chinese parts, etc. and put them in storage for a month and see how you end up living). Our low inflation rate (hah) is more because of cheap inports from China than any other single reason (IMO) and we wouldn't be able to finance our government if not for the discretionary money (that left over after purchasing our lifestyle needs) left over from the difference between the cost of chinese goods and the cost of domestic goods (or goods purchased from another country with a standard of living somewhat equal to ours).

Ask you self this: If the United States quit buying from China, would China survive in something close to it's current form? And if the Chinese dumped all our financial insturments and quit exporting anything to US how well would we fare? IMO, we have gotten ourselves into a serious dependance with China for many economic and other reasons, not them with us.

BTW, IMO we don't need China to deal with NK. We're quite capable of quickly dispatching them ourself if we get impatient of waiting for them to commit suicide. If anything, China is in the way of a final solution here.

[RicocheT]

Agree with posts #8 and 10. Red China makes a lot of crap that we buy, but none is irreplaceable. The US and its reliable trade partners still have the ability to make/replace all the junk Red China sell us.

Now is the time to back off on trading with China, while we still can make replacements here. If we wait too long, all our machine tool ability, all our basic resource refining and all our light and heavy manufacturing will have died or gone to Red China.

As consumers, we may have to pay higher prices for Game Boys or DVD players, but better that than our kids be helpless to defend the USA in 10 to 20 years.

[texas booster]

I doubt that we would ever bring that manufacturing back to the US. Too many taxes, laws, lawsuits and envirowhackos.

But don't for a minute think that we couldn't replace Chinese manufacturing with Korean and Taiwanese suppliers, Philippino cheap labor and Indian knowledge workers. They would be glad to have our business, and they are much better strategic partners. We could keep Mexican workers busy, as far as that goes. Maybe even Canadian workers, eh.

It took us 15 years to build up Chinese infrastructure to allow them to manufacture for us. If we pull out, then we need a plan to keep Asian banks from collapsing. The Chinese would find a way to harm us by harming our partners. Think the Japanese banks, Singapore banks and HSBC.

It is a problem to seperate, but doable. Do we have the cajones to think long term?

[Terriergal]

Chinese military advisers played a key role in helping Iraqi air defenses withstand coalition air strikes

This is news??

[larryjohnson]

China was my brother's enemy in Korea,my enemy in VietNam and ever since!

[vanmorrison]

Not buying Chinese Communist goods would be a hardship, not an impossibility. There is nothing that is made in China that makes them irreplaceable. The goods we buy from them are made in many other places around the world as well. Clothes, shoes, toys, tools, electronics, and everything else that we get from the PRC are all available from other sources, albeit at a little higher price. But, dammit, I'll pay a premium of my hard earned dollars to stop bankrolling the Chinese Communists!

I look at ALL labels, and will only buy from countries that are not a direct threat to me and mine. We all should!

[fella]

A modified microwave (used to called a radar range) could do the trick.

[templar]

I look at ALL labels, and will only buy from countries that are not a direct threat to me and mine.

If you buy anything that has inisdes (electronics, machines or tools, crusie missles, navigational equiptment, etc.) you better look inside as well. You will be surprised how much stuff, 'made in USA' or elsewhere, has Chinese components inside. Pull your computer case and look at the mainboard and all the lableled components on the mainboard as well as the various cards. It'll probably be functionally dependant on at least one Chinese component (and that ignores unidentifiable origins on stuff like resistors, diodes, capacitors, etc.).