Good article and I hope Mr. Babbin is right about ur response to China and Chavez.
This a little disingenuous. The EP-3 was struck by a Chinese jet, which was indeed "challenging" the US aircraft, but well away from Hainan Island in international airspace. But even if one assumes that the Chinese pilot deliberately committed suicide, a doubtful proposition given the details of what happened, the more likely outcome would have been for the EP-3 to end up in the South China sea, not on Hainan Island.
Only through the quick and competent action of the commander, Lt. Shawn Osborne, and crew, was the aircraft able to make it to Hainan Island. Many here thought the aircraft should have ditched at sea, even at the loss of the crew, rather than land on Red Chinese territory. Be that as it may, it's pretty obvious that the Chinese on Hainan Island had no idea the EP-3 was coming.
The Central government did move quickly to take advantage of the incident to try to humiliate the United States, but of course we wouldn't have expected anything else, would we?
BTW, the EP-3 was flown back, disassembled, to the Lockeed plant, rebuilt and is presumably sniffing around the Chinese, Iranians and others once again.