Free Republic

ANYONE following the pattern of the US foreign policy under the Bush administration will be baffled by the widely divergent trends that have surfaced during the last five years. President Bush began his journey by engaging China over the shooting down of an American plane which intruded into Chinese airspace. The US blew hot and cold over the issue. The heat gradually subsided. The turn-over of annual business between America and China is the largest in the world. The bilateral trade between the countries has given China a great lead. This has become a sore point with America blaming China...

Colin Powell, veteran soldier and bureaucratic infighter, had the makings of an outstanding secretary of state. Notice of his potential came with the handling of the spy plane incident with China a few months after the new Republican administration had taken office. The mid-air collision between an EP-3E reconnaissance aircraft and an F-8 fighter over the South China Sea threatened a major confrontation between a President who had spoken of strategic competition with Beijing during the election campaign, and a Communist Party only too happy to bang the nationalist drum to shore up its legitimacy. In the event, despite the...

<p>A Navy report says a Chinese F-8 jet pilot was to blame for the midair collision over the South China Sea that nearly killed the crew of a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft two years ago.</p> <p>The report of an investigation of the incident by the Pacific Fleet judge advocate's office also states that the crew of the aircraft, which was forced to make an emergency landing at a Chinese military base, was unable to destroy all of the secrets on the electronic-warfare aircraft and that China likely obtained some classified information from it.</p>