I would agree with Egberto. The U.S. Army is in a true quagmire in Iraq right now. This is clearly demonstrated in Thomas E. Rick’s “Fiasco”, if you bother to read the 400+ page book in some detail. After reading the book, I have the impression that a groud war between the U.S. army and Iran is next to impossible, let alone with North Korean.

After reading the book, I also have the impression that Chairman Mao must be laughing in his crystal coffin in Bejing right now. The U.S. army, with all its might, is suffering from the “people’s war” wracked by the insurgency. From a culture point of view, this is understandable. The U.S. society itself is a “winner-take-all” society. They simplely do not care about the basic needs of the Iraqi people. As a matter of fact, the U.S. goverment does not take care of its own sick and poor that well either. Just look at the mess of the healthcare system in the U.S., and how they treated their own people in New Orleans after Katrina. The U.S. Army will never win the hearts and mines of the poor people in Iraq, which is the vast majority of the population.

To be fair, I suspected that one of the major reasons that the Arab countries performed less than idealy in the Middle East wars was that these countries were full of traiters. Everything eventually boils down to human intelligence. If you believe that satellites, Joint Stars and UAVs can see it all, you will be in a rude awakening, just like the U.S. army in Iraq. This is one of the reasons that an airstrike against North Korean is also unlikely. Besides the 800 pound gorillas called China and Russia sitting there, the U.S. does not really know where all the labs are, due the the lack of human intelligence. An airstrike against NK is too late anyway.

Sabotage?

Is the accident a result of espionage? Who ordered to have so many experts onboard? Something is fishy here.

I have the impression that one of the major problems of pumpjet is the clogging up by sand and mud while operating in shallow water or near shores. Pumpjets are also difficult to clean up and rust easily.

Even conventional propellors may have clogging problems while operating in dirty water. In fact, the Chinese Navy are kind of proud of themselves that they pretty much solved this problem. Remeber all those pictures in which the Chinese submarines are sailing in the extremely muddy inland river ? You better know what you are doing in that kind of environment !

Few companies in the world can build economically competitive large passenger aircraft (those that can make trans-atlantic/pacific flight) now. There were more in the past, but fewer now.

But military cargo plane is another story. From what I saw on the internet, I believe China’s large cargo plane programme will start in the near future.

Regarding how freely people can move in China, here is an interesting fact: Chinese are building highways in a frenzy. In fact, China’s freeway, or limited-access expressway, ranks second in total mileage in the world (http://english.people.com.cn/200410/29/eng20041029_162122.html), it may surpass the U.S. if they keep building at this rate. The hardware for moving people around is already there, isn’t it ?

The submarine might be in mechanical trouble.

According to a major Chinese newspaper published in the U.S. and chinesenewsnet.com, Japanese found a Chinese submarine rescue vessel and a tugboat in that area several days ago, which was a ominous sign that a troubled Chinese submarine was nearby.

Look like an An-124. Could be used to carry those mobile ICBM/micro-satellite launchers around.

http://www.unsustainable.org/view_art_un.php?AID=307

The Sun and the Dragon: America’s Wishful Thinking About Sino-Japanese Relations

This is an eye-popping article! After reading the article, it seems to me that there will be no guarantee that Japanese military will be directly involved in a conflict between U.S. and China over Taiwan.

Also, now I finally understand why the Nationalist (pre 1949) and Communist governments of China never asked for retribution from Japan publicly: the governments wanted to keep the money themselves! Obivously, had the retribution been paid publically, it would have been paid to the victims and their families directly, and the governments themselves would not have been able to keep the money!