The US plays hardball--- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SF Chronicle April 4, 2001

Army delays up decision on China beret contract

PAULINE JELINEK

(04-04) 12:46 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon delayed announcing a decision Wednesday about whether to buy Army berets from China as a standoff continued over a downed U.S. spy plane and its crew.

Officials canceled a news briefing that had been scheduled to release the results of a review of the awarding of contracts for the berets.

The U.S. spy plane, with 24 crew members, made an emergency landing on a Chinese island earlier this week after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki decided last year that all soldiers, except paratroopers and Special Forces soldiers, would wear black berets, beginning June 14, the Army's birthday.

With that deadline set for acquiring 2.6 million berets, the Defense Logistics Agency said it had to use foreign manufacturers along with American suppliers. When word got out that China was among the suppliers, it created a problem among lawmakers who want the Army to buy American; the review began in March.

Though production of the berets continued while the review was under way, the Army could have stopped the purchase if the review found fault with the way the contracts were awarded, officials said.

They said Wednesday's announcement was intended to state that the process was proper. But officials did not want to announce that while China continued to hold the 24 Americans, and before congressional hearing on the berets that was scheduled for Thursday.

Shinseki, businessmen and others were to testify on the purchasing process before the House Small Business Committee.

For years, only members of elite Ranger commando units have had the right to wear black berets and they objected that widespread use of the headgear would cheapen something they had won through special training.

Shinseki later accepted a Ranger offer to switch from black to tan berets, enabling Rangers to keep an exclusive color.

On the Net: Army beret site: www.army.mil/beret/

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), April 04, 2001

Answers

Yep, all the rightwing paranoid redneck morons are getting all riled up. They have the same ignorant bigot attitude as Dumbya, saying things like "we ought to kill them gooks" and "damn chicoms" and "let's get charlie". This is the kind of paranoid stupidity that starts wars. China is a sovereign country at peace, and just wants to be left alone. It's assholes like Dumbya who feel so inadequate that he has to prove he is more powerful that always have to go fucking around with peaceful countries until he pisses them off. LOL, what a dipshit!

-- Bill Clinton (dumbya will @ never. learn), April 05, 2001.

China is run by a bunch of commie reactionaries, and it's left-wing loonies like the above that would get down on their knees and give the Chinese both an apology (for what I do not know, but lefties love to apologize) and a Monica at the same time.

-- libs are idiots (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), April 05, 2001.

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

--Mao Tse Tung, Problems of War and Strategy (November 6, 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 224.

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"Bill Clinton",

You are a "useful idiot". You and the leftist-manque acedemics will be the first to be shot after we take over. We will line you up against the wall. We will glease you with bursts of righteous AK-47 burrets. We will eat doggie cutlets on your capitalist-piggish grave. Die, round eye mo fos!

In the meantime you are useful.

-- (LeonTrotsky@Tienneman.Sq), April 05, 2001.

wow you need some serious help

-- (cin@cin.cin), April 05, 2001.

"useful idiots"—Lenin's term for credulous non-Communist denizens of the West who were easily suckered by the supposed democratic progressivism of the 1917 Revolution.

Comrade Lenin understood that the West was (is) chock full of self-hating useful idiots. The West is pathetic. You are so full of Liberal guilt that we can manipulate you at will. You don't know what you stand for.

Cinderella, I don't personally eat dog meat. It's a Chinese thing.

-- (LeonTrotsky@Habana.cabana), April 05, 2001.

This cannibalism thing is grossing me out...

Retchin' in the garden... (Trottin' over to lick Leon's face)

The Dog

-- The Dog (dogdesert@hotmail.com), April 05, 2001.