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Battle for Taiwan.


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The is or was also a term called "ultra", which i know about because my father in law had that clearance, as an RAF translator in German during the Cuban missile crisis.

This also ment that he was on two occations given a gun and acted as part of the guard when there were exchanges of "spies" in Berlin.

He always laughs at this because clearance or not, as he'd never been tarined for combat if anything had gone wrong he'd have been bloody useless.

He once told me his plan was to stay close to the edge, and at the first shot, he was ging head first over the side in to the water.

As to Johns sad trawl of the net to prove that the "Black Watch" are a special forces unit, well thats just another example of his logic, as the quote says'

" If you torture a fact long enough it will admit to anything".

Oh and as to the comment that the "Scots are Nuts", well as a scot, I'll back that 100%.

Peter.

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Guys,

Now that I've had a bit of a chance to think about it, having meanwhile finally gotten some sleep (helped!) I see what you mean about News of the World, it apparently being in roughly the same league there as WEEKLY WORLD NEWS here. Was unaware of that, though, when I posted the article, though had I been alert (difficult after being up around the clock), I might've taken more notice of the breathless journalistic style. I posted it because despite a detailed Google search, there simply wasn't much to be had on the Black Watch at all, and that surprised me. Even the official Black Watch site at MoD had almost nothing pertinent.

Presumably, the LONDON SUNDAY TIMES occupies a rather higher journalistic niche? If so, can one of you in the U.K. locate and post at least the key points of the referenced article?

If we take the 600 man figure as accurate, are we talking a battalion? If not, what formation size are we talking about?

So many felicitous turns of phrase from which to choose: "Scots are nuts," "there's all that fearful bollocks about...," "sad trawl of the the net," (really deserves a special award for imagery and inadvertent punning combined!) and a look at the Cold War version of "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight"--all with a soupcon of covert history and high weirdness (real Nazi doings and bases for years in Antarctica, coupled with some stuff I've never even heard of).

Does anyone know if the Black Watch regiment has,

say, one battalion trained to a much higher standard than the rest, said battalion being used for more demanding tasks? Judging from what little I found, the ones in Iraq are pretty ballsy. The same site, BTW, has another article about a Black Watch sniper team in action there.

Regards,

John Kettler

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The Blackwatch, soon to be part of the Royal Scots Infantry Regiment had two battalions of approximately 450 to 550 men, one regular ( the larger) and one TA (reserve volunteer, roughly like the National Guard).

The six hundred would be the full regiment in Belize doing jungle warfare training. The extras would be Royal engineers and Logistics regiment plus signals etc.

As they are a Scottish rergiment and as a member of the SNP I have bben involved in the campaign to prevent their amalgamation in to a single five battalion regiment, I know quite a few current and former members.

Which is why I stick to my original comment...."BULL****".

Peter.

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Originally posted by John D Salt:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by flamingknives:

[snips]

* There are three levels of UK security of which I am aware.

If you mean levels of protective marking, four:

RESTRICTED

CONFIDENTIAL

SECRET

TOP SECRET

...and then there's all that fearful bollocks about ATOMIC, CRYPTO and codewords.

All the best,

John. </font>

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flamingknives,

Kind of like that here, wherein the government delegates the authority to issue Confidential clearances to defense contractors, but anything higher falls under the purview of the marvelously acronymed DISCO (Defense Investigative Security Clearance Organization, under the Department of Defense). Secret requires a BI (Background Investigation, detailed and not cheap), Top Secret requires an SBI (Special Background Investigation, which takes months and is pretty expensive), and Top Secret, which requires an EBI (Extended Background Investigation, about a year, brutally in depth, and mucho expensive = ~$10K U.S.).

One guy I knew with a TS stunned his mother by informing her he knew she'd been divorced and remarried. Why stunned? It'd happened before he was born, and she'd never told him. The DISCO gumshoes found it, though. Even at Secret level I had to supply addresses and contact names going back 18 years.

And we haven't gone into all the other "tickets" and program briefings, such as CNWDI (Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information), WNINTEL (Warning: Intelligence Sources and Methods Involved), NATO Secret and Cosmic Top Secret, Q Clearances (Department of Energy), SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence, as in TS/SCI), never mind the compartments, such as Talent, for overhead aerial imagery, Keyhole (imaging satellites), Holystone (Navy tap of Soviet underwater cables, Umbra (Communication Intelligence), etc.

You have to be briefed into programs, which if they're Special Access Programs may be the standard SAP (e.g., National AeroSpace Plane) or the deep black Unacknowledged Special Access Program (USAP) about whose very existence the Pentagon security regs permit lying. Some who've worked on them have said they literally had to sign their Constitutional rights away, were placed under mandatory electronic surveillance at work and at home, etc.

This list is by no means comprehensive, but does provide at least a flavor of how what you call "positive vetting" works over here. Of course, if you have actual access to live nukes and can use them, then you fall under a wholly separate set of controls called the Personnel Reliability Program.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ February 14, 2006, 04:35 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

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Moronic Max,

Great question! The government does the investigation through DISCO, then bills the defense contractor. Because of this, defense contractors make absolutely certain the person being cleared is going to be there for some years to come, for it's a substantial investment. My estimate may be low by as much as a factor of two, seeing as how I haven't had to think about it since the late 1980s. I was looking at this exercise during my NASP days, and in the entire program at Rockwell we were only talking about getting two people for fresh TS/SCI clearances. The program manager and a few other senior types already had such existing clearances, but the Threat guys, of whom I was one, didn't. We were also looking at a big outlay for a special electronically suppressed vault in which to store our super sensitive intel gleanings, seeing as how TS/SCI must have such secure storage, operate under the two man rule, etc. Even with a high priority rush on the clearances, I believe we were still looking at an agonizing nine months for processing after completing a stack of paperwork

nearly 2" thick.

For an example of the kind of security environment, see THE FALCON AND THE SNOWMAN. Chris Boyce used to work in a CIA controlled satellite communication vault at TRW, a vault which had a blender installed for the specific purpose of turning cipher key punchcards into utterly useless slurry. The security was so tight, though, that he and his colleagues started bringing in booze and mixing margaritas in the thing, with no one the wiser.

Regards,

John Kettler

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  • 2 weeks later...

Interesting development. Sounds like Taiwan and Iran are being played like poker chips; looks like the U.S. may have called the pot. Damn Texans are like that. I wonder what the Britt’s are going to do about it? The Israeli’s? I don’t think a move like that would come about without a lot of contingency planning. I think Steve made an interesting comment a few weeks back when he said he thought Israel probably has come to the conclusion that war would cost a couple hundred thousand lives and solve nothing or alter very little.

MikeyD also has made an interesting point of late, the high cost of the war in Iraq. Maybe it is not just the high cost of this war but gearing up for an escalation (if need be) or future war. China seems to be holding the bill for the U.S. deficit; I wonder how they would react if the U.S. just said “no” to payment? I wonder who their debt collector is?

I also wonder if the E.U. will stay in the shadows as it tries to bolster its own position, or come forward with bold actions one way or the other? You would likely know more then I about that Peter, what do you think?

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Abbott,

A very interesting point, especially considering that my country technically entered receivership in 1933, when FDR took us off the gold standard and put us into fiat money which is borrowed into existence, with interest due and payable to the bankers who own the Federal Reserve Bank, which isn't federal at all but is privately held. See SECRETS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE by Mullins and THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND by Griffin for details.

In case anyone wants to accuse me of waving the conspiracy flag, be advised that I have a copy of a formal reply to a friend of mine from the Treasury which says that NONE of the money collected in income tax goes to support the government.

China would appear to be in a most interesting position. It's practically singlehandedly keeping our housing market alive, via buying so many Treasury notes, but if it decides to call the notes and implode our economy, it is going to take a terrible hit itself, for if memory serves, the U.S. is China's biggest customer. Lots of manufacturing jobs go away in a hurry if the U.S.

goes bust. Again. The other big unknown is how the current owners (the aforementioned bankers) would react, for they, after all, are quite obviously senior debt in the equation, and I believe China has a central bank in which guess who? provides fiat money. May be wrong about this, but I know for sure the former Soviet Union's central bank ran that way.

Regards,

John Kettler

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John Kettler: It is all a Raelian conspiracy to elevate the PRC to be a serious economic threat to India. Mace and Emrys and Rambo, leading economic experts have opined that the PRC's demise will end the Western world ... so let them have Taiwan. BBC is made up of Kool-aid drinkers lined up behind Jim Jones.

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Tagwyn,

If you want to claim that the BBc is full of left wing hippies or whatever, prove it post two stories, one BBc the other someone else, and show where the Beeb got it wrong.

Put up or shut up. CNN may be the biggest, but world wide the BBC is far more respected, even by people who don't particularly like Britain.

Peter.

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As China expands it economy and dabbles with free enterprise and technology, the country, in my opinion, will face another revolution as the powers that be will be questioned by the powers that start to make money. And those huge numbers of cheap labor will start to question more and more until something breaks. N. Korea is even more fragile.

And a war between the US and China would not just hurt the US economically. It would crush China and they would be the ones to suffer more infrastructure damage. All of their exports would stop. The inflow of oil would stop. There is alot of risk for China to take Taiwan or challenge the US. Otherwise, it would have already been done.

The card they want to play is a weak US government that would balk at the thought of going to war. They will wait for a US President who is afraid to thumb his or her nose to the UN, world opinion, etc... Time is on China's side. But they will never move against Taiwan until they feel that the US will do nothing.

If it went nuclear, then both sides would lose, but the US would loose a few cities, while China would be completely devestated. They know that. As much as they threaten, I highly doubt the Chinese would risk nuclear destruction.

Just been rambling tonight...

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LtCol West,

Why should China have done so already. Thats like saying,

"If you don't have the strength to overcome enemy defences and have reinforcements on the way, you should attack anyway".

China is growing in strength and influence globally and in the Eastern Pacific in particular, why rock the boat, time is on it's side not Americas.

Peter.

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Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

LtCol West,

Why should China have done so already. Thats like saying,

"If you don't have the strength to overcome enemy defences and have reinforcements on the way, you should attack anyway".

China is growing in strength and influence globally and in the Eastern Pacific in particular, why rock the boat, time is on it's side not Americas.

Peter.

Ummm, that is what I said. Time is on their side.
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The issue is has the time come, given the economic dislocation involved and the cost to both would the US fight today.

It's not how hard you hit it's how much you vcan take. Is China and it's people prepared to endure more pain to achieve unification that the US and it's citizeans are to keep it seperate.

Most mainland Chinese want unification, and if their government used force would probably take to the streets to support it. I can't see American teenagers lining up in droves outside recruiting offices to go and protect Chinese from becoming, well chinese...

As to waiting, the equally widely held view is that they have never had or have any intention of using force, but the threat of forces has a political utility as it helps to give them an edge in the region.

Waving a big stick gets peoples attention even if you don't intend to use it.

Peter.

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Have you read the previous posts in this thread? From CIA.gov:

Taiwan Ethnic Groups

Taiwanese (including Hakka) 84%, mainland Chinese 14%, aborigine 2%

Also, I don't think most American teenagers even know that Taiwan exists, so while they would not be lining up in droves, they would most probably support the Taiwanese side (having gotten their information from the news and government announcements), and there would be a noticible short-term increase in military volunteers if the U.S. intervened.

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If it went nuclear, then both sides would lose, but the US would loose a few cities, while China would be completely devestated. They know that. As much as they threaten, I highly doubt the Chinese would risk nuclear destruction.
If they were rational and shared your (well, and mine, I suppose, as I agree with most of the points you made) perspective, that'd be one thing. But, ah...how often is the decision to go to war a rational one?

I'd argue that it's typically irrational. China's leadership is human. Humans can and do behave irrationally. Therefore, expecting them not to do something counter-productive because it's irrational is, perhaps, expecting too much of them.

I've done things that were irrational and counter-productive, and I imagine the same is true of most people looking over this thread.

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Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

The issue is has the time come, given the economic dislocation involved and the cost to both would the US fight today.

It's not how hard you hit it's how much you vcan take. Is China and it's people prepared to endure more pain to achieve unification that the US and it's citizeans are to keep it seperate.

Most mainland Chinese want unification, and if their government used force would probably take to the streets to support it. I can't see American teenagers lining up in droves outside recruiting offices to go and protect Chinese from becoming, well chinese...

As to waiting, the equally widely held view is that they have never had or have any intention of using force, but the threat of forces has a political utility as it helps to give them an edge in the region.

Waving a big stick gets peoples attention even if you don't intend to use it.

Peter.

I agree with that. They want to wait us out and just move in when the global political situation appears best. That was exactly Saddam's plan in 1990. He bet that the US would not oppose his annexation of Kuwait. And if the US did not, then he would have kept Kuwait and who knows how world history would have turned out then.

I think the Chinese are spending more money to get a real amphibious capability in the near future to project power to Taiwan. It is not just a political stick. But, in my opinion, they will not make their military move until they feel the politics completey isolates a US military response. They are quite prepared to absorb the angry letters from the UN and France.

I also believe that China needs to take back Taiwan at some point because the government has been pushing that idea for so long to its people. Eventually that political momentum will start to culminate and people will no longer believe the past propaganda and or the threat of inaction.

Oppressive governments need not only enemy's of the state to survive but the need to motivate its people to want to go forward and fight the imperialists, etc..and not think about how working 10-12 hours a day in a crammed factory for a few dollars a day is really not the good life.

I do believe that right now, China is prepared to suffer more pain that the US. But the US can dish out alot more pain on China that China can against the US. So it is not even. Taking back Taiwan would be a difficult challenge for US forces, but since it is waterlocked, and the US is a maritime power, I believe that barring a political resolution, it would only be a matter of time and hard effort to take back Taiwan.

It would make for a tremendous CM:SF game. I would use most of Peter's scenario and pit US, UK, Aussie. South Korean, and loyal Taiwanese forces against Chinese and communist Taiwanese forces. Taiwan would make for a varied battlefield as well.

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