It is always good to know exactly where you stand with a communist.
That was no benign spy balloon. It didn't belong in the USA air space. Any scientific balloons that would enter our air space legally would have been with an affiliation within the USA that would have been sanctioned by the USA government.
The Chinese balloon was over the USA illegally. We had every right to bring it down over the ocean where it could not hurt anyone or contaminate land. There was some talk about another Chinese balloon over Brazil shortly after this one arrived. If that is true then the Chinese were practicing triangulation. They were measuring distances to decide trajectory of missiles when the USA came to help defend Taiwan. That is exactly what it was doing over the USA. No other reason.
By Zeke Miller, Michael Balsamo, Colleen Long, Aamer Madhani and Lolita C. Baldor
Washington - The U.S. military (click here) on Saturday shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast on orders from President Joe Biden after it traversed sensitive military sites across North America, the latest flashpoint in tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Biden wanted the balloon downed on Wednesday but was advised that the best time for the operation would be when it was over water, U.S. officials said. Military officials determined that bringing it down over land from an altitude of 60,000 feet would pose an undue risk to people on the ground.
The presence of the balloon in the skies above the U.S. this week dealt a severe blow to already strained U.S.-Chinese relations that have been in a downward spiral for years. It prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to abruptly cancel a high-stakes Beijing trip aimed at easing tensions.
“They successfully took it down and I want to compliment our aviators who did it,” Biden said after getting off Air Force One en route to Camp David....
