Hi Again MT,
Originally posted by midnight Target
Hangs analysis seems about right to me. All the "evidence" in Seagoons post is suspect at least, and a stretch at best.
Ok, I'll freely admit that I'm a little slow on the uptake, but your comment above has me a little confused. Most of the "evidence" in Timmerman's article came from government sources, in particular the FBI and Senate Subcommittees. The evidence itself was, by and large, not even disputed by the Democrats and you'll remember that Johnny Chung was convicted based on it. In fact, even the Democrats did not even bother to argue that Chung was not working to buy influence for the Chinese government via campaign contributions. The arguments were that it wasn't really important, that there were more important issues we needed to be focused on, that there were no connections, or in Star Wars parlance
These aren't the droids you're looking for or as Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos put it: Johnny Chung is “a very minor, insignificant puppet of the Communist regime.”
The contributions from the Chinese PLA are indisputible (heck the Democrats even had to give $360,000 of it back), their objectives were clear - the FBI has them on record via wiretaps as seeking influence and access to restricted technology, and the fact that such technology as the design for the WD-88 Nuclear Warhead and the much longed for ability to create MRV'd missles was illegally transferred to China. We also know that restrictions on US companies selling (or doing cooperative agreements) High-Tech and Restricted technology vital for modern weapons development was also lifted during the Clinton Administration
after illegal Chinese campaign contributions (and when you figure in all the sources we are talking millions, not hundreds of thousands) began flowing to re-election coffers.
What Timmerman does then is to take 1 and 1 and 2 and put the plus sign and the equals in what he thinks are the appropriate places whereas Democratic claims are that the illegal campaign contributions, the Chinese ambitions, and the massive technology transfers are ultimately unrelated. And that the explanation is in fact that the Campaign contributions were due to lax campaign finance laws, the technology transfers were unintentional and due to incompetence and bad security, and the fact that the Chinese ultimately got most of what they hoped to buy was an unhappy coincidence.
So, it seems to me that you can either buy Timmerman's explanation or the Democratic explanation of the evidence, but the evidence itself remains. You are free of course to do either.
- SEAGOON
PS: Here's a question for you MT, why do
you think the Chinese People's Liberation Army "Liked Clinton" and gave him contributions but not Dole? Ditto Gore over Bush in 2000? I'm just interested in hearing your theory.
