July 4, 2001

9:04 AM

Spy Plane Parts Back on U.S. Soilthree months after landing on the Chinese island of Hainan, bringing to a close an incident that strained US-Chinese relations.
posted by NJguy (8 comments total)

The incident isn't closed. The sour taste of this will linger for a long time and is going to poison relations between the two countries for years.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:07 AM on July 4, 2001

we should put her back together and sell it to Taiwanese commercial fleet for pleasure trips. or a floating f.m. station that plays requests only.
posted by clavdivs at 9:48 AM on July 4, 2001

I say, put the thing back together and have it fly the same missions over international waters with "HA HA" in big letters painted on it various Chinese languages. (is it possible to say HA HA in Chinese languages?).
posted by ParisParamus at 10:19 AM on July 4, 2001

ALL OUR SPY PLANE ARE BELONG... what the fuck am I doing???
posted by Dirjy at 11:20 AM on July 4, 2001

(FYI: Links to wire.ap.org are difficult for people to follow, as you have to select a source newspaper and such. Better to search dailynews.yahoo.com or another source for the wire story and link to that.)
posted by dhartung at 12:23 PM on July 4, 2001

They didn't mention that the instructions to put it back together again are in Chinese. The Pentagon is currently looking for people with experience of assembling flat-pack furniture.
posted by holgate at 7:29 PM on July 4, 2001

"We did not apologize."

"Yes, you did, three times."

"No, we did not apologize."

"Yes, you did, and to prove it, you will transport the plane out in little pieces, aboard a Russian cargo plane."
posted by nofundy at 5:34 AM on July 5, 2001

I think there were probably a few internal components missing when it got back.
posted by NJguy at 5:35 AM on July 5, 2001