To the editor:
The question is, can our nation allow the People’s Republic of China to fly a “weather balloon,” over our nation? I say ‘fly’ as the balloon is being directed and controlled by the Chinese Ministry State Security. We have seen how our President’s weakness toward the Russian Federation green lighted the first war in Europe since WWII to rage in The Ukraine. World leaders look for weakness in other nations and exploit it; we need to stand up to this invasion of our air space, not wait days after it entered our air space.
Balloons have been used in war for well over a century. As we sit in our homes in Martin, Hopkins, Moline, Dorr and Wayland, we are within a few miles of the site of a Japanese FU-GO balloon bomb landing in North Dorr on Feb. 23, 1945. Balloons were used by both sides in the American Civil War and most wars after that. Balloons were commonly used in the Cold War to gather intelligence and drop propaganda material. Balloons were also used by the National Socialist German Workers Party, Nazi Germany, to test French and British radar capabilities prior to the invasion of Poland starting WWII.
An interesting bit of data is that at 0730 hours 4 February the “weather balloon” was over Missouri at a location, and only slightly below the altitude that would be the most effective, to use of an Electromagnetic Plus (EMP) weapon; according to open-source intelligence, Forbes.com, China has multiple EMP devices. This balloon did not have an EMP weapon, but it would be military malpractice not to do a test run if possible before using one. The “weather balloon” has a gondola the size of three school buses, larger than the norm for a weather balloon. Why?
An EMP weapon is a first strike weapon that could disable the national power grid to the point where it would take decades to recover. All unprotected communications devices, 98% of them, would be destroyed; our banking system, aircraft in flight, trucks, planes, and automobiles, cellular communications, pacemakers, insulin pumps, ventilators, and nearly all other medical devices, to name but a few.
An EMP weapon (depending on the size of the device, it is powered by an atom bomb) would fry some to all microchips and microprocessors in our nation and southern Canada, along with northern Mexico. An EMP weapon will not directly kill or harm anyone, nor see any dangerous radiation falling to earth, but indirectly cause the deaths of nearly one million Americans in the first hour, according to three open-source congressional reports on the effects of an EMP weapon on our nation.
China maintains that the balloon was blown off course. Why not allow it to descend gradually onto the earth in an open area or into the sea? If it is a harmless “weather balloon” why not allow it to descend gradually over the United States or direct it away from our heartland?
The prize-winning question is, why is our President allowing this potential weapon of war to fly over our nation? It could have been destroyed in our air space over the Aleutian Islands in the State of Alaska hundreds of miles from any occupied areas; why not? Why wait three days, much of it over uninhabited areas, to destroy it?
Again, more unanswered questions concerning our President, his family and the People’s Republic of China.
Robert M. Traxler, Dorr, Mich.
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