Why exactly is a

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Why exactly is a Russian cargo plane, an Antonov 124, being used to ferry home the disassembled American spy plane which has been sitting on the runway at Lingshui Air Base in China for the last two months? The Chinese apparently refused to allow an American military aircraft to land at Lingshui to retreive it. And the Russian AN-124 is apparently the biggest production cargo plane made. So Lockheed put the job out to bid and contracted with the Russian firm Polyot Air Cargo Ltd. to crate the thing back to the US in several pieces.

(‘Polyot’ is the Russian word for ‘flight’ and thus it’s a little difficult to pick apart all the various companies with similar names. But based on a few quick Nexis searches, Polyot Air Cargo appears to be a subsidiary of the Polyot aerospace concern which has ties to the Russian military and is currently working on plans to launch satellites from Antonov 124s. Polyot planes were also used in March 1999 in a suspected effort to ship MIGs to Yugoslavia or North Korea.)

Frankly I’m not sure there’s anything so bad about this. I assume they’ve taken precautions to make sure there are no Russian military personnel on board the cargo plane who can crack the boxes open while they’re in flight.

But wouldn’t folks on the right be going nuts if this happened on Bill Clinton’s watch? And for those on the right who are already bent out of shape about American ‘kow-towing’ to China, isn’t this just a further loss of face or dignity? Any thoughts, Marshall?

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