Context is important here... Ignoring the 'inconvenient' words as the author of this story did, it looks an awful lot like the US is admitting that they're at fault, but look at the whole transcript and note that rather important portions were omitted:
What we have done and what President Bush has done and what I have done and what Ambassador Prueher is talking to them about is to make sure that they understand we do regret the loss of their pilot and plane. We do acknowledge that we violated their air space, but look at the emergency circumstances that the pilot was facing. And we regret that, and we've expressed sorrow for it, and we're sorry that that happened. But that can't be seen as an apology accepting responsibility.
Taken on the whole, it makes quite a bit more sense and, from all that I've heard (admittedly from the confines of Indiana), it sure does sound like the fighter pilot was at fault:
Some witling, like a modern-day Icarus, hot-dogged and flew too close to something bigger than he, plummeting to his death. This is Darwin at work, folks. On the bright side, he's out of the gene pool... The US should apologize for this? I think not! Wood has a higher capacity for conscious thought than the semi-evolved simian doltish Chinese hardline imbeciles who seemingly clutch on to this dick-waving fest the way a shipwreck victim might clutch on to flotsam. This is rock stupid. Dehydrated rock stupid. This is granite-like stupidity to the ninth degree. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know and love into a whole different dimension of stupid. It is stupid collapsed in on itself so far that even the neutrons of stupidity have collapsed. Stupid so dense that no intellect can escape. It is a blazing mid-day sun on the Mercury of stupidity. It emits more stupid in one second than the entire universe emits in a year. This truly is some primordial fragment from the original big-bang of stupid. It's the pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to go beyond the laws of physics that we know. Stupid beyond humanity's capacity to love and be loved. If I had a dime for every rung on the ladder of stupid that this stupidity climbed, I'd be rich. It's just another dog peeing on the fire hydrant of stupid...
Slashdot Mirror
The following is an excerpt from Xinhua
Context is important here... Ignoring the 'inconvenient' words as the author of this story did, it looks an awful lot like the US is admitting that they're at fault, but look at the whole transcript and note that rather important portions were omitted:
Taken on the whole, it makes quite a bit more sense and, from all that I've heard (admittedly from the confines of Indiana), it sure does sound like the fighter pilot was at fault:
Some witling, like a modern-day Icarus, hot-dogged and flew too close to something bigger than he, plummeting to his death. This is Darwin at work, folks. On the bright side, he's out of the gene pool... The US should apologize for this? I think not! Wood has a higher capacity for conscious thought than the semi-evolved simian doltish Chinese hardline imbeciles who seemingly clutch on to this dick-waving fest the way a shipwreck victim might clutch on to flotsam. This is rock stupid. Dehydrated rock stupid. This is granite-like stupidity to the ninth degree. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know and love into a whole different dimension of stupid. It is stupid collapsed in on itself so far that even the neutrons of stupidity have collapsed. Stupid so dense that no intellect can escape. It is a blazing mid-day sun on the Mercury of stupidity. It emits more stupid in one second than the entire universe emits in a year. This truly is some primordial fragment from the original big-bang of stupid. It's the pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to go beyond the laws of physics that we know. Stupid beyond humanity's capacity to love and be loved. If I had a dime for every rung on the ladder of stupid that this stupidity climbed, I'd be rich. It's just another dog peeing on the fire hydrant of stupid...
But I digress...