Republicans criticized Democratic President Joe Biden on Sunday for his handling, in their view, of the Chinese balloon incident. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP
The American president suffered much criticism on Sunday from his Republican opponents, who accuse him of having been slow to act.
Republicans criticized Democratic President Joe Biden on Sunday for his handling, according to them, of the Chinese balloon incident, shot down the day before by the American army after flying over the United States for several days, and whose remains must now be recovered during operations at sea.
“Having the president shoot him down over the Atlantic is kinda like tackling the quarterback after the game is over“, lamented Sunday morning on NBC the elected Republican Mike Turner, chairman of the Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives. The ball “should never have been able to enter the United States, and complete his mission“, he added.
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“Why did it take so long to reveal it to the Americans?“Asked him on CNN Republican Senator Marco Rubio, Vice Chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee. He called the incident “unprecedented“, and considered that the ball was used by China to demonstrate that it had “the ability to do this“, without the United States being able to “do nothing against“.
Biden said he gave the order on Wednesday to shoot “as soon as possible“The balloon, which entered American airspace for the first time on January 28 above Alaska, then a second time at Idaho, in the northwestern United States, on January 31, i.e. Tuesday.
But the general public only learned of its existence on Thursday, when it was over Montana. The Pentagon explained that it wanted to wait for the balloon to fly over the sea to shoot it down, in order to avoid any damage to the ground during the fallout of debris.
The area over which they extend, after the operation off the coast of South Carolina, is more than 11 kilometers, underlined Sunday morning on CNN the American Minister of Transport, Pete Buttigieg. The case “has been managed appropriately“, in “weighing the various risks“, he defended.
The entry of this Chinese balloon into American airspace, which the Pentagon claims is a spy balloon, has fueled tensions between Washington and Beijing, and caused the last-minute cancellation of a visit of the head of the American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, in China.
Beijing, which maintains that it was a civil aircraft, accused the United States of having “overreacted” by using force, and saidreserve the rightto reply.
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