Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

In President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) recent interview with CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour, he firmly said, “We will never ask the Americans to fight for Taiwan. This is something very clear.” After Amanpour’s repeated efforts, Ma finally exposed the Achilles’ heel he had tried to hide.

It is not unusual that CNN made the interview the top story on their Web site. Nor is it unusual that government Web sites in Taiwan all substituted the word “never” with “will not” in the Chinese translation.

It reads like a John le Carre spy-thriller. The ingredients are all there. Billions of dollars for military hardware-here read French Lafayette Frigates. The staggering amount for bribes and payoffs alone reaches well over US$600 millions of dollars. Even the PRC military got in on the action and were paid well not to protest France selling these ships to Taiwan. How France got the contract instead of South Korea which had seemed to have had it in the bag, is only the beginning; the known body count of accidental deaths and questionable suicides has reached at least 8 with falling out of windows from tall buildings seeming to be the accident of choice. Yes, even by Taiwan standards this is a scandal of scandals.