RE: UN Ship Nomenclature

You wrote: 

>What about the American Revolution,

If you were a USian, I'd shoot your high school history teacher.  As 
you ain't. . . The reason there was a conclusion to that nasty 
boondoggle was because of France.  At a dump called "Yorktown" some 
overbred idiot named Lord Cornwallis got himself trapped.  See, it's on 
a peninsula.  The original plan was for him to evacuate his army via 
the RN to New York to link up with another Brit army.  So he digs in to 
await retrieval.  Besieging him are 8,000 Allied troops, split evenly 
between American regiments and French Marines.	The French contingent 
also includes a lot of the artillery and engineers.  So we're closing 
in on him,  when all of a sudden the RN finally arrives.  As do the 
French.  And once in the entire French Navy's history, it beats the RN 
to little bloody toothpicks.  Then Corwallis gives up.	Plus we had the 
French shipping arms, uniforms, money, and ammunition to us like 
madmen.  In fact, the French crown went so far into debt to save us 
that it is considered one of the major causes of the French 
Revolution--the debts had to be repaid with crushing taxes, etc, etc, 
etc.  Plus there were independant foreign volunteers like Layfayette, 
Stuben (neither von nor a Major General.  He was a corporal who gave 
himself a field promotion on the ship over here) and a Pole whose name 
I can't spell who basically created our entire Cavalry branch from 
nothing.

> the Communist Revolution in 
>China, the Russian Revolution? Do you really think that outside 
>support was the major factor in all of these?

Yeah.  Communists wouldn't have suceeded in China without Russian 
support, plus the Japanese attacking the Nationalists--not intended to 
support Commies, but had that effect.  Russian Revolution would not 
have been possible without German support.

>> Imagine if the US had, as our first act as an independant nation,
>> rounded up a bunch of Frenchmen, kidnapped them, and abused them.
>
>Except that weren't you pals with the French at that time? Do you 
>think embassies in the history of the world have never been attacked 
>by regular forces? I think in that you'd be mistaken, although I'll 
>admit I could be wrong.

You get my point?  It's stupid to attack people who aren't involved.  
And yes, I do think so.  At least in the past three centuries when such 
rules had been invented.  If I'm wrong, cite an example.

>And right now the US has trouble carrying out 'reprisals' against 
>people who commit terrorist acts against it. Sometimes they'll launch 

Political ones which aren't as much a factor in the much nastier world 
of 2183.  And again, that's TERRORIST.	I'm arguing that REGULARS would 
not be involved.  Since when does REGULAR and TERRORIST mean the same 
thing?

John M. Atkinson