HI,
Good points. However I still hold with my original
opinion.

1) DNA testing is surprisingly sensitive. For
instance, genetic testing has shown that the Japanese
people originate from Korean stock. ^_^ (Most Japanese
don't like this thought)
 However I wasn't thinking only of that. 
For instance, diet leaves a lot of traces that help ID
a person. 
Dental prostheses differ from country to country. 
Surgical techniques
Clothing
Jewelry
Tattoos
fingerprints
communications traffic
personal effects. (You can sanitize a small group.
When you start working with an army there's always
some joker who doesn't get the word.)

ALL of these things would be used on individuals to
track them back to the source. And, with enough
individual ID's the whole force could be identified as
to country of origin. It takes time and money but it's
done all the time. The FBI is very good at this.
INTERPOL is very good at keeping records.  Unless the
story postulates the entire world is in on the
invasion there would be an investigation and the
�perps' would be found.

Look what happened with the World Trade Center
bombing, or the bombing of flight 707 over Scotland.
There were far fewer people involved in either event
than would be necessary for invading a country. The
more people involved, the harder to stay hidden. 

2)Single weapons are traced to individuals all the
time. An ARMY uses a LOT of equipment.
Using a lot of different weapons only leaves MORE
paper trails. It would be possible to provide
sanitized weapons for a small group. It's done all the
time. This appears to be a regular army. You need
troop ships or large air craft to move them. Kitchen
facilities to feed them. There's a limit to how long a
large force can live off the land.  Bulk ships to move
in supplies. They need food, medicine, munitions. They
need training facilities, embarkation areas. All of
these things help to ID them.

If the story were talking about a small force of 20-30
people it might be plausible. This story talks as if
it's a major invasion of the entire country. I do not
believe you could hide the identities of this many
people. It would be possible to create �plausible
deniablity',----- that is everyone would KNOW who they
were but their �boss' could claim �I didn't know
anything about it." 

--- UnderF4331@aol.com wrote:

In a message dated 7/4/99 9:50:07 PM Eastern
Daylight Time, ayonge@yahoo.com 
writes:

<< ##Stupid. With modern forensics they'd ID the
racial
 type within a day or two. Weapons and supplies
would
 be traced back to the source. The people of Nerima
 might NOT know immediately who is invading. People
 being shot at often don't know who's shooting at
them.
 And don't care. The point is, there is NO WAY to
hide
 the identity for very long. And no point in it.  >>
     First, although they can tell racial type, they
can't tell nationality.  
This may have something to do with the fact that
there are only a few truly 
identifiable racial types, or with the fact that all
racial groups can be 
found in at several countries.
     Second, while you can trace the weaponry back
to its source(s), you 
can't tell who is using them.  This is because many
weapons are not used by 
only one country and you can't easily find out what
nation bought any given 
group weapons.  (In fact, it can sometimes be
impossible to figure out who 
bought the weapons, as they might have used several
fronts in other countries 
to buy the weapons...)
     Considering what is established in the fic
itself, I'd say that the arms 
used are likely from several different arms
manufacturers, all of whom sell 
to several different nations.  It's also likely that
many of the people 
themselves are mercenaries, to make it even harder
to trace the strike to its 
source.


          --Ryo Hoshi

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