"One need look no farther than Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib for the beam in the US collective eye (probably the one on top of the pyramid). "

Nah, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib aren't significant, I was referring to much more fundemental issues. For instance, US prisons are sewers of corruption- and that's one aspect which is wrong.

Taiwan: not only relatively sane, especially compared to N. Korea, but also nuke-less."

Well, considering that we are providing Taiwan with security guarantees, and we have around 10,000 nuclear warheads, wouldn't describe Taiwan as nuke-less, nor would describe Japan or S Korea as nukeless. Though of course it's not the Tiawanese who will actually call the ball on whether nukes are ever used.

"However -- since I'm by no means an expert in inter-Asian relations -- I'd talk to the people in Hong Kong before I suggested repatriation terms to the Taiwanese."

Hong Kong's lease expired and rightfully the Brits gave it back to China. End of story.

Taiwan at one time, claimed to be the only valid govt for all of China- this evenually resulted in the "One China Policy". If instead they had declared their independence many decades ago {instead trying to do it now} they would probably be a independent nation. But now, Independence for Taiwan is NOT in the cards, because the US has treaty agreements with China, and breaking these agreements is not something the US will do (if we did, it would give the legal right of China to go to war with the US in order to take back what is legally part of China).
Now, basically the Tiawanese were right- communism was the wrong path to take and there are "the *rightful* rulers in exile" but it's just not realistic, the facts on the ground are that Communists in Beijing rules China.
Anyways, we got this marriage & we got to make it work between the Chinese (Chinese Communist leadership Beijing and the Chinese Capitalist leadership in Taiwan). The "marriage" is a done deal and nothing is going to change this unless the Chinese are stupid enough start a war with Taiwan [and they will definitely lose that war, and then new treaty agreements {from the cease fire agreement} which could have a different result]. So we have long standing security arrangements with Tiawan. But don't make the mistake that the USA are forcing Taiwanese to do anything, if Tiawanese want to relieve the US of these Security guarantees, it would THEN be free to declare itself independent State {and sequently crushed by the Chinese, and btw in that case we aren't going to do squat, other than perhaps ally yourselves with the Chinese- just to be perfectly clear that our intention isn't to support this "illegal insurrection" or be an aggressor in starting a civil war}.
Yes, it rather crazy sounding, but treaty agreements are very important. They define borders, and define the nature of all nations.
For instance, we are not going to invade Cuba, we sign a treaty with the USSR saying we would not invade Cuba. This treaty does not disappear simply because the USSR doesn't really exist- it's transfers to Russia. And things like the cease fire agreement from Gulf war I still hasn't been voided. It's still in affect until the UN and Iraq agree that it's not longer in affect (all involved parties sign an agreement saying this).