Hot Dog, I'm unsure of the relevance of your last paragraph as a response to HD's post. Yes, in that instance you would have got a TCAS RA if you'd had a TCAS fitted, and yes, ATC had fouled up. These mistakes do happen, and all ATCOs are acutely aware that it could happen to them as easily as it could happen to anyone else. But I think what HD is trying to say is that many RAs (probably much more than 50% of them) are "nuisance advisories" and occur when ATC have provided the correct separation. In an en-route environment, this may merely be an minor annoyance, because it's quite unlikely that there'll be anything else in your way. In a terminal environment, a nuisance RA can quickly put an aircraft in much more danger than it was in before TCAS intervened.
As ATCOs we do our best to issue traffic information when situations occur where separation has been provided, but the profile of the traffic is such that your TCAS may become "interested", and issue a TA or RA. We DO expect you to respond to ALL RAs, but with any luck, early traffic information means that pilots will moderate their climb/descent profile accordingly, thus reducing the likelihood of a TCAS event.
The bald statement, <<If your TCAS issues a RA, Air Traffic Control has already failed.>>, isn't just flawed, it's untrue. Try opening a topic in ATC issues with that statement, and check the response you get.
LTP