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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 03:20pm Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10013 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Why can't we get what we need to do done with a few changes, leaving the things we have working alone whenever we can, and moving things step by step?

rshowalter - 03:27pm Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10014 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

We just lost, at one fell swoop, .0028% of the US population, more than usually well connected to be sure, and some valuable real estate.

Considering all the terrible things that could happen, we ought to consider a "difficult" thought experiment. Maybe far fetched. But with effort thinkable. Suppose we did nothing, other than make the few incremental changes that we know have a reasonable chance of working, swallow hard, and go on?

Whatever we actually do, it ought to be better than that.

Now, we're doing a lot worse.

rshowalter - 03:30pm Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10015 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

In 1914, a Serbian nut murdered a member of the Austrian royal family. In a sequence of events that nobody knew how to control, more than fifty million people died in agony, and a lot of the good things about Western civilization got snuffed out.

We ought to think hard about avoiding explosive instabilities like that.

For a number of reasons.

First among them, in my view, the fact that we have nukes around, with grossly defective controls.

That ought to suffice. But there are other reasons, too.

rshowalter - 03:32pm Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10016 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

These instabilies scared the h*ll out of Bill Casey, and he worked his heart out, explaining to me, as best he understood it, how serious these problems were. I never trusted Casey too completely, but he wanted me to believe that the Castro story was true, and put on a show that convinced me at the time.

rshowalter - 04:15pm Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10017 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

September 30, 2001 under the word "INTELLIGENCE"

U.S. Pursued Secret Efforts to Catch or Kill bin Laden by JAMES RISEN http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/30/international/30INTE.html

I think it is worth a moment's time to ask:

Could the folks at the C.I.A. be doing things backwards -- acting with logic that has a sign error somewhere, so they sometimes do exactly the wrong things, morally and operationally?

If these jokers are going to try to kill folks, they should make damn sure they do it.

How often have they botched things like this?

I think the United States might well be safer if we took the whole lot of CIA people out and fired them. No covert intelligence might very well be better than what we've gotten from these "patriots."

Augustine was clear about that.

rshowalter - 04:16pm Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10018 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

And how often have they killed unjustly, according to patterns that do MUCH more harm than good? Pretty often, in my view. I'm not alone in that opinion.

rshowalter - 04:18pm Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10019 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

There would, however, be massive unemployment in whole extended neighborhoods in the greater DC metropolitan area. A whole subculture would have to redirect their skills to jobs they could actually do, on subject matter they could decently check.

rshowalter - 04:31pm Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10020 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The C.I.A. is now, and has long been, a massive lie and rumor factory that has misled us, and done an astonishing amount to alienate other peoples, and make them have contempt rather than respect for the United States of America.

rshowalter - 04:34pm Sep 30, 2001 EST (#10021 of 10023)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If the US wanted to make a brilliant public relations coup, warming the hearts of the whole world, and opening lines of communication that are closed to us, all over the world, it could do no better than closing down the CIA, firing the people in it (and many of their opposite numbers in the military) and working in clear .

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