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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

lchic - 01:32pm Dec 27, 2001 EST (#10545 of 10657)

My understanding of how military workers are educated is on 'A needs know basis' .. meaning that the fuller aspects are sacrificed .. it's all about having just sufficient knowledge to do the job in hand - is this so?

idenbade - 02:32pm Dec 27, 2001 EST (#10546 of 10657)

'Black Hawk Down' Was Set to Blame Clinton for 9/11

Columbia Pictures' "Black Hawk Down," the holiday action adventure movie about the 1993 Somalia debacle that cost 18 U.S. soldiers their lives, was set to explicity blame ex-President Clinton for the 9/11 terrorist attacks before the film's director and producers decided to soft-peddle the connection.

In mid-November, before the decision to tone down the Clinton angle, the film was previewed for a handful journalists.

Before its final edit "Black Hawk's" closing crawl highlighted a series of events following the Somalia mission, including Clinton's humiliating troop withdrawal from the country, the humanitarian disasters in Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo and, finally, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

"With what happened in Mogadishu, with the way that all came down, you end up with the terrorism we see today," the film's producer Joe Roth told the New York Times on Wednesday. "It's so obvious now, eight years later."

Roth said his partner Jerry Bruckheimer and "Black Hawk's" director Ridley Scott agreed with him that "we would be remiss in not making this connection to the general audience."

But ultimately the filmakers, along with Mark Bowden, author of the best-selling book upon which the movie is based, decided that blaming Clinton explicitly would be "unnecessary and too distracting."

"It was a judgment call," Bowden said. "And I know you would think that a decision like this would have had something to do with the commercial aspects of releasing a movie, but it didn't. It was all about what was the right thing to do for the film."

Noted the Times: "It would have been an unusually bold move for a big, expensive studio production like 'Black Hawk Down' to blame President Bill Clinton and American public opinion for setting the stage for the kind of terrorism behind Sept. 11."

Still, director Scott argued that even after the rewrite, the message is obvious. "I think the implication is there.... To me, it's very clear that there is a connection between Mogadishu and what is happening now. But to make it explicit at the end of this movie would have been too much."

"Black Hawk Down" is set to premier in select theaters on Dec. 28.

idenbade - 02:34pm Dec 27, 2001 EST (#10547 of 10657)

Hillary Boos Vanish From McCartney Concert Rebroadcast

There was something missing when VH1 rebroadcast Paul McCartney's Oct. 20 Twin Tower relief concert on Christmas Day. The music video cable channel edited out the infamous twenty seconds where firefighters, cops and their friends in the crowd booed New York Sen. Hillary Clinton off the stage.

"The boos were... replaced with general crowd noise," reports the New York Post's Neal Travis, adding, "the cable channel evidently wants to keep on Hillary's good side."

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