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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

almarst-2001 - 10:40pm Mar 20, 2002 EST (#733 of 743)

BRITAIN would be ready to make a nuclear strike against states such as Iraq if they used weapons of mass destruction against British forces, Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, told MPs yesterday. - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$W4L5OSYAAAQILQFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2002/03/21/niraq21.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/03/21/ixport.html

almarst-2001 - 10:44pm Mar 20, 2002 EST (#734 of 743)

ISLAMABAD (SANA): Taliban have announced their willingness to release 18 US troops in exchange for all prisoners detained at Guantanamo island.

http://www.frontierpost.com.pk/afghan.asp?id=11&date1=3/17/2002

lchic - 12:18am Mar 21, 2002 EST (#735 of 743)

The 1922 decision to cut the Kurdish culture and State may have been an error. A strong Kurd State over Iraq might have been strategically important.

Only the mountains are still
Iraq is on shifting sands

lchic - 12:41pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#736 of 743)

My comment on this ... is flying in via the far side of the moon .. almarst-2001 3/20/02 10:44pm

lchic - 08:03pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#737 of 743)

The above poster ... peacenow3 3/21/02 7:44pm .... is saying .... that Israel Mossard Nazi is even more vile and corrupt than the US-nazi spider who spins a mirage web of lies ...

Something for Dashel to think about ... on his search uncorrupted reality!

rshow55 - 08:12pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#738 of 743)

One need not like the Israelis (or Palestinians) especially to doubt the postings in peacenow3 3/21/02 7:44pm .

lchic - 08:36pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#739 of 743)

Ah ... so could be a 'False Flag' operation from yet another nation ... and so it goes on, and on, and on ......

Speculation, skeptism, and pain are the lasting outcomes of international incidents of mass killing ... perhaps no one will ever know the real truth .. yet 'inocent' people are fractured by lasting hurt and pain.

lchic - 09:14pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#740 of 743)

The world has R E A L problems:

Sanitation

Two British development charities say the lack of proper sanitation is killing almost 6,000 children every day.

Half the world's hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from water-borne diseases.

The charities WaterAid and Christian group, Tearfund, describe the problem as "one of the world's most urgent health crises".

Yet they say the diseases are preventable, and solutions are both simple and cheap

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1884000/1884284.stm

rshow55 - 09:46pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#741 of 743)

MD731 mazza9 3/20/02 10:23pm starts:

"Missile Defense Works! You can deny the existence of this fact but it won't go away no matter how much you invoke Eisenhower, Enron, or the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

"You . . . fail to answer questions that might jeopardize your position. You speak of force when logical persuasion is what is called for."

What questions? Missile defense works for what? Right answers are what is called for.

There are very solid reasons why countermeasures for MD are thousands, tens of thousands, or MORE times cheaper to build than the MD systems themselves.

It is easy to have fairly large numbers of identical balloons - which each reflect light or radar just the same - with the warhead in only one of them. At best, an interception probability of 1/N , where N is the number of balloons. That's one easy countermeasure -- and a number of other countermeasures, that have also been discussed for years, are also easy. That make "missile defense" no reasonable defense - a huge expense for no real security.

Tests specially tailored for success can keep the engineers "justified" - - - "justified" for people who aren't looking very hard - but as far as US security is concerned - the program is a fake. MD353 rshow55 3/10/02 10:16pm

And the money, and the skills - - can be much better spent. lchic 3/21/02 9:14pm

mazza9 - 09:58pm Mar 21, 2002 EST (#742 of 743)
Louis Mazza

Question #1-Who elected you the diversion sheriff?

Question #2-Opinion or Fact?"Tests specially tailored for success can keep the engineers "justified" - - - "justified" for people who aren't looking very hard - but as far as US security is concerned - the program is a fake.FAKE! What proof do you offer.

Question #3-Opinion or Fact? "And the money, and the skills - - can be much better spent."

LouMazza

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