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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.

rshow55 - 07:38am Mar 22, 2002 EST (#752 of 757)

There are ways to peel the lies back -- and we need to start using them.

Speaking of diversion -- and patterns which, taken together, form "big lies" - according to patterns well thought out and set out by the Nazis, look at how Mazza responded in

MD749 mazza9 3/21/02 11:27pm

to this, in MD rshow55 3/21/02 10:09pm

Showalter: 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.

Showalter: Mazza, do you have a reasonable reason for questioning the paragraph above?

MD mazza9 3/21/02 11:27pm ignores the clear question, which is central to the purposes of the board that he worked to restrict -- to post only this:

"You still didn't identify your diversion commission source."

Probabilities are narrowing down.

Mazza, I'll answer your question, but doing so, will have to remember the purposes of this board -- which may need some review. Issues of "the big lie" and associations with Nazi practice are being discussed heatedly, in public, between US Senators. I think that is proper -- and a discussion of who is using the "big lie" tactics is proper, too.

It seems to me that there is work, on these subjects, for responsible journalists to do. "Trust us" should not really mean "submit to us" . . . MD718 rshow55 3/20/02 12:39pm . . . not in America.

Here again is Eisenhower's Farewell Address http://www.geocities.com/~newgeneration/ikefw.htm

The very worst things Eisenhower warned of have already happened.

But they've happened with key parts in secret - hidden from the American people, from the Congress, and even, for long times from the President. They've been hidden, and obscured, in patterns that have involved much lying to America's allies.

But these dangerous patterns, which I believe ought to be considered crimes, cannot stand the light of day - - not real light - - not for long. Facts, established solidly enough, can be powerful. Enron was dominant - deferred to -- respected -- on the basis of a pattern of ornate but blatant deceptions. But the lies were unstable - - and once some key facts solidified - with clarity - and with many of the facts presented together in space and time, so people could see -- the fraud collapsed. An admirable collection of facts and circumstances, contributing to that instability is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/14/business/_ENRON-PRIMER.html

Some key aspects of the US military-industrial-complex deserve analogous scrutiny.

rshow55 - 08:07am Mar 22, 2002 EST (#753 of 757)

One doesn't have to deny the fact that people are dangerous, that defense is needed - to be concerned for details -- because proportion, and workable approaches have to matter. We're dealing with matters of life and death, both in terms of what is done, and what is left undone. We have to worry about oversimplifications, sold as panaceas, that simply don't work as presented.

. Globalization Proves Disappointing By JOSEPH KAHN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/international/21GLOB.html

People are dangerous - - and if the rules are wrong, and discipline and culture are wrong, the world can be far too ugly -- too much like a "war of all against all." --- or "war of all tribes against all others."

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Visiting N.R.A. Heaven http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/opinion/19KRIS.html

"In Yemen, with you and everybody else carrying around an assault rifle, with armor-piercing rounds in your bandolier, with a couple of grenades in your pockets, you'll really feel safe. "

RICK BRAGG Afghan and Pakistani Tribe Lives by Its Own Set of Rules http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/21/international/asia/21PASH.html

"When a male child is born in a Pashtun village, gunfire is the first sound he hears."

We need to deal with situations as they ARE - as complex as the ARE - and get "end games" that can actually work. With people as imperfect, dangerous, and deceptive as they can be.

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Pull Up a Chair http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/20/opinion/20FRIE.html

"There is no way that America will be able to sustain a successful Middle East policy unless the U.S. is prepared to station American troops on the ground, indefinitely, around both Afghanistan and Israel.

Will the approach below work, without more?

. U.S. Might Pursue Qaeda and Taliban to Pakistan Lairs By DEXTER FILKINS http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/international/asia/21AFGH.html

We know that the MD programs set out in public can't work tactically. We have other needs. MD, in the ways that matter to me, at least, appears to be a massive fraud. I'm not alone in feeling so.

We need solutions that we can stand, as the human beings we are, with the needs that we and all other people can deny, but never entirely escape. We need things to be balanced -- and the situations we face are complicated enough that massive webs of lies cannot be tolerated - by decent Americans, or by others with power to look and react, elsewhere in the world.

For decency. And as a matter of life and death.

almarst-2001 - 09:33am Mar 22, 2002 EST (#754 of 757)

"The U.S. government view is that markets are always right," Mr. Soros said. "My view is that markets are almost always wrong, and they have to be made right."

That's a revelation!

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