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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?

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rshow55 - 11:17am Mar 28, 2003 EST (# 10631 of 10636)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

"This war will prove dangerously destabilising for decades to come "

If people are at all sensible, this war will show a lot about how stable things have become.

And with some reasonable work, things can become much more so.

Your idea of "just bringing the Bush administration to trial" is massively impractical.

I'd have some objections, even if it weren't.

Nor do we have a workable international law now - and if that had been sensibly recognized at the Security Council, we wouldn't be having this war. We have to get past the Treaty of Westphalia.

commondata - 11:24am Mar 28, 2003 EST (# 10632 of 10636)

What on earth is the chain of logic that leads to "it's the fault of the security council"? Weren't they saying, "hey, the inspections are going well, give them a bit more time, and if they find something nasty you can drop your bombs"?

That one needs explaining.

rshow55 - 11:32am Mar 28, 2003 EST (# 10633 of 10636)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Had they said just exactly that, including "if they find something nasty you can drop your bombs" I don't think we'd be having this war.

Force as a real end point was being denied.

Had force as a real end point been acknowledged - the negotiation could have closed I believe.

In any case, because the point wasn't acknowledged - the Bush - Blair position does have some strong arguments on its side, in my opinion.

They did negotiate for quite a while.

Back within an hour.

commondata - 11:39am Mar 28, 2003 EST (# 10634 of 10636)

Force as a real end point was being denied.

That simply isn't true. Force as a real end point was being denied "next week if Mr. Hussein didn't go on television and tell his people how wrong he'd been all these years." What was being denied was an excuse for a war that the US administration had already made up its mind it was going to have. There was still a good game in town.

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