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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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lchic - 08:50am Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12367 of 12383)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Dedicated to RUMMY ... or so it said ... on an elsewhere thread

http://www.poems.com/trompsal.htm

bbbuck - 09:15am Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12368 of 12383)

I miss world crossing dot com.

My home page

http://fck-u-world-crossing.com/

fredmoore - 09:44am Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12369 of 12383)

Robert ....

So .... Almarst is entitled to accentuate the negative and ignore 9/10th's of the reality of today's world. It reminds me of a quote from Abraham Lincoln: "If you seek to find the bad in people then surely you WILL find it". Where would you like to be placed if you could slide back to 1938?

rshow55 - 11:34am Jun 7, 2003 EST (# 12370 of 12383)
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.

http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.e6iObxbhdkc.800473@.f28e622/14019

fredmoore , that's a fascinating question. And related to some different questions I've been thinking about - especially since my last phone call with lchic - where we talked about my involvement with Eisenhower, in ways that were interesting but a wrench for me (I've spent much of my life bending over backwards finding ways to avoid talking about my relationship with Eisenhower) - and I hung up the phone worrying about exception handling - and with a deep sense of how illicit my relationship with Eisenhower was - in some of the same ways that Mimi Fehnstock's affair with Kennedy was illicit. Thinking about Watergate, too - especially Donald Segretti - and about Robert Moses' comment, quoted by Dowd a little while ago:

"If the ends do not justify the means, what could?"

A very good question - in a world where rules have to be broken.

Your question

"Where would you like to be placed if you could slide back to 1938?"

is a fascinating one - great to fantasize about. I'd have to know as much about WWII as Herman Wouk to talk about that well - especially remembering how inherently hard it is to get into communication with key players even in one's own time. Just now, I'm not sure I could be as effective with anyone in 1938 as I could be if I could have some serious time with some leaders today - including some leaders of the TIMES - and a man I might especially like to talk to - if I wanted to get things done - and could get his attention - Howell Raines (assuming he'd be free to talk.)

If I could go back to 1938 - and talk to someone I might actually find a way to get to? I'm mulling that over, thinking of the following cases, thinking of me as I am now, and of "me" as I was, knowing what I knew in 1969.

Contact with C.L. Sulzberger

A connection with Eisenhower and MacArthur at MacArthur's staff in the Phillipines (where Ike was until he returned to the states just after the invasion of Poland.)

A junior academic or graduate student position with Tizard or Blackett - or even contact with C.P. Snow.

Contact with General George Marshall.

Contact with Harry Hopkins.

Contact with people on the French general staff.

All might make "nice stories" if I could only imagine that I could get through barriers then that stump me now . Which might have been possible, though there would have been different barriers.

I don't know what good I could have done back then. With some answers and experience that I got from Eisenhower - I think I could do some good now.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense