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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  /

    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.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (12407 previous messages)

fredmoore - 09:12pm Jun 8, 2003 EST (# 12408 of 12415)

Robert ....

The following paragraphs, whether from you or Eisenhower are all wrong! You must present evidence if you expect people to believe this against incontrovertible historical data.

""So, with almost no time to relax, the victorious Soviets found that they faced a new enemy - Americans fully trained in all the tactics the Nazi Germans had actually used with success against them. Somehow the Germans had quickly become American friends. The Soviet Union, which bore the disproportionate burden of World War II, was the new enemy.

We were in a primarily offensive posture, with superior armaments, and the Soviet Union was in a primarily defensive posture, and usually outgunned. Our own people weren't told this.

No matter how terrible the Soviet system was, no matter how monstrous Stalin was, no matter how ugly the Gulag was, no matter how easy it is to describe the Soviets, from a distance, as "the bad guys" and the Americans, from a distance as "the good guys" it remains true that our two countries, and generally subordinate allies, were in a continous standoff, without territorial change, for over forty years. ""

Let me add some historical data to the above paragraphs :

So, with no time to relax, the victorious Soviets found that their new toy of POWER could give them all the plunder of the eastern Bloc and if they played their cards right, particularly with the untimely death of FDR, they could intimidate an unfocused USA into relinquishing the rest of Europe to their will. No matter how terrible the Soviet system was, no matter how monstrous Stalin was, no matter how ugly the Gulag was, these 3 things were enough to focus the soviets to adopt an 'expansionism into vacuum' policy which was to last for over 40 years ... 40 years till they realised that the social structure (communism) upon which the expansionism was based in the absence of Stalin's evil genius, was not sustainable. Only after the Soviets made it quite clear (from Yalta onwards) that they were playing a game of lies and deceit did the US and Britain seek to take advantage of German infrastructure to block what were becoming obvious signs of Soviet expansionism. And sure Russians were quick to sacrifice themselves against the Germans ... because they had little idea what the Germans would do to them but they KNEW what Stalin would do to them if they didn't fight. Stalin had killed some 30 million Russians pre WWII in order to consolidate Soviet Hegemony inside greater Russia and historians are divided as to whether Stalin was a force for good, whether a lot more than 30 million would have died if ethnic tensions across the country had been allowed to play out into revolutionary chaos. The point is, Stalin had turned into a monster or what I prefer to think of as Quantum Mechanical in nature . THAT is what Eisenhower could not understand ... even the American Civil War which so shaped US military and social traditions because of its terrible carnage, never knew the carnage perpetrated under Stalin in a freezing cold energy starved, overpopulated expanse of Russian dominion. No one in the US could have known , but they soon enough found out as Russia exploded the bomb and made it all too clear that any sign of US or British weakness meant obliteration.

The bottom line is that the German invasion of Russia merely pumped an already 'inverted' or stressed population to new heights and with a Soviet victory came a stimulated emission that drove the Soviets to expansionism for over 40 years. Russia was a source of 'quantum coherent' output and I don't think until now this fact has ever been appreciated. How could Eisenhower have known it?

The Fall of the Soviet Union seemed to coincide with a corresponding pumping of the US psyche with Talk of 'Star Wars' and 'evil empires'. The Soviets could no longer expand in the face of Reagan's big spending when they were 'pumped out', out of roubles and beginning to enjoy the susta

fredmoore - 09:14pm Jun 8, 2003 EST (# 12409 of 12415)

Continued ....

The Fall of the Soviet Union seemed to coincide with a corresponding pumping of the US psyche with Talk of 'Star Wars' and 'evil empires'. The Soviets could no longer expand in the face of Reagan's big spending when they were 'pumped out', out of roubles and beginning to enjoy the sustainability and comforts that western and Soviet technologies were providing.

And the BIG POINT is that the game isn't over. Any country under the right conditions of repression and 'entropic' starvation can turn QM. Especially now with the advent of cheaply available WMD's. The only solution to a sustainable future that makes any sense amongst the awesome complexities of current Geopolitics is a Kyoto Alternative Energy Protocol which I have described on this forum. All other measures, no matter how well or 'Kofi' or 'Condi' intended, would be like putting bandaids on chicken pox.

almarst2002 - 12:19am Jun 9, 2003 EST (# 12410 of 12415)

Blow to Blair over 'mobile labs' - Saddam's trucks were for balloons, not germs - http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,973196,00.html

The Bush administration distorted intelligence and presented conjecture as evidence to justify a U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a retired intelligence official who served during the months before the war. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-2762073,00.html

Allies call Iraq's 'political climate' unfit for democracy - http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030606-102009-5225r.htm

HAHAHAHEHEHEHOOOO!

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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  / Missile Defense