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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 - 08:18am Jul 14, 2003 EST (# 13005 of 13007)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Rockefeller http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1335540.html

rshow55 - 10:23am Jul 14, 2003 EST (# 13006 of 13007)
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.

Fredmoore: Legitimacy is a big issue - and there's more to it than just the admonition

"If you attack a king, you have to kill him . . "

important as that is, both symobolically and literally.

It is also true that if you "kill a king" you have to have a way to substitute a reasonable order.

Am a "sickled over with a pale cast of thought?" - - maybe sometimes.

Shakespeare's Hamlet , Act V, Scene 2 offers a cautionary tale. Hamlet, Laertes, the Queen, the King - all die. Messily.

We need to do better than that.

But ideas and honor matter - and I'm glad that Rockefeller is showing courage and honesty. http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1335540.html

"It's just beyond me that she (Rice)didn't know about this, and that she has decided to make George Tenet the fall person. I think it's dishonorable."

. . . . Sen. Jay Rockefeller http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1335540.html

I think it is dishonorable, too.

Can we solve problems? I believe so. But carefully.

rshow55 - 11:04am Jul 14, 2003 EST (# 13007 of 13007)
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.

192 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.G4dSbBH1pis.0@.f28e622/226 - Lchic

ENRON

Former Enron employees like Laura Chapa, who worked as a software tester in Houston and is now struggling to find another job, say they believe they were tarnished by their association with the company http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/03/business/yourmoney/03ALLI.html

But for all these cases, there are available defenses that would never work in simpler crimes. Corporate defendants can argue not only that they are not the criminals, but also that a crime never took place. Try that in a liquor store robbery.

And prosecutors have to prove that defendants intended to defraud, not just that people lost their life savings by believing what they said. Money missing from the cash register is a crime; money missing from an investment might not be.

So corporate criminal cases often revolve around a concept called "professional reliance" — meaning that everything the executives did was first approved by accountants and lawyers, so there could not be the intent to commit a crime. Enron executives have repeatedly pointed to the approvals they received from Andersen in constructing the Byzantine partnerships that helped bring the company down.

EVEN white-collar prosecutions that seemed successful have been sabotaged by these problems.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/03/weekinreview/03EICH.html

The CIA the military-industrial complex at large are - and have long been - masters of these kinds of evasions.

To deal with these evasions effectively - facts have to be checked to closure.

That takes attention - and responsible power - effectively applied. The Democrats have a responsibility to ask questions - and the Republicans have a responsibility to clean up their act.

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