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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 - 05:37pm Jul 14, 2003 EST (# 13015 of 13026)
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.

"Eight times [Mr. Bush] interchanged the war on Iraq with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," wrote The New York Observer, "and eight times he was unchallenged." The unproven but constantly reiterated White House claim of a Qaeda-Saddam Hussein connection has now become a settled fact, not to be questioned at a press conference any more than any "Chicago" reporter challenges the mythical pregnancy Billy Flynn flogs in his propaganda campaign to save Roxie Hart.

"The movie's press conference ends with Billy Flynn's message spreading from the servile reporters' lips directly to the next morning's paper: "THEY BOTH REACHED FOR THE GUN" is the banner headline we see rolling off the press. At Mr. Bush's press conference, under the guise of "news," CNN flashed the White House's chosen messages in repetitive rotation on the bottom of the screen while the event was still going on — "People of good will are hoping for peace" and " `My job is to protect America.' " No less obliging were the puppets at CNN's rival, Fox News, whose Greta Van Susteren sharply observed: "What I liked tonight was that in prime time he said to the American people, my job is to protect the American people." Though Mr. Bush usually appears on TV in front of White House backdrops stamped with the sound bite he wants to pummel into our brains, this time he didn't even have to bother. As he knew — and said, in his one moment of truth that night — the entire show was "scripted." It has been from the start.

"That "Chicago" should catch the wave of an American moment in 2003 is remarkable when you consider that its roots go back to a Broadway play of 1926. Coolidge was in office when it had its premiere at the Music Box Theater under the direction of George Abbott — more than a year before the arrival of the most famous stage incarnation of Chicago city rooms, "The Front Page." "Chicago" was the first and only durable work by Maurine Watkins, a one-time Chicago Tribune reporter who had covered the Leopold-Loeb case and served as a movie critic. She was not enamored of her former profession. "They're awful dumb, reporters. Never get anything right," says the jail matron in a line that is paraphrased by Billy Flynn in Bill Condon's current screenplay.

"When Watkins's play was reborn as a Bob Fosse musical on Broadway in 1975, it was seen as reflecting the cynicism of Watergate; the onstage band played a sardonic "Battle Hymn of the Republic" at the finale. When the musical was revived in 1996 — in the production still running on Broadway — Billy Flynn was identified with Johnnie Cochran and Roxie with O. J. Simpson. This year Miramax, the studio that produced the film "Chicago," is trumpeting the movie's social relevance in one of the relentless commercials of its Oscar campaign. The movie is "all about American institutions being corrupt," says its director, Rob Marshall, as we see black-and-white photographs of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and of the disgraced Richard Nixon's departure from the White House.

". . . .But if the film is a "flimflam flummox," to quote its anthem, "Razzle Dazzle," that stylistic shell game could not be in more apt unison with the cynical content.

"It's hard to picture George W. Bush fretting about the fate of the Academy Awards, let alone seeing "Chicago," but he knows his westerns. Last weekend Vice President Cheney spoke admiringly to Tim Russert of how the president "cuts to the chase." In the Azores last Sunday, Mr. Bush instructed his erstwhile allies to "show your cards when you're playing poker."

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Lies have consequences.

lchic - 05:43pm Jul 14, 2003 EST (# 13016 of 13026)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Probably 99% of heads are fine ... but it's that 1% of minds toting units of semi-automatics that ....

Changing outlooks is changing minds .... how to get everyone swiming with the new tide ....

Seeing new futures ... new opportunities ... a place for them and their offspring .... a non-violent FUTURE

mazza9 - 07:25pm Jul 14, 2003 EST (# 13017 of 13026)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Getting back to missile defense, it appears that atmospheric testing finds Krypton 95 over North Korea. This is strong evidence of fuel rod reprocessing for plutonium. There's only one natural response.

We surrender to the North and anoint Robert Showalter as Gaulieter for life with Le Chic as his consort. Only then can truth, justice and the other way be established.

Funny joke, huh!

lchic - 08:32pm Jul 14, 2003 EST (# 13018 of 13026)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Iran announced a significant oil find - 38b barrels - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3065913.stm

Russian & China want Iranian oil www.iranoilgas.com Log In

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