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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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almarst2003 - 09:03pm Sep 8, 2003 EST (# 13572 of 13576)

The war on Saddam has made the U.S. less secure, say foreign-policy experts. - http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/07/31/security/index.html

The president's 16-word stretcher about African uranium was nothing compared to his lie about the links between Osama and Saddam. - http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/07/24/iraq_qaida/index.html

almarst2003 - 09:08pm Sep 8, 2003 EST (# 13573 of 13576)

A nation of scared sheep - http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2003/07/09/lying/index_np.html

Why is it that Americans have given Bush a pass on his seemingly misleading and trumped-up evidence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, when they pilloried Clinton and Stewart for far less devastating transgressions?

rshow55 - 08:36am Sep 9, 2003 EST (# 13574 of 13576)
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.

Was the kid who said the obvious thing being "fair and balanced?" - or loyal?

The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Chrisian Anderson http://www.deoxy.org/emperors.htm

Those are questions that even editors of the New York Times are likely to have problems with - if they think about them. Sometimes I suspect they do. H. L. Menken had a number of things to say about the kind of thought applied - some of them funny.

Something basic, though not funny - is that matters of logical structure and weights are both involved - and that the difference between weights and logical structure needs to be recognized.

This statement is "obvious" - but is it loyal? If the point is understood - a great deal of team persuasion is subject to new questions.

We should check questions of fact - and decent balance - fit to circumstances. If leaders of nation states wanted facts checked - it would happen. By conventions that say "statements of leaders can't be questioned" - it won't.

I say that it is loyal.

What can the statement indented above reasonably mean? People are stumped - including high-shots at the NYT.

13439-41 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.wxECbZdJEuv.8043167@.f28e622/15130

I think this board is making a difference - and almarst's involvement is part of that. In March 2001 - I had posted some things - and the NYT thread moderator commended my postings -and said to wait for someone else to come. Almarst appeared. I think his contributions have been interesting and distinguished since - though we often disagree.

A couple of months into our discussion on this thread, I posted this, which I'm still proud to look at. http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_md4000s/md4125.htm

there has to be more talking, within countries, because that's needed for comfort -- and because that's needed for productive and safe talking between countries.

The US needs to find reasons to go on, without having to make up or manufacture new fears and new enemies.

As for Russia, she has plenty of big concerns, plenty of things to worry about, without holding on to deep, wrenching fears that have done so much to blight the lives of the Russian people - when the reasons for these fears are either obsolete, or when these reasons can, with moderate work and care, be put aside.

rshowalter - 09:40pm May 21, 2001 EST (#4129 of 4133) Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Before I respond again, I'm going to spend some time re-reading an essay by C.P. Snow -- just to see if some hopes that made sense to Snow in 1959, but fizzled then, might make sense now, and might actually work.

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