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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.

lchic - 05:21am Jul 24, 2002 EST (#3262 of 3327)

NAZI training manual - US foreign policy Eighties

The jury decided that Carlos Casanova and Jose Guillermo Garcia, both former defence ministers, ignored widespread acts of brutality against civilians during the civil war that raged in El Salvador from 1979 to 1992.

Both men were trained by the US military at its notorious School of the Americas in Georgia where torture manuals were used.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=317855

Mauricio, 50, a former professor who fled El Salvador after being tortured for two weeks by police in June 1983, told The Independent: "I have been waiting for this day in court for 20 years. Since I was released from prison I have been waiting for the day I would be able to come to court.

"There is no way I will be able to forget what happened. I believe that the trauma caused by torture is something you cannot forget."

he still suffers eyesight problems as a result of the beatings

Gonzalez was repeatedly raped by soldiers when she was eight months pregnant and her child died two months after it was born. She now works for an environmental organisation.

Mr Arce, who runs a community health clinic in Washington, is unable to perform surgery because of the so-called Chinese wire torture which numbed his arm.

lchic - 05:47am Jul 24, 2002 EST (#3263 of 3327)

Israeli human rights group say the army is no longer conducting proper investigations into civillian deaths. 3 times more Palestinians killed - than israeli. Soldiers can shoot whoever.
1/4 of the dead are children!

Soldiers shoot - before identifying target!
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/ Wed

wanderer85us - 07:08am Jul 24, 2002 EST (#3264 of 3327)
Bush and Cheney - inside traders - bad apples that need to be tossed out.

"We have never witnessed war being so much promoted in the US." "

Smirk has destabilized the world to push his own popularity polls up - but it still hasn't worked.

lchic - 07:12am Jul 24, 2002 EST (#3265 of 3327)

Bush raises $60m one lunch time for his election campaigne .... that's the equiv of ten days funding that's sent to Isreal ....

Wonder if 'who gave' is documented - not CEO's giving away shareholder money !

wrcooper - 10:50am Jul 24, 2002 EST (#3266 of 3327)

Bob Showalter:

Do I oppose or support President George W. Bush's missile defense program?

I've made a number of posts in this forum previously on the subject. You can check them to find out.

rshowalt - 11:27am Jul 24, 2002 EST (#3267 of 3327)

Can indeed. "You've" been against it. And asked some good questions.

MD3217 rshowalt 7/21/02 11:03am

I'm responding to questions as best I can, considering other committments and available equipment. What is most needed, I believe, is a format where things can be taken to closure - something much discussed on this thread. MD1076-77 rshow55 4/4/02 1:17pm

wrcooper - 11:35am Jul 24, 2002 EST (#3268 of 3327)

rshowalt 7/24/02 11:27am

Correct. I'm against it. Then why do you say I'm the same person as kalter, Lou Massa, and George Johnson? Are they all against the program, too? What is your "checked" evidence that leads you to conclude that we're one and the same person? That's a serious charge to make for someone who insists on checking facts before levelling accusations. What have you "checked" to confirm the charge?

rshowalt - 12:26pm Jul 24, 2002 EST (#3269 of 3327)

Just now the market is heading up, and I hope that it goes up a good ways. People need to think about the stability of the decisions that they make. Over time. In context. Partly, that's a matter of reasonably accounting issues economists have talked about a long time -- issues of external effects. After a while, you have to deal with them, if good solutions are to be found. Lies and deceptions have large and unpredictable external effects - they poison all sorts of things. Openness, on the other hand, tends to have positive external effects -- it helps people sort things out.

In the equity markets, stability comes from honest accounting, and reasonable, balanced bets based on available information that is true and reasonably balanced as part of a model.

We've made some progress towards getting that stability in the markets - and it seems likely that there will be more progress to come.

Many of the things that make the world inefficient, ugly, and dangerous could be made better with more honest accounting.

Some of the biggest problems are "simple" once one finally understands some key truths, which may be distasteful to look at. In The Great Divide http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/29/opinion/29KRUG.html , Paul Krugman suggests that we're at "the ending of an era of laxity."

To some extent, in ways that are a credit to the United States (and the New York Times) I think that's proven to be true.

But we've got a lot farther to go.

MD1805 rshow55 4/26/02 4:30pm

Markets hate uncertainty. That means that there are good reasons to "nail down" what can be checked. And good reasons to avoid muddle and deception when possible. I've had some problems with uncertainty myself.

Anyway, the markets won't listen to me, but I hope prices stabilize, and head up. Based on honest evaluations and valuations.

We could use some honest evaluations of probabilities and risks in a number of military areas, including missile defense.

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