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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.

wanderer85us - 10:18am Aug 7, 2002 EST (#3537 of 3545)
You can't know your limits, until you push yourself to the limit.

Israel keeps 90 percent of Palestianians from getting to their jobs - i.e. they are unemployed.

Is this state sponsored terrorism?

mazza9 - 10:48am Aug 7, 2002 EST (#3538 of 3545)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Robert:

The entire quote is: "Until the barbaric regimes display civilied behavior they may receive civilized actions up to a point. Then let the bombs fall where they may,especially Iraq!"

The quid pro quo of any diplomatic discussion is mutual respect and accomodation. Iraq has not demonstrated this. They ignore the UN resolutions and have fired weapons at UN approved flights in the designated no fly zones, AND the bomb fall. Richard Pearl's body is coming home. According to his kidnappers he was guilty of being Jewish. That was sufficient cause for his brutal murder. The Abu Sayeff of the Phillipines abduct and eventually murder religious missionaries who are guilty of caring for their fellow man. Such barbarism, eventually, can only be dealt with in a manner which they understand since reason and logic seem to be beyond their comprehension.

Nobody enjoys the "old stick in the eye." This forum was quite silent on Aug 6th. Where were the "Hiroshima" crowd? I fully expected the usual invective about US this and poor old Japanese that. There is never any mention of the Rape of Nanking, The Bataan Death March, and the rule of the samuraii sword, (you know the benevolent beheadings! alittle sarcasm)

"But I left wondering. Suppose the Nazis had won the war". According to lchic the Nazis, (USofA), did win the war.

I mentioned that I would rather that everyone could sit down and discuss the issues peacably. But as we approach the 1st anniversary of 9-11 where is the moderated behavior of those who would destroy our civilzation?

LouMazza

wrcooper - 12:21pm Aug 7, 2002 EST (#3539 of 3545)

ARMS TRADE RESOURCE CENTER

Axis of Influence:
Behind the Bush Administration's Missile Defense Revival

A World Policy Institute Special Report
by Michelle Ciarrocca and William D. Hartung
July 2002

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In his first year and one half in office, President George W. Bush has moved full speed ahead on his campaign pledge to deploy a multi-tiered missile defense system as soon as possible. The Bush administration has not only increased missile defense funding by billions of dollars; it has also turned the international arms control regime upside down by withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. Despite ongoing questions about whether defending against ballistic missiles should be the nation?s top security priority in the wake of the low-tech, high casualty terror attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in September of 2001, the administration?s determination to develop and deploy a missile defense system has not wavered.

While it may be too early to judge whether the Bush administration?s approach of throwing more resources at missile defense and eliminating testing limits will yield better results than the efforts undertaken by prior administrations, it is not too early to raise questions. Deploying an unproven, multi-billion dollar system without fully assessing its costs, capabilities, and likely impacts on patterns of global nuclear proliferation could result in serious long-term damage to United States security. To make sure that doesn?t happen, it is essential that the Bush administration?s ambitious missile defense program be subjected to independent assessments within the Pentagon, in the Congress, and by an outside panel of scientific and technical experts with no economic stake in missile defense development or deployment. Without this oversight, the program is liable to take on a life of its own, driven by ideological imperatives and economic self-interest rather than an objective analysis of how best to protect the United States from a nuclear attack.

Major Findings and Recommendations

Finding 1 ? Conflicts of Interest (I): Ties to Major Missile Defense Contractors ? The missile defense lobby no longer needs to rely only on its ability to influence the federal government from the outside. Missile defense advocates have staged a virtual friendly takeover of the Bush administration. Thirty-two major appointees of the administration are former executives, consultants, or major shareholders of top weapons contractors. Seventeen Bush administration appointees had ties to major (or soon-to-be-major) missile defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon prior to joining the Bush administration, including top policy makers in the White House, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the Air Force, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy?s National Nuclear Security Administration, the State Department and the Justice Department.

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wrcooper - 12:21pm Aug 7, 2002 EST (#3540 of 3545)

CONTINUED

Finding 2 ? Conflicts of Interest (II): Ties to Corporate-Backed Conservative Think Tanks ? The Bush administration has cast an extremely narrow net in seeking to fill national security posts dealing with sensitive issues like missile defense and nuclear weapons policy, relying heavily on a small circle of pro-missile defense, anti-arms control think tanks that don?t even represent the full range of perspectives on these matters in the Republican party, much less the views of experts in Democratic or independent circles. The Center for Security Policy (CSP), a corporate-financed conservative advocacy group with a long history of distorting the facts to make its case for the immediate deployment of missile defenses, boasts no fewer than 22 former advisory board members or close associates in the Bush administration. CSP alumni in key posts include its former chairman of the Board, Douglas Feith, who now serves as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; Secretary of the Air Force James Roche; Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim; Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle; and Defense Science Board Chairman William Schneider. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is also a long-time friend and financial supporter of CSP, as well as a former board member of Empower America, another well-connected conservative think tank that ran misleading ads against missile defense critics in the 1998 elections.

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