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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 - 01:06pm Oct 15, 2002 EST (# 4904 of 4916)
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.

Perhaps they did - - but it might still be worth more checking.

But the behavior of Iraq is not the only thing that needs checking - to reasonable closure.

The Iraquis and other Islamic states might be more willing to submit to some checking - if other checking was done as well.

There are many things about the behavior of the United States that ought to be checked, too. People representing many nations at the UN know and care about some of them.

If people with real power (especially people with power in nation states the United States has to listen to) asked for checking on some key points -- it would happen.

commondata 10/15/02 12:13pm has an eloquent chain of "maybe if" s.

Maybe if some key things that are already obvious, already bothering a lot of people - were actually checked - people could then sort things out so that the world would be a much safer, more comfortable, and more hopeful place.

Checking implies a certain amount of distrust - some reservations, small or large - about both honesty and judgement. Real people, in their real lives - live along a continuum of trust and distrust - and have to. Why not acknowledge it?

If Iraquis sometimes lie and evade, 100% American leaders - even religious leaders - even Republicans - can do so as well.

Bush 2000 Adviser Offered To Use Clout to Help Enron by Joe Stephens Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 17, 2002

" Just before the last presidential election, Bush campaign adviser Ralph Reed offered to help Enron Corp. deregulate the electricity industry by working his "good friends" in Washington and by mobilizing religious leaders and pro-family groups . . . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22380-2002Feb16.html

This piece on Reed is well worth reading, because it sets out technical and social reasons why it can take power, and authority - to get even "easy" things checked - and not only in Iraq.

4858 lchic 10/14/02 6:15am

" "FOR 13 days starting Oct. 16, 1962, "the world stood like a playing card on edge," as Norman Mailer put it, while President Kennedy and his closest aides faced down the threat of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Forty years later, Washington and the world are again on the brink http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/13/weekinreview/13PURD.html?8hpist

Maybe if there's some honesty and courage from some leaders - (and not only American leaders) we could step back from that brink - and sort out many things, in the interest of the whole world.

Maybe if people think about where the world now is, they might get scared enough to think straight, and ask the questions that need to be asked.

gisterme - 04:00pm Oct 15, 2002 EST (# 4905 of 4916)

commondata 10/15/02 7:38am

"...- A new alternative energy strategy, aimed eventually at weaning the west off oil..."

Great idea. I've suggested the same myself.

"...No longer would the US and others need to manipulate the Middle East just to safeguard their petrol supply..."

Ummm, if by "manipulation" you mean private US companies building the middle eatern oil fields in the first place just to have the nationalized, if you mean paying the going price for every drop of middle eastern oil used in the US then I'd have to agree we're manipulating. However, it seems to me, that once I pay for the gas in my tank, it's mine...no longer the property of the supplier. Likewise with the crude oil supply. Once we buy their oil, it's no longer theirs...they took the money.

Of course, if the alternative energy solution that we'd both like to see came to pass, that would be the end of any vestages of wealth in the middle east. After all, by far the largest source of income in the OPEC nations is from selling their oil.

Commdata, if you think that buying oil from middle eastern nations is manipulation, how much more would you complain if those places became bankrupt because noboby bought their oil?

"...They could let the peoples of the Arab world choose their own governments for once..."

Let's see...Saudi Arabia is a kingdom and I don't think the US selected the monarch. Iran? I doubt you'd argue that the theocracy going on there was installed by the US. How about Kuwait? That's a kingdom too, I think. The US preserved that from invasion by Saddam in 1991. How about Iraq? Are you implying that the US installed Saddam? I believe most of the middle eastern oil reserves lie in those places.

"...- The US would move its troops out of Saudi Arabia, healing one of the sores Bin-Laden most likes to inflame: the presence of "infidels" on holy Muslim soil..."

Last I heard, the sole reason that US troops are in Saudi Arabia is because they are there by the invitation of the Saudi Government...specifically to protect Saudi Arabia from its tyrannical neighbor. I'm sure that both Saddam and Ben Laden would be delighted to see US troops leave Saudi Arabia so that they could overthrow the monarchy and install a new government there. However, once the monarchy were gone there would no doubt be a power struggle between those two to see whether the government was a secular dictatorship ala Iraq or a taliban-style theocracy. I don't see the Saudi people having much choice in either scenario.

My own feeling is that there is an alliance between Al Qaida and Saddam perhaps somewhat like the alliance that Hitler and Stalin arrived at wrt Poland. You know, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". The problem with that is that as soon as the alliance no longer suits the needs of one party or the other it will be broken.

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