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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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lchic - 08:52pm Oct 15, 2002 EST (# 4916 of 4924)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Showalter : truth's out and about (see next posts)

rshow55 - 09:09pm Oct 15, 2002 EST (# 4917 of 4924)
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.

gisterme 10/15/02 5:30pm - - the tests show that jobs that are easy compared to realistic jobs can be done.

They show nothing at all about any realistic threat - - just what one would expect for a boondoggle.

rshow55 - 09:13pm Oct 15, 2002 EST (# 4918 of 4924)
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.

commondata 10/15/02 7:01pm

"Follow the trail of blood you've left back through the recent past in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Honduras, Chile ...

Plenty of blood - but actions that look different to me - depending on whether they happened before the fall of the USSR, or afterwards.

Where do we go from here?

How do we stop shedding so much innocent blood - and do so in ways that can actually work.

A big question, to me, is how do we satisfy Eurpean questions, and Russian questions - - as well as questions from the Islamic world?

What means justify what ends now?

. . .

One concern involves the falsification of data. I've been much concerned with checking - and that is a subject treated carefully in today's Science Times section - which includes these articles:

On Scientific Fakery and the Systems to Catch It By KENNETH CHANG http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/science/15FRAU.html?8isc

At Lawrence Berkeley, Physicists Say a Colleague Took Them for a Ride By George Johnson http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/15/science/physical/15ELEM.html

There is also a fine interactive Feature: Painting the Mice

. . . The Guardian Thread Psychwarfare, Casablanca . . . and terror http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/281 is data - it is a record - and it has been altered today. I'm supposed to be the only person who can delete my own posts - and this posting was deleted - for reasons that I think may be significant. (I wouldn't have thought to delete the posting #219 - July 25, 2001 - but can see why some people might want to.) Because of the deletion - the posting bears repeating here - with the references it cites. Somebody cares about this posting, and cares a good deal, or they would not have been deleted. :

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense