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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.

almarst2002 - 04:24pm Dec 16, 2002 EST (# 6760 of 6779)

mazza9 12/16/02 3:56pm

Do you remember the say: "First do NO HARM"?

almarst2002 - 04:34pm Dec 16, 2002 EST (# 6761 of 6779)

Mazza,

The people who can forgive ara admirable.

The people who can easily forgive themselve - are not.

Our Sen MacCain still fumes over lost war in Vietnam and bad treatment he received in captivity. He should know better. The bombing of Vietnam was not comarable with attack on WTC and Pentagon. But he was treated still better the those in Guantanamo.

How come the worst incarnations of human beings end up at the stearing wells of so many so-called "civilized" countries, including this one? How come, Truman did not appologised for hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think none did.

mazza9 - 04:54pm Dec 16, 2002 EST (# 6762 of 6779)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Alarmst:

Once again you choose to rewrite history to make your point. what do you know of the treatment of sen McCain while at the Hanoi Hilton? Were you there. The beatings with fan belts and 2x4s. The starvation and death. The failure to provide health care. I've heard the stories of prisoners having to pull out rotten teeth with a rusty nail of palsied digit. Of course, you have been to Guantanamo and can testify to the ill treatment that is going on there.

What a load of hockey pucks! You lie and think that you can get away with it!

Why apologize for Hiroshima? Many Japanese and American lives were saved by not having to invade the homeland islands. I saw an article in which an elderly Japanese lady spoke of the training she received as a teenager. When the US forces waded ashore she and her fellow young women were going to Banzai charge with fixed bamboo spears! The psychological effect on the American troops who would hesitate to fire on women armed with spears was supposed to insure the glorious victory of the Imperial Empire. Fooey on you! You haven't a clue!

rshow55 - 07:42pm Dec 16, 2002 EST (# 6763 of 6779)
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.

I've had occasional disagreements with the Bush administration - and concerns about their respect for facts, and human consequences - but I'm encouraged by developments reported here, and respect President Bush's choice of a medical doctor - a cardiologist - as a preference of his for Majority leader, if Senator Lott is replaced by a vote of his colleagues:

G.O.P. Leaders in Senate Call Meeting on Trent Lott's Fate By CARL HULSE http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/16/politics/16CND_LOTT.html

Republicans close to the president said Mr. Bush had expected his remarks to undercut and perhaps unseat Mr. Lott. But they also said the White House's first choice for his replacement as Senate majority leader was Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, not Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma . .

I'd be very glad to have a cardiologist as majority leader of the U.S. Senate. For plain reasons - including some selfish reasons.

Cardiologists have watched people die - and made decisions, hoping to prolong life, and watched life end. Many times. Cardiologists care about the #1 cause of death in industrialized countries - ventricullar fibrillation - a disease with etiology that would be reinterpreted in the event that I'm right on a matter involving differential equations (and the effective inductance of neurons, and heart muscle fibers.)

If I'm wrong - Frist might well be motivated to make an example of me. But if I'm right on the technical matter - where so many lives are at stake - he'd be in a position to help me prove it.

I think it would be fine thing to have a medical doctor - and a heart surgeon, who knows the animal consequences of mistakes first hand - in a powerful position in the United States.

When it is a matter of life and death - - right answers matter - and checking matters.

Frist must know that, not only intellectually, but viscerally, too.

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