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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 - 06:48pm Dec 31, 2002 EST (# 7171 of 7176)
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.

Mostly because it has been difficult to get to closure on some key problems with the whole Arab world - - and partly, my guess is, because Bush is moving step by step from previous stances.

I was really pleased by what David Stout wrote in Bush More Hopeful for Diplomacy With Korea Than Iraq http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/international/31CND-PREX.html

"WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 — President Bush said today that he was still hopeful that the confrontations with Iraq and North Korea could be resolved through diplomacy rather than war, though he seemed to express deeper concern over Iraq.

. . .

. . .

"Mr. Bush did say that Americans should feel safer now than they did a year ago, and that they would be safer still in 2003 — notwithstanding the tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the Iraq region.

That seems right to me. I'm assuming that US diplomats, and other diplomats, keep at it - and stay as reasonable as they've been and as diligent.

I'd be more optimistic if the press (not only in the US, but elsewhere, too) looked at their conventions - in terms of new insights about "connecting the dots" - and rethought some of their positions about "old news" - and about the work of collecting "the dots" so that they can be connected. Now, journalistic output, some superb, is part of an ongoing torrent - and people who need to make judgements from an entire context have to work very hard. With the internet the mechanics of collecting the dots has become far easier than before.

The process costs some labor - and if information is to be clear enough to put before a jury (and for decision, that ought th be the standard) - there needs to be better collection, and better umpiring, than there is anywhere today.

( I won't bother to claim an umpire role for myself - for one thing - I'm trying to collect about forty million dollars for some old investors, and some money for myself, and might be tempted to toady to the administration for that reason. For another, I've said a few things that the American press, with their customary distortions - might perhaps construe as hostile to President Bush.)

The United States is strong enough, deep enough - to face up to tough questions.

I was glad to see http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/international/31CND-PREX.html , and think that Americans, and people of other nations, will have a good chance of being safer than before, and more prosperous, too, if we keep at it.

In January 2001 I wrote Fred, a man gisterme says he doesn't know. But GWB does know Fred. Here's what I wrote Fred.

" My own view, now, is that we may be in the middle of the cleanest, neatest, fairest, most beautiful, most bloodless resolution of a paradigm conflict in the history of science. That would be something we could all be proud of, and, in my opinion, might set a precedent that would be of long service to the United States of America."

That prediction referred to specific circumstances, and turned out to be dead wrong, mostly because I couldn't get debriefed. Maybe I'm wrong this time, too.

lunarchick - 06:53pm Dec 31, 2002 EST (# 7172 of 7176)

:)

The Australian | "" The year just passed was a stinker, arguably our worst since Japan threatened in 1942, yet people still came together to mark its passing.

Alert but not alarmed – this year's version of comfortable and relaxed – they were unwilling to suspend their animation.

Brisbane partied as it always does and Darwin shared its celebration with 800 visiting US military.

^{http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,5774811%5E2702,00.html}

almarst2002 - 07:10pm Dec 31, 2002 EST (# 7173 of 7176)

Hundreds of Iraqi children led by an actress marched through Baghdad streets on New Year's Eve chanting anti-war slogans and releasing white pigeons into the air. Some cried, ``Down with America, enemy of peace.'' - http://www.boston.com/dailynews/365/world/New_Year_s_Eve_in_Baghdad_Peac:.shtml

almarst2002 - 07:17pm Dec 31, 2002 EST (# 7174 of 7176)

On Thursday, it will be one month since the UN weapons inspectors began working in Iraq. Over this period, they have inspected over 150 facilities, and found no traces of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Mind that the first examined facilities were those 14 enterprises mentioned in Tony Blair's Declaration and the CIA report as having relation to the WMD production. http://english.pravda.ru/world/2002/12/26/41415.html

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