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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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rshow55 - 10:13am Jan 15, 2003 EST (# 7659 of 7679)
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 misspoke - I intended "f*ck" - - which is often softend idiomatically to phrases like "to f*rt around with"

- back after breakfast - just looked in for a few seconds.

rshow55 - 11:37am Jan 15, 2003 EST (# 7660 of 7679)
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, I appreciate your point of view, in many ways - but I choose not to close with you, or fight with you - just now. I'll try to later - if it seems right. But right now, to close with you would be disorderly, unsymmetric, and disorderly from points of view I've been working on. I don't have the luxury of explosive indignation. Whatever the US does - it has to be the US doing it, and the Bush administration doing it - and stances predictated on detestation of the United States aren't helpful.

7645 <a href="/webin/WebX?14@93.cNfJajEw0tf^302050@.f28e622/9169">rshow55 1/14/03 6:19pm</a> includes this:

"We need to take time - and there is time. We need to have enough different lines of communication that ambiguous or muddled or stupid messages can be identified to reasoable probability.

. U.N. Chief Says It Is Too Early to Consider War With Iraq By JULIA PRESTON http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/international/middleeast/14CND-NATI.html

"I disagree formally - Annan is using words awkwardly. It is certainly time to think HARD about war with Iraq - in many, many ways - every which way - so we can learn enough to avoid it.

I stand by every word of that. I believe that Annan, reading my text, would have read it as support of the objectives he was pursuing.

Things are difficult. For the United States, for the UN, for North Korea, for Iraq, and for other nations of the world from many points of view.

Wizard's Chess http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/opinion/05SUN1.html

Right now the world must seem like a potentially deadly game of three-dimensional chess to the the Bush administration.

It looks to me like a potentially deadly "game" that is at a dangerous stage, but that looks to me like it can be shaping up to solutions that save many, many, many lives - both by avoiding unnecessary deaths - and by permitting better lives. I think the diplomats who actually have to speak and act are acting and speaking pretty carefully - and in many ways well.

Korea has some things backward - but is moderating its rhetoric to a significant extent. I hope people are patient - and that moving toward Bush's excellent proposals can be done in much smaller steps - and enough of them so that Korea and the US have a reasonable chance of making an agreement. Steps that are too large - even if they suggest superb endpoints - are usually unstable in a highly charged situation. The same end point - achieved after a series of smaller steps - can be very stable. I think Bush's proposal was excellent - but it will have to serve as an objective to be reached in small and oscillatory steps.

North Korea Calls Offer of U.S. Talks 'Deceptive Drama' By REUTERS Filed at 10:50 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north.html

When two enemies are "feeling each other out" - treachery and peacemaking look alike - and under these circumstances, elements of "deceptive drama" are not only understandable - they can be necessary. From where they are - both N. Korea and the US may be doing things pretty right, just now - if they remember that some fights - about "principles" can be unresolvable - when the things that matter can be entirely satisfactory to both sides.

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