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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.

gisterme - 03:40am Feb 21, 2003 EST (# 9164 of 9173)

lchic - 03:29am Feb 21, 2003 EST (# 9163 of...) http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.fXGTaUDU3QX.1793777@.f28e622/10689

"Almast exists in the cyber dimension"

Tell me something I don't already know, lchic. Isn't almarst a lot like all those George Johnson monikers you claim. I think so.

fredmoore - 07:08am Feb 21, 2003 EST (# 9165 of 9173)

Gisterme ...

It's nice to be appreciated ... thanks.

In the words of Jackie Gleeson

'How sweet it is!'

Also, with regard to P.O. sucking vampires: "Send em to the moon, Alice!" ...

rshow55 - 07:26am Feb 21, 2003 EST (# 9166 of 9173)
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.

5362 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.fXGTaUDU3QX.1793777@.f28e622/6722 includes some things worth repeating, I think, as we consider the divine inspiration of the Bush administration:

Bush 2000 Adviser Offered To Use Clout to Help Enron Joe Stephens Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 17, 2002; Page A01 b http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A22380-2002Feb16&notFound=true

" 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. . .

"In public policy," he wrote, " it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard -- and by whom."

The whole of Stephens piece bears reading - it has a certain grim family resemlence to a great deal of other "persuasive technique" the Bush administration shows.

The New Jersey Ethicist by BILL KELLER http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/21/opinion/21KELL.html

" Allow me to quote my favorite moral philosopher, Karl Rove. Remember what he told Republican candidates back in June? "Focus on war." (O.K., he's no troubadour, but the man gets to the point.) D'you think he meant, "Let's all focus on the war and have a moment of silence and feel blue?" Of course not, knucklehead, he meant, "Take the war, and run the wussy Democrats into the ground with it."

Some responsible politicians, of both parties, ought to be asking careful questions, now, about motivations, and consequences. Leaders of other nation states should be asking them too.

Consequences matter. This poem is a fine warning, that fits today.

Mesopotamia .....1917 by Rudyard Kipling http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee74d94/3625

I'm glad that, after an absence from the board, gisterme has rejoined us.

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