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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 - 02:13pm Mar 10, 2003 EST (# 9753 of 9763)

rshow55 - 12:40pm Mar 10, 2003 EST (# 9751 of ...) http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.5t0cawK557D.1096025@.f28e622/11293

"...Perfect consistency isn't going to be possible - but we have to have clear reasons for what is said and done..."

I'd say again that the reason we don't have "clearer reasons" WRT Saddam's WMD, i.e. all the intellgence informaton available from Iraq, is that to reveal that information now, while Saddam is still in power, would be to place a death sentence on the intelligence sources.

I think the details and history of all this will come out in due time, perhaps even in the form of first-hand accounts. So I'm sure that what's now hidden will be revealed. It just won't be until after lives of helpful people are no longer at stake. I'm willing to "know a little less for now" about how certain things are known in order to save some lives. I trust that President Bush and Secretary Powell know of what they speak with regards to Saddam's WMD.

Considering the way that certain nations are supporting Saddam, even betting their political farms on him, why should they be trusted with information that would reveal intelligence sources inside Iraq? If such data were revealed to France for instance, Saddam would surely get it right away...because stopping the flow of information out of Iraq would obviously serve French interests. The ever-arrogant French government is already doing everything in their power to extend Saddam's regime. They don't care about the lives of a few spies...after all, they apparantly want the carnage that already goes on daily in Iraq to continue. It will be interesting to find out why. To me, that's a far greater mystery than details of current intelligence about Saddam's WMD and how they are known.

I think there's going to be a very SHOCKING story that reveals a hidden relationship between Saddam and Chirac at the end of all this. Chirac is acting as if he is handcuffed to Saddam and desperatly trying to keep Saddam from falling over the edge of a high cliff. We'll see.

I'm sure the biggest revelations from inside Iraq will come from it's own current scientists once they can speak freely without fear of having their loved-ones slaughtered. They could already be the principal source of hidden information that's damning to Saddam and apparantly feared by Chirac.

almarst2003 - 02:16pm Mar 10, 2003 EST (# 9754 of 9763)

Iraqi civilians dust off their firearms, construct oil-filled trenches and prepare for civil unrest. - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0310/p01s03-woiq.html

almarst2003 - 02:17pm Mar 10, 2003 EST (# 9755 of 9763)

rshow55 - 12:40pm Mar 10, 2003 EST (# 9751 of ...)

You trust the government much more then I do.

almarst2003 - 02:43pm Mar 10, 2003 EST (# 9756 of 9763)

Why not invite on some voices that are not Pentagon-approved?"

Her 9 a.m. magazine show mixes investigative scoops (a recent report detailed how the Bush administration quashed an FBI investigation into Saudi Arabian funding of terrorist organizations)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2307-2003Mar9.html

Robert,

If this does not fly in your face, what does?

almarst2003 - 02:48pm Mar 10, 2003 EST (# 9757 of 9763)

The group, the Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, was founded in 1997. Among its supporters were three Republican former officials who were sitting out the Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz. In open letters to Clinton and GOP congressional leaders the next year, the group called for "the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power" and a shift toward a more assertive U.S. policy in the Middle East, including the use of force if necessary to unseat Saddam.

And in a report just before the 2000 election that would bring Bush to power, the group predicted that the shift would come about slowly, unless there were "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/DailyNews/pnac_030310.html

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