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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 - 04:11pm Jan 25, 2002 EST (#11050 of 11062)

If one feels strongly that terrorism is wrong - as I do, then indiscriminate murder of tens of thousands, millions, or hundreds of millions of people is VERY wrong.

And that is what nukes do.

We need to guard against them -- in ways that can work - - and work to eliminate them, in ways that can work.

I've been reading Memoirs: A Twentieth Century Journey in Science and Politics by Edward Teller, with Judith Shoolery

fascinating stuff. One can understand how the things were built, and why. But they are obsolete menaces, and we should take the damn things down. And not try to fool orselves into thinking we can immunize ourselves against them, in the immediate or any longer term future, with anti-ballistic missiles, just because Teller championed them.

lchic - 04:18pm Jan 25, 2002 EST (#11051 of 11062)

Teller

rshow55 - 04:31pm Jan 25, 2002 EST (#11052 of 11062)

Nuclear weapons make mass murder easy - too easy. Though not entirely easy. You could know this too - especially if you'd seen the faces, and the rigidity of the missileers, of all ranks, in CNN's Special Report, REHEARSING DOOMSDAY ...which aired Sunday, October 15, 2000 at 10 p.m. EDT. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/democracy/nuclear/stories/nukes/index.html

MD2638 rshowalter 4/26/01 8:33pm ... MD 2639 rshowalter 4/26/01 8:34pm
MD2640 rshowalter 4/26/01 8:35pm ... MD2641rshowalter 4/26/01 8:38pm
MD2642 rshowalter 4/26/01 8:39pm ...

I thought there was something specially sensitive, and specially courageous, about Bob Kerrey, by political standards, when he wrote ARMED TO EXCESS ... NYT , OpEd, March 2

lchic - 06:20pm Jan 25, 2002 EST (#11053 of 11062)

tell·er (tlr) n.

One who tells: a teller of tall tales.

A ________employee who receives and pays out money.

A person appointed to count votes _______

mazza9 - 11:16pm Jan 25, 2002 EST (#11054 of 11062)
Louis Mazza

RShow55:

Machetes make mass murder easy. Ask yourself, during the past 50 years how many people have be murdered by nuclear weapons?

0

Now measure that against the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the tribal murders of Rwanda, and the the murder and slavery in the Sudan.

I believe that your angst is mis-directed.

LouMazza

lchic - 01:08am Jan 26, 2002 EST (#11055 of 11062)

How many people have been 'murdered' by the Nuclear Industry -- Lots -- but they try to hide it in the Statistics.

The Nuclear energy industry - no buyers when powerstations go on the market, standards are poor, neighbouring countries are concerned re pollution and their water ways, nuclear workers tend to be recycled through the Electricity industry so that the 'cancer' can not be directly attributed.

How many people working with 'nuclear' munitions are actually wear the death_mask of radiation cancer .. many -- yet one can be sure it's 'hidden' in vague statistics!

lchic - 07:34am Jan 26, 2002 EST (#11056 of 11062)

Kinetic Warheads for Dummies!

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