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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

applez0 - 04:17pm May 1, 2001 EST (#2901 of 2919)

rshowalter - Why are you printing these out? You can grab it and save it as docs on your computer: much more efficient storage & retrieval, and with fewer environmental problems.

llazard27 - 04:17pm May 1, 2001 EST (#2902 of 2919)

Where are our priorities? What is this administration thinking about? The more Bush talks the worse he sounds. Does this administration have a clue? I really don't want my hard earned "tax dollars" spent on something like this.

rshowalter - 04:21pm May 1, 2001 EST (#2903 of 2919)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

rshowalter 5/1/01 4:09pm

I'm superstitious -- and when I say things CIA may not like, my computer has a way of acting up -- so even with disk bakups from time to time -- I like paper. It is also nice for some crossreferencing.

applez0 - 04:30pm May 1, 2001 EST (#2904 of 2919)

Rshowalter - well, for a start, go UNIX...:) (sorry, old joke). Honestly, consider burning your stuff on CDs if you want a physical medium; alternately, consider an extra hard-drive, they're cheap enough nowadays.

As for cross-referencing, hand-helds are getting quite good these days...everyone in North America knows about PalmPilots and 'Raspberries,' but consider 'Visor' as well.

sissy888 - 04:56pm May 1, 2001 EST (#2905 of 2919)

in my hometown, We don't play with guns. The children don't either. We trust each other. And nobody gets hurt. I like America this way. I don't like the Idea of guns period.. It frightens me. Of course I live in a small town.

sissy888 - 04:58pm May 1, 2001 EST (#2906 of 2919)

you may wonder about my small town. WHats it like? Its hard to find. Lost in time? No, its the future. Only a few can come.

sissy888 - 05:02pm May 1, 2001 EST (#2907 of 2919)

of course everybody wants it now. Funny how that works.. Soon as you raise the price, everybody wants one. So i,ve reserved a few places here. and for the right price? no! for the right person it'll be waiting.. Just talk to the lady with the purple scarf on.

atwnw - 05:16pm May 1, 2001 EST (#2908 of 2919)

George W. Bully is going to waste the people's money for the benefit of the defense industry since the military-industrial complex is his constituent Bully cannot become the president without the soft money of the corrupted defense industry.

carriglas0 - 05:21pm May 1, 2001 EST (#2909 of 2919)

Our isolationist Imperium continues on its way. Total disregard for allies, drop Kyoto, ignore the rapprochment with the Korea's, Russian opinion etc. Build a system that will protect what? decaying schools, a sixth of the children who miss one meal a day, seniors without medical care. Where is their defense system? Then there is the blatant farce to present this as the President's policy. It is someone's policy, but it is not that of Mr. Bush fils. In all our history we have never been so ridiculous or dangerous. To propose spending billions on something that may or may not work, at the expense of so much and so many. One can laugh or cry, or both, take your pick.

rshowalter - 05:25pm May 1, 2001 EST (#2910 of 2919)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I believe in redemptive solutions whenever possible, and Bush's speech today might be consistent with a beautiful resolution of many of the world's problems.

(Redemptive solutions when perfect justice isn't possible, or desireable People interested in religion and ethics may be particularly interested in #792-797. rshowalter 2/27/01 6:03pm

However, before deciding to disgard the search for justice, the reasons for doing so need to be clear -- redemption, to work, requires clarity. At the very least, if the right wing of the republican party has been manufacturing ideology funded by stolen federal money, to a corrupt and ugly purpose --- that ought to become clear, and the moral legitimacy of a tradition that now holds itself in very high esteem ought to be forcefully questioned. )

I'm copying Bush Commits U.S. to a Missile Defense System by DAVID STOUT http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/01/world/01CND-PREXY.html with bolding for emphasis, and some comments:

"WASHINGTON, May 1 — President Bush committed the United States today to building a missile defense system for a world in which cold-war thinking is outmoded and the Soviet Union is fading into memory.

"Declaring, as he had been expected to, that the United States must no longer be hobbled by the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the president said, "We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today's world."

Comment 1: Few dispute the need for new frameworks -- how can we "need to" build missile defenses -- if we have none, and no prospects of any this decade -- aren't the priorities being set out distorted?

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