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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?

rshowalter - 10:42pm Aug 20, 2001 EST (#7939 of 7944)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

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New Zeeland Academic Freedom:
MD7487 lunarchick 7/27/01 9:00am

Wynne, and "gut feeling"
MD7488 lunarchick 7/27/01 9:20am ... MD7628 lunarchick 7/30/01 9:12pm

rshowalter - 10:45pm Aug 20, 2001 EST (#7940 of 7944)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

People have to come understand that decision making in military matters carries large, and relatively safe, opportunities for cover up and corruption.

And powerful pressures for biasing answers to fit the wishes of "the group."

Few understand these points now. But the understanding is essential to an understanding of what has happened.
MD7491-92 rshowalter 7/27/01 10:17am

Some facts should be established.

Because of the stakes, getting these facts straight should be morally forcing.

rshowalter - 10:46pm Aug 20, 2001 EST (#7941 of 7944)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The culture of some of the "military industrial complex" - including the intelligence community - has felt invulnerable for a long time -- immune from the ordinary decencies involved in considering others for a long time, or essays like FLYING INTO TURBULENCE by Peter Martin http://www.intellnet.org/news/articles/peter.martin.flying.into.turbulence.html couldn't be written, and featured in the "respectable" places where they are.

rshowalter - 10:56pm Aug 20, 2001 EST (#7942 of 7944)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

U.S. Balks on Plan to Take Plutonium Out of Warheads by MATTHEW L. WALD http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/21/international/europe/21NUKE.html

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 - " A program conceived by the Clinton administration to rid the world of 100 tons of American and Russian weapons-grade plutonium is likely to be abandoned by the Bush administration, according to people who have been briefed about the project. " (more)

It is hard for me to see how the US can be so desperate for missile defense -- a threat of little credibility, not credibly adressed by technical means available, when other risks, that are clear and present, are ignored -- in ways that further degrade the trust other nations can have in the United States of America.

(2 following messages)

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