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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?

lunarchick - 04:17pm Sep 13, 2001 EST (#8956 of 8975)
lunarchick@www.com

On putting secret service people back on the ground to join terrorist cells .... the reasons why the people wanted them out of that senario related to their sometimes being labelled as being involved in terror themselves - yes?

rshowalter - 04:20pm Sep 13, 2001 EST (#8957 of 8975)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

And we're in a situation now that we have to deal with.

But it isn't as easy a situation as Saddam's invasion of Kuwait -- which was diplomatically hard enough - - and the US's negotiating position, and resevoir of good will, world wide, is less than it was.

A time to be careful, and mindful of the vulnerabilities that we have. Whatever we do, that is effective, has to have a community of nations really behind us.

And those nations can be expected to form their own judgements of what makes sense, and not defer to the Bush administration. And that is what they should do, for the safety of the world.

lunarchick - 04:21pm Sep 13, 2001 EST (#8958 of 8975)
lunarchick@www.com

Watch the markets ...

on RISK

only ONE of the two towers was insured .. because they were believed to be infallible. Watch the share price of tennants tumble today!

rshowalter - 04:23pm Sep 13, 2001 EST (#8959 of 8975)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

lunarchick 9/13/01 4:17pm

Yes - - it is practically impossible to penetrate such groups - - the history of attempts to do it, in the past, has been a sorry saga.

Friedman was clear about that this morning.

rshowalter - 04:30pm Sep 13, 2001 EST (#8960 of 8975)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Ominous title -- important piece:

World War III By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/13/opinion/13FRIE.html

gisterme - 04:43pm Sep 13, 2001 EST (#8961 of 8975)

The BIG PICTURE...

This attack on NYC is NOT the first battle of this war. This war started prior to the Gulf War and the Gulf War was the first major battle. Expect that lessons learned by the enemy during that battle will be applied to the next major battles in this war. Hindsight shows that gathering information about how the US would make a major deployment to the middle east may have been one of the enemy's major objectives of that battle. Given that as an objective the otherwise apparent stupidity of his strategy makes more sense. Our enemy observed and learned from the coalition actions during that battle and expect us to respond in a similar way during this one. We must not. We must be as unpredictable as our enemy. The tactics of this enemy have always been to attack by stealth, from within. That much IS predictable about his behavior. However, for that strategy to be effective, he must be able to move freely among us (as was done here at home) or prepare a snare in advance based on our expected behavior.

We know that Pakistan has been a major supporter of the Taliban and that the Taliban are close to the heart of this enemy. We know that Pakistan has developed nuclear weapons. We know that these jihadi militants can look you in the eye, lie and kill with a smile. We should be prepared for the worst.

If we deploy any significant numbers of troops to the middle east, including Saudi Arabia, we should preempt the possibility of attack from within. We must not forget that those who are willing to "martyr" their own individuals for thier cause will also be willing to "martyr" large numbers of their own for their cause. The rationale for both cases is identical. We shoud not deploy any forces to or near existing bases anywhere in the middle east.

Since our enemy does not at present have good methods of deploying their nuclear weapons or other WMD against our military forces, they will try to lure our military forces to their WMD. I believe this is the intent of the high profile attack on Tuesday. This attack would not have been made if our enemies had not felt they were prepared for our response. They expect the US and its western allies to act in the same way that they did during 1992-93. This may be the sole reason that the Saudi Royal Family has not been overthrown. Far more Saudis support the Taliban than support the Royal Family. Our enemy wants it to be easy for the US to move forces to those existing bases.

If we must deploy ground forces to the middle east, they should be deployed to large well-secured areas using bases we build ourselves. Not as easy; but, far safer for our troops. Those areas should be secured without advance notice by our own people , carefully searched and well-defended against ground, air and theater ballistic missile attack before many more people are sent there... Secure perimeters should be miles from the main activities of any such bases.

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