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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 - 02:54pm May 19, 2002 EST (#2313 of 2319)

lchic 5/19/02 2:49pm - - the lesson is direct. It is easy to "go around" our planned missile defenses in many different ways, and many different senses.

Countermeasures to any and all announced kinds of MD approaches are cheap and easy. And there are many other ways to deliver WMD.

We need to find defensive patterns that have a chance of working.

lchic - 03:01pm May 19, 2002 EST (#2314 of 2319)

Connecting Dots

Walking down the Mall yesterday i noticed a couple of older gals with their 'dot-connecting colouring-in' books ... gaining great self-satisfaction from their achievement - completion may be an innate need ?!
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=completion

rshow55 - 03:03pm May 19, 2002 EST (#2315 of 2319)

To clear away a lot of nonsense -- just start laying out the logic. There are good tools available, well collected in MD669 lchic 3/18/02 12:51pm

...

There are so many lies, at so many levels, now involved with the US military- industrial complex that showing the bankrupcy of much of it can be done clearly with resources in the open literature. The US is asking the other NATO countries to spend a lot of money - for a lot of things. There seems compelling reason, not only in the US, but elsewhere, to CHECK some key facts and relations. The mechanics developed doing so would permit us to check a lot else.

For reasons of money, decency, life, and death. MD1075-1076 rshow55 4/4/02 1:17pm

rshow55 - 03:22pm May 19, 2002 EST (#2316 of 2319)

For NATO, Little Is Sure Now but Growth By STEVEN ERLANGER http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/international/europe/19NATO.html

Fundamentals should be dealt with in reasonable ways -- not just "discussed" in the spirit of "keep the myth alive" -- but set out, so that facts are clear, reasons are clear, and relationships are clear - - with Russia present, and fully participating.

If that were done, with tools now available - really done - - the key tasks involved in a real, deep, lasting, workable integration of Russia with Europe would be very far along to total, satisfactory resolution.

The United States may be incapable of really close relations with Russia - and may be becoming isolated from Europe, as well, because of legacies of the Cold War that the United States cannot find the honesty to deal with.

Those barriers are much less between Russia and the othe NATO countries.

lchic - 03:25pm May 19, 2002 EST (#2317 of 2319)

^{|> dumbells-Barbells <|}

rshow55 - 03:42pm May 19, 2002 EST (#2318 of 2319)

Sometimes not "dumbells" but frauds .

Other People's Money http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/opinion/19SUN1.html

Last week's blowup on Wall Street was Adelphia Communications, the nation's sixth-largest cable company. It was yet another case of corporate insiders improperly helping themselves to other people's money.

Looking at much of the defense budget - how much easier is it for insiders to "help themselves to other people's money" within security rules?

How about endowing think tanks, or wings of political parties?

Not hard.

How about "news management" on programs like missile defense - - that systematically mislead - that delete the most significant facts?

Huge parts of the US military budgets have been effectively unaccountable for fifty years.

Things should be checked. It isn't just Enron . . . and for a sense of ethics in the system - note that Thomas White remains Secretary of the Army (given his position, even if was totally innocent - he should have left long ago - if reasonable senses of propriety meant much. Under Eisenhower, he wouldn't have lasted even a few days - once the Enron scandal had become public. )

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