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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?

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rshow55 - 07:54am May 22, 2002 EST (#2345 of 2359)

FBI Pigeonholed Agent's Request Canvassing of Flight Schools For Al Qaeda Was Rejected http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53054-2002May21.html

By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer

"A Phoenix FBI agent's request for a canvass of U.S. flight schools for al Qaeda terrorists was formally rejected within several weeks of his July 10 memo, after mid-level officials at FBI headquarters determined they did not have the manpower to carry out the task, sources familiar with the memo said yesterday.

. . . .

" The information we need, we are going to get," House intelligence committee Chairman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) said after meeting with Ashcroft.

Are they? Is it really so strange that Casey told me not to "go in directly" - but to wait to have things set up, by him or others - or, in a pinch - to come in through the New York Times?

It is hard to get things checked -- for all sorts of reasons, some good, some bad.

MD2242 rshow55 5/5/02 4:36pm ... MD2243 rshow55 5/5/02 4:56pm

The best advice I have for progress, right now, was worked set out in the sequence referenced in MD2245 rshow55 5/5/02 11:45pm . . . a two hour, 70 post session on negotiation in the middle east in the Guardian thread Anything on Anything from http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.eea14e1/1253 to http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.eea14e1/1318 that includes many links to this thread, and has been discussed in this thread since.

To specify things is expensive. Checking is expensive. Sometimes exceptions have to be made. "Going through channels" usually is the right thing - usually makes sense - but sometimes it is not a workable thing to do.

What if Williams had been permitted to ask for some outside funding, to do some investigation? How many lives would be saved (so far - and perhaps far into the future? ) Perhaps others find this an unreasonable question. I don't.

How many "chain breakers" are built into the system? Too many for safety, these days.

Chain Breakers http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/618

Eisenhower became very concerned about patterns he'd seen, and warned against the military-industrial(political) complex in his FAREWELL ADDRESS of January 17, 1961 http://www.geocities.com/~newgeneration/ikefw.htm

Everything Eisenhower was worried about has happened. People with power are going to have to ask that some key things be checked. It isn't easy. Shouldn't be. If I'm doing things wrong, and someone from the government, who I could identify, would call me up and tell me so, and tell me why, I'd listen carefully.

MD2286 rshow55 5/18/02 5:44pm

Tom Daschle , the Senate Majority Leader , pledged to try for workable patterns of discourse in A New Deal for a New Senate http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/10/opinion/10DASC.html

That "new deal" requires a decent amount of correct information - something Daschle says clearly in that speech, and continues to say.

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