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    Missile Defense

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n Missile Defense #3058 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 06:02 pm
98 postings yesterday.

108 postings today.

People are interested...

n Missile Defense #3056 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 05:55 pm
U.S. Democrats Criticize Bush Missile Defense Plan by REUTERS Filed at 4:08 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/bush-arms-democrats.html

ends

" House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt said, ``If the proposal actually comes before the House, either in the budget or in the defense bill, we'll do everything we can to raise the right questions.''

That would be good...

n Missile Defense #3053 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 05:47 pm
And missile defense, to be any good, has to handle the hardest interceptions, under the noisiest conditions, that an adversary can arrange.

As the brits would say"

" It is just not on."

n Missile Defense #3051 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 05:44 pm
Nobody has to doubt the fact that good things happen sometimes. But you ought to go to someplace with a good overview -- say the U.S. Patent Office (one of my favorite places) and get a sense of how often hopes are dashed...

n Missile Defense #3049 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 05:38 pm
Radar engineering, for instance, has been going on for a long time. And there were very good, motivated people in it, very early. Order of magnitude resolution breakthroughs, dealing with targets built to be hard to measure, are going to be hard to come by...

n Missile Defense #3047 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 05:35 pm
I don't think licenses should be much of an issue -- what ought to be crucial is setting out technical information, that can be checked, on matters like resolution, and control capabilities.

An internet video feed (with real people, with real names) might work well on some essential issues -- for a number of reasons -- one being that anyone who wanted could look at, and replay, the arguments and calculations. We're talking classical physics here...

n Missile Defense #3046 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 05:32 pm
In the Guardian Talk threads and in this Missile Defense thread, Dawn Riley and I have worked to focus patterns of human reasoning and persuasion, and problems with human reasoning and persuasion.

These citations deal with that:
rshowalter 4/24/01 7:56pm
rshowalter 4/24/01 8:09pm
rshowalter 4/24/01 8:10pm

We believe that controversies that could not be resolved before may be resolvable now.

The techniques we (and so many other people on the net) are using to get things to closure are the same techniques that often work in well conducted jury trials...

n Missile Defense #3045 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 05:31 pm
Another summary, liked to the Kerrey-Vietnam discussions, is at rshowalter "Reader Discussion: 'One Awful Night in Thanh Phong'" 4/29/01 5:36pm

The Kerrey matter is not central to this work, but it is related, in part because of Kerrey's very good OpED piece ARMED TO EXCESS ... NYT , OpEd, March 2 http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/opinion/02KERR.html and in part because nuclear war involves atrocity on an almost unthinkable scale, and the Kerrey story tends to make that more thinkable.

rshowalter 4/26/01 8:33pm
rshowalter 4/26/01 8:34pm
rshowalter 4/26/01 8:35pm
rshowalter 4/26/01 8:38pm
rshowalter 4/26/01 8:39pm
rshowalter 4/26/01 8:41pm

rshowalter 4/26/01 8:41pm ends

" If more Americans could rise to (Kerrey's) level of moral sensitivity, current grave risks to the survival of the whole world could be ended."

n Missile Defense #3044 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 05:31 pm
I told some of the story of the Cold War, from a nuclear weapon perspective in Psychwarfare, Casablanca -- and terror on 27 September, and thereafter. The basic part is in postings 1-36 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/0 but the thread continues with discussions.

Summaries of this thread, with many links, occur from #152 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/158 ...on, and constitute a convenient way to get an overview of this thread.

n Missile Defense #3037 - gisterme May 2, 2001 05:01 pm
    "What we believe can be done we can do. What we don't believe can be done somebody else will do."
rshowalter wrote: "is absolute nonsense almost all the time, especially where settled physics is involved, and competent engineers know it."

That's got to be about the silliest thing I've ever seen come from an engineer, Robert. Haven't you noticed that we can do many things today that we couldn't do yesterday?..

n Missile Defense #3035 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 04:54 pm
dialog is useful:

Moscow Asserts It Is Eager for Talks on Missile Shield By PATRICK E. TYLER http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/02/world/02CND-RUSS.html

" MOSCOW, May 2 — Russia responded today to President Bush's call for the deployment of a missile defense shield, saying it was eager to begin a new strategic dialogue with the United States in a bid to find a common approach to new missile threats and further reduce nuclear arsenals.

" But a senior official underscored Moscow's expectation that the United States not take "unilateral steps" to withdraw from an arms control accord that has helped to ensure strategic stability for three decades without first replacing it with a new understanding...

n Missile Defense #3034 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 04:45 pm
"What we believe can be done we can do. What we don't believe can be done somebody else will do."

is absolute nonsense almost all the time, especially where settled physics is involved, and competent engineers know it.

n Missile Defense #3032 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 04:44 pm
On the issue of trust, and reasons for other nations to distrust the moral sensitivity of the United States, and especially the United States military. That's a matter of importance, in judging missile defense. rshowalter 5/1/01 8:49am

Mr.Safire, I'm an admirer of yours: ....

n Missile Defense #3029 - rshowalter May 2, 2001 04:39 pm
rshowalter 5/1/01 7:09am
rshowalter 5/1/01 7:11am

n Missile Defense #3028 - deniseny May 2, 2001 04:36 pm
gisterme - 03:42pm May 2, 2001 EST (#3020 of 3021)

rshowalter wrote: "...Could corruption be the problem? ..."

Sure it could Robert. Go ahead and give some specific examples of that corruption...

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