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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 - 02:49pm Jan 19, 2002 EST (#10880 of 10898)

MD6673 rshowalter 7/6/01 11:05am

The level of feel for propriety exemplified in http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/05/politics/05CARL.html -- would indicate a culture where thoughts of accountability, for either facts or money, would be almost futile, wouldnt you think?

I wonder how many enlisted men (and there are plenty of literate ones) could read Elder Bush in Big GOP Cast Toiling for Top Equity Firm by LESLIE WAYNE without being ashamed?

On matters of defense, especially, respect for facts matter -- because resources are finite, priorities are important, and things have to work.

It seems to me that missile defense , for a long time, has been a bluff -- not something intended to be productive, where mistakes are sought after, so that they can be corrected - - but a classified boondoggle, built to keep money flowing to contractors, and to keep money flows flexible, so that insider information can enrich insiders.

Also, perhaps, to keep misinformed constituencies mollified, when it would be better to tell them the truth.

Perhaps not. Perhaps everything can be explained in terms of honest mistakes. Perhaps including some, or many, mistakes of my own. Maybe.

But things should be checked.

ENRON AND THE GRAMMS by Bob Herbert asks a key question - - and subsets of that question, applied to missile defense, need to be dealt with.

MD10837 rshow55 1/17/02 8:27am ... MD10838 lchic 1/17/02 11:04am
MD10839 rshow55 1/17/02 11:45am ...

lchic - 03:33pm Jan 19, 2002 EST (#10881 of 10898)

.

rshow55 - 03:34pm Jan 19, 2002 EST (#10882 of 10898)

"search pages" on this MD thread offer a sense of how much participation there has been.

Psychwarfare, Casablanca -- and terror #207-210 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/218

lchic - 06:30pm Jan 19, 2002 EST (#10883 of 10898)

On searching - seems the top flight Chinese were non too pleased to find 20-bugs planted on the new plane from Boeing they recently took delivery of.
Even so,
the Chinese are fond of the concept of 'searching'
It seems
ISP's there have been deemed responsible for the content of each electronic mail item passing through their system
The mighty HAN believes in Order!

rshow55 - 06:40pm Jan 19, 2002 EST (#10884 of 10898)

KOKO http://www.koko.org/news/062901.html might have known better. What was there to gain, worth the risk of the bugging? Honesty is easier.

A nice series on Koko, written on the 4th of July, from MD6559 lunarchick 7/4/01 7:27pm

rshow55 - 06:49pm Jan 19, 2002 EST (#10885 of 10898)

Enron poem, by "beeth"

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/4641

rshow55 - 06:55pm Jan 19, 2002 EST (#10886 of 10898)

Boeing poem: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/4717

guy_catelli - 07:36pm Jan 19, 2002 EST (#10887 of 10898)
the trick of Mensa

"I find some of the patterns involved with Enron , and Carlyle, uncomfortably similar to patterns that occurred in the Nazi corruption of Germany -- and dont believe it is entirely an accident. At the level of corporate, government, and cultural relations, there are many similarities between countries -- many of the patterns that worked in Germany apply, at the level of structure, to the United States, too."

if this doesn't prove that your hatred of my country and its people is pathological, i don't know what possibly could. you're surely not going to deny that there is no more hate-filled comparison that you could possibly devise than a comparison to the Nazi's. right?

so, maybe you're fooling yourself. but, you're not fooling anyone else -- i.e., your opposition to MD is just a masquerade for your true agenda: hatred of america.

lchic - 07:56pm Jan 19, 2002 EST (#10888 of 10898)

If you read the Enron board poster 'Hondo' the resident postWarII Nazi hunter isn't impressed with the Enron situation - and makes WWII-Enron comparisons continually. http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?14@63.IPhYa92QCyS^237730@.ee806ff Be fair to add that 'most' of America seems very 'unimpressed'!

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense