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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?

rshowalter - 04:45pm Apr 30, 2001 EST (#2840 of 2846)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

You're the becq I conversed with between beckq 9/25/00 9:19am ..... and rshowalt 9/25/00 5:28pm ... ? That's what you said earlier.

That would make you the same person I discussed things with, before that, as "Willy_Nilly" in Favorite Poetry (interesting name, I thought) as referred to in rshowalt 9/25/00 3:50pm ---- where I said:

" Now, we've become corrupted, attempting to justify the unjustifiable with evasive words. "Willy_Nilly) #6238, in the favorite poetry forum is an example of how facile, yet dangerous, the logical corruption of nuclear weapons can be. willy_nilly "Favorite Poetry" 9/23/00 10:43am

So we've had disagreements before.

So I'd like to know if you're referring to my posting of 03:17pm Apr 30, 2001, or something else.

How am I "off target?"

If I'm wrong for a reason you can state, I'd be interested. Thank you.

cookiess0 - 05:22pm Apr 30, 2001 EST (#2841 of 2846)

The system is a telephone based system"

"system as in nuclear?

This is incorrect. Thus you are off target. C3I Command Control Intelligence issues do not permit American nuclear forces to be tied into the phone system. The only "system" tied into such lines is that of what your on. The Internet for which C3I attempted to maintain communication while different parts of it were being killed. It was the entire reason for the project. But, no- nuclear weapons are NOT on a "telephone based" phone system. Try again dear moron.

rshowalter - 05:31pm Apr 30, 2001 EST (#2842 of 2846)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

My computer got rather emphatically attacked after I said some things you're calling nonsensical.

By ordinary word usages -- the connections shown, illustrated and spoken over in Rehearsing Doomsday http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/democracy/nuclear/stories/nukes/index.html were clearly "telephone based" in the usual sense of the term. Perhaps an entirely isolated telephone system -- as I said in rshowalter 4/30/01 3:58pm

On March 1, in There's Always Poetry #1273 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/1556 I put out a poem that starts.

Before witnesses, not long ago
I blew through
Nuclear controls that apparently
hadn't been changed since the mid-60s'

You might also be interested in poems 1276-1281 , as well.

So you're dismissing me about a semantic question about telephones? No problems with our previous conversations?

rshowalter - 05:32pm Apr 30, 2001 EST (#2843 of 2846)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Perhaps I've misinterpreted something -- people do -- but enough fits, and I've had enough harassment, to suspect strongly that I have not.

jeffreybrannon - 05:52pm Apr 30, 2001 EST (#2844 of 2846)

Bush's missile defense system is nothing more than a jobs program for his defense contractor friends, who along with big oil helped him get elected. How does one defend against incoming missiles that have multiple warheads? How many of those can a missile defense system hit? If only a few get through, its curtains for the U.S. and the world.

rshowalter - 05:58pm Apr 30, 2001 EST (#2845 of 2846)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

rshowalter "Science News Poetry" 3/1/01 11:58am

rshowalter - 06:07pm Apr 30, 2001 EST (#2846 of 2846)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

When you look at the best performance of the best phase array radar - and the computer processing those radars take, and THEN extrapolate to what would be needed for "Star Wars" -- the program is beyond the pale. To a ridiculous degree. It is a "big lie" -- and big lies are, after all, mainstays of psychological warfare. Now, if you can be, in the Confederate General's phrase

"furstest with the mostest"

most everywhere in the world - and can knock missiles down in early launch phase,where they are very bright, and relatively slow -- that's fantastic. (Fantastic in a number of senses.)

But for ordinary placements, with an ordinary sense of the odds, Star Wars is crazy.

If we need to take nukes away from some crazy nation states -- once nukes are outlawed, so we have a legitimate position -- we should use coordinated arms of conventional forces of as many nations as it takes to go in and take them away.

With current surveillance -- that would be a very effective "missile defense" against rogue nations. And both cleaner and cheaper than even the best interpretation anybody has of a Buck Rogers program, that has failed and been wrapped in lies for thirty five years, that has no chance at all of working anyway.

If we want to take away nukes, from rogues, we should take them away in the conventional military manner. It is something we could do next year, if negotiations with Russian and China started soon, and were in good faith.

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