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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?

almarst-2001 - 01:18pm Jul 11, 2001 EST (#6926 of 6939)

We can do better...

Or can we? Is it possible the biggest obsticle is exactly an assumption of allmighty man? The one who strive to and can achieve to change the environment, the nature, the other man around. To change and even to destroy. All with a single goal - expansion of his INDIVIDUAL ever growing and constantly changing desires, his EGO.

The moment, the human evolution advanced past the strugle for physical suvivor and into the strugle for endless race for the GREATNESS, the future seems bleaker and bleaker.

The human evolution may be doomed because it turned from achievable self-adaptation to the environment into the futile attempt to adapt the infinite environment to its individual needs. Even by means of brutal destruction.

Could it be the God made a mistake? Again as it already happend once during the age of dynasoures which disapeared without a trace after ruling this planet unchalanged for millions of years.

rshowalter - 01:41pm Jul 11, 2001 EST (#6927 of 6939)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

We can.

And people aren't just individuals -- our existence is collective, too.

Maybe God only cares so much -- and expects that, when faced with problems within their capacity, people should solve their own problems.

Seems to me that we should try to.

rshowalter - 02:15pm Jul 11, 2001 EST (#6928 of 6939)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

We could get closure on important things -- and make progress, if the Bush administration would concede things that are becoming obvious and inescapable. It would be better to do it in a way that might permit some graceful resolutions.

gesterme and the control group gisterme represents ought to respond -- ought to feel morally forced, as decent human beings, to respond.

Perhaps, though, there is a divine plan, and gisterme and co-workers have been put on this earth to make clear how ugly some old ways are -- how ugly and useless some old certainties are.

MD6861 rshowalter 7/10/01 4:36pm

I feel that the people responsible, directly and indirectly, for what gisterme has said and done have a duty to respond. These people are:

National Security Advisor Condaleezza Rice,

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage,

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfkowitz,

Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley,

and the people they report to.

The administration's missile defense initiative is a massive fraud, and I can't see how anyone in the Bush administration control group can escape knowing it.

They should stop evading the truth - in violation of any reasonable accounting of national or world interest -- and move on.

almarst-2001 - 03:47pm Jul 11, 2001 EST (#6929 of 6939)

Commander Admits Chechnya Crimes - http://www.newsday.com/ap/text/international/ap60.htm

"MOSCOW (AP) -- In an unusual admission of responsibility, Russia's top military commander in Chechnya said Wednesday that he regrets his troops' crimes against civilians in house-to-house searches for rebels, and a Kremlin official even suggested the raids would be stopped."

The question is - what can be done to restore the peace without establishing the rule of mafia criminals over the Chechnia?

The Afganistan and the Kosovo under NATO supervision does not seems to provide a viable solution.

almarst-2001 - 03:52pm Jul 11, 2001 EST (#6930 of 6939)

The MD, fraud or not, will force other nations to INCREASE their deterance capacities. And that would definetly drain their resources, particularely but not only, in Russia.

That may be another item of administration's "hidden" agenda - to inflict an economical hardship... or surrender the independence.

rshowalter - 04:14pm Jul 11, 2001 EST (#6931 of 6939)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

On Chechnya crimes. They were ugly -- but according to Patrick Taylor's story in the TIMES today - pretty mild compared to bombing from 15,000 feet. No rapes reported. Gross, entirely intentional intimidation -- but few or none killed.

Ugly. Perhaps disproportionate.

But how much more beautiful the world would be, if the United States waged war by such moderate means - inflicting pain, but not death.

almarst's question:

" what can be done to restore the peace without establishing the rule of mafia criminals over the Chechnia? "

seems to me to be a valid question. I'm glad Putin's having to cope with it -- I'm sure I'd not know what to do.

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