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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?

lunarchick - 07:00am Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7194 of 7208)
lunarchick@www.com

Understanding the Global Economy see VII :
~ http://www.howardri.org/index.html
~ http://www.howardri.org/Trade.html#2
~ http://www.howardri.org/Trade3.html

dawnc - 08:06am Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7195 of 7208)

We should be keeping friends, not creating enemies,as the new administration has been doing. First the Kyoto Treaty that they backed out of. Now this Missile defense issue. The administration has watched Star Wars one too many times.

rshowalter - 08:09am Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7196 of 7208)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

My background is unusual. It is a source of both insight and difficulties for myself and people who have to deal with me.

Writings connecting me to Bill Casey: MD6057 rshowalter 6/26/01 7:22am MD6370-71 rshowalter 7/1/01 7:19am

" When I figured out the "buried problem" in applied mathematics, and "figured out how to really talk to the Russians" -- and figured out what a stable stand-down of nuclear terror was to be like -- I was to come in. They wanted the answers, but weren't sure how they'd accomodate them, and would have to sort it out at the time.

" Its been rougher than that, for reasons, I believe, that Casey might be ashamed of.

" Bill Casey felt passionate about this - agonized about this. Yes - it had been and was going to be necessary to do terrible, morally indefensible things. Yes, gross injustice had been and was going to be done to many people. Yes, it had been and was going to be necessary to subvert the Constitution, and many of the most dearly held values of the American people and our allies.

" These things had been, and would continue to be necessary -- to fight the Cold War, against forces of totalitarianism that, Casey sincerely felt, had to be stopped at all costs - including both practical and moral costs.

"Yes, it had been and was going to be necessary to lie and cheat and steal -- and kill innocent people beyond the ability of any individual human being to count.

. . . . . . . (Ever tried to physically count to five million?)

Yes, it was ugly -- ugly beyond anything you could get in your head -- ugly beyond telling.

But the US, Casey felt, could do these things. Do them in secret, concealed in elaborate patterns of lies. With the secrecy and the lies justified, not only by expediency, but because there was a real desire to preserve the good things about America -- the kindness, the flexibility -- the opportunity -- the beauty. Preserve them by isolating them from the ugliness.

Bill Casey deserved, I believe, the same criticism as Kissinger and his colleagues and proteges deserve -- that he took positions that "made Machiavelli seem like one of the Sisters of Mercy."

And acted on them.

" HOWEVER, Bill Casey also not only respected -- he revered , the standards of decency, and openness, and flexibility -- that THE NEW YORK TIMES tries to stand for -- and usually does.

" When I talked to Casey, he was very clear about the conflict -- and his sense of the terrible moral box he and others had gotten the United States into. When he talked to me, a special asset who, it had been provisionally decided, was not to be killed -- (at every meeting I had with Casey, I was sure he was re-evaluating that decision) -- what we talked about was finding an end game -- finding a way out of the horror .

" Perhaps, if Casey hadn't had the brain tumor he had, and died in 1989, the terrible tragedy of the last decade might not have happened quite as it did. Perhaps some grace not found could have been found. I don't know. This happened.

" When the Soviet Union fell, and everyone, on all sides, had so much hope, we didn't have an end game -- and the United States was so tied up with lies, that it could not sort out problems before it -- or help the Russians sort out their problems.

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