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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 - 11:40am Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7224 of 7236)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

We need to step back from that horror -- which will take some careful negotiation, and straightforward action.

MD4472 rshowalter 6/3/01 6:34pm

For more than fifty years, and especially since the late 1950s, weve had large groups of people knowingly acting to make it possible to reduce large populations, almost all innocent in military terms, into masses of rotting unburied corpses.

There is no reason to think that the US population, or the Russian population, was in any substantial doubt about what was being done, and threatened, by our military forces. Though the ignorance about details was enormous and important.
MD797 rshowalter 2/27/01 6:27pm ... rshowalter "Science in the News" 8/29/00 7:26am

It is worth pointing out a practical sense in which nuclear war is entirely, vividly real - a sense in which crimes and massive injuries have already happened. They have happened, over and over, in great detail, in the imaginations of people. And those imaginations have been made vivid, and reinforced repeatedly, by careful and detailed rehearsals. We are not dealing as "innocents." MD798 rshowalter 2/28/01 2:47pm

When we negotiate and speak "abstractly" as if fear, and distrust aren't essential parts of our nuclear impasse, we may feel that we are being "mature" and "polite" but we are also being impractical. The sensible thing is to acknowledge the fear, distrust, and other emotions that are there. And deal with these emotions as they are, in ways that work for all the human beings involved.

rshowalter - 11:42am Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7225 of 7236)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

There are good reasons to be serious here, and to check facts , and make decisions in due light to the best information and logic available.

The logic is compelling -- we need to find ways to make peace -- so that it works, between old enemies who are now "friends".

MD4473 rshowalter 6/3/01 7:55pm ... And we need right answers -- not wishful thinking carried to ridiculous extremes to justify exorbitant funding of far-fetched, back-of-the-envelope Buck Rogers schemes that could not stand up to public, competent, clear cross-examination.

Item: An attempt to do a first flight test on a scramjet under continuous development of 40 years failed (or was surreptitiously aborted.)

Some people say "with enough money, there are no real problems in missile defense" -- but masses of engineering experience stand dead against that postion. MD7177 rshowalter 7/18/01 10:32pm

MD4474 rshowalter 6/3/01 8:02pm

When one deals with "big lie" techniques, again and again, from the secret side of the US military industrial complex, it is worth remembering the information here carefully -- there is a great deal behind it -- CIA's Worst-Kept Secret by Martin A. Lee May 16, 2001 http://www.consortiumnews.com/051601a.html

MD4475 rshowalter 6/3/01 8:20pm

I believe that everybody concerned about matters of defense, and especially nuclear deployments, should consider carefully the concerns about the “military-industrial complex” set out in the FAREWELL ADDRESS of President Dwight D. Eisenhower January 17, 1961 . And people should imagine how concerned Eisenhower had to have been, to have made the speech. http://www.geocities.com/~newgeneration/ikefw.htm

It makes sense to read Eisenhower's speech, in light of information Eisenhower was well aware of, including decisions Eisenhower participated in. CIA's Worst-Kept Secret by Martin A. Lee May 16, 2001 http://www.consortiumnews.com/051601a.html .

It is now many years on, and the secret part of the military industrial complex, in charge of nuclear policy to an extraordinary degree - has been, in many of the ways that matter most, unsupervised, and limited in their actions only by their own senses of expediency and honor.

Key qustions about the motivation and sanity of administration positions need to be asked and answered. Here is one. MD4431 rshowalt 6/1/01 12:45pm

rshowalter - 11:43am Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7226 of 7236)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Attitudes like this one, supported by many in the US military and intelligence communities, are morally wrong, practically counterproductive, and dangerous.

FLYING INTO TURBULENCE By: Peter Martin http://www.intellnet.org/news/articles/peter.martin.flying.into.turbulence.html

MD7055 rshowalter 7/15/01 12:47pm

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