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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 - 06:29pm Mar 15, 2002 EST (#591 of 614)

Bush Calls for Quick Action on Military Budget by TERENCE NEILAN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/15/politics/15CND-PREXY.html

Includes this:

"Nothing is more important than the national security of our country," he told an audience of soldiers and civilians in Fayetteville, N.C., before visiting nearby Fort Bragg, a center for Army Special Forces.

To critics who have complained that his plan for a $48 billion increase in the military budget is too high, Mr. Bush replied: "Let me make this as clear as I can make it. The price for freedom for high, but it's never too high, as far as I'm concerned."

Nothing is as important as breathing, if breath is in short supply -- but we only pay so much for air -- or clean air -- and the same goes for food, and many other life and death issues.

What about priorities?

Without a sense of proportion - without checking for facts, and considering contexts -- words, and "logic" at the level Bush is using -- can justify anything. http://www.subvertise.org/details.php?code=453 MD538 rshow55 3/14/02 4:05pm

rshow55 - 06:52pm Mar 15, 2002 EST (#592 of 614)

Facts and ideas, combined together in space and time let people "connect the dots", as Erica Goode explains in Finding Answers In Secret Plots http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/weekinreview/10GOOD.html MD382 rshow55 3/11/02 12:13pm (please note images)

MD384 almarst-2001 3/11/02 12:29pm

From time to time, almarst is asking us to "connect some dots." Not all the connections are to our credit. We are looking at some horrors - - and a degree of cynicism that ought to make americans ashamed . Not many Americans conciously support Hobbes, in their daily lives, or would want to associate with anyone who did.

Feb 28, 2002 http://filmtalk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/281

March 2, 2002 http://filmtalk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/282

March 6, 2002 http://filmtalk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/283

March 12, 2002 http://filmtalk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/285

and especially http://filmtalk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/285

almarst-2001 - 09:59pm Mar 15, 2002 EST (#593 of 614)

"The United States, which had originally trained the Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. When NATO forces launched their military campaign against Yugoslavia three years ago to unseat Mr. Milosevic, they entered the Kosovo conflict on the side of the KLA, which had already received "substantial" military and financial support from bin Laden's network, analysts say." - http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?f=/stories/20020315/344843.html

rshow55 - 08:23am Mar 16, 2002 EST (#594 of 614)

Superb piece:

EUROPE'S MILITARY GAP: U.S. Is Vaulting Ahead, Raising Questions about NATO and Continent's Credibility by Steven Erlanger http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/16/international/europe/16NATO.html

There are issues of role, and proportion here. Basic ones. The U.S. may be right that the European countries need to spend more. On some specific things, for some specific reasons. But not without sufficient reasons. Not needlessly.

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