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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?

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almarst2003 - 08:35pm Mar 15, 2003 EST (# 10012 of 10017)

Fake Iraq documents 'embarrassing' for U.S. - http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/14/sprj.irq.documents/index.html

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee asked the FBI on Friday to investigate forged documents the Bush administration used as evidence against Saddam Hussein and his military ambitions in Iraq.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia said he was uneasy about a possible campaign to deceive the public about the status of Iraq's nuclear program.

An investigation should "at a minimum help to allay any concerns" that the government was involved in the creation of the documents to build support for administration policies http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20030314_1455.html

almarst2003 - 08:57pm Mar 15, 2003 EST (# 10013 of 10017)

Next stop: panic station - http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,913399,00.html

"it will be embarrassing if we find ourselves rehearsing phoney "catastrophic incidents" in London while we are inflicting real catastrophic incidents on the people of Iraq by pounding them with bombs.

So if an invasion of Iraq isn't supposed to expose us to any greater danger from terrorism than we were in before, and if al-Qaida is currently on the run, then why are we now taking such dramatic precautions against terrorist attacks?

there is no discernible reason for all this panic unless it is to terrify us into support for the government in its war on Iraq.

We would all love something to distract us from thinking about health and education, about crime and transport. And if we are going to be involved in a war in any event, we might as well persuade ourselves that we are doing so in self-defence; for without that justification, we are bound to feel miserable about it.

If Saddam were capable of staging a terror attack in London, he surely wouldn't have waited for us to invade before making the necessary dispositions.

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