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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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lchic - 09:02am Mar 17, 2003 EST (# 10119 of 10137)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Income from oil is limited - currently - wouldn't fund the rebuilding of Baghdad.

|> Aussies have been told we'll wake up to WAR !

|> out

rshow55 - 10:12am Mar 17, 2003 EST (# 10120 of 10137)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

This is a superb piece - and states some issues clearly.

A Decision Made, and Its Consequences By DAVID E. SANGER http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/17/international/middleeast/17ASSE.html

To say that "I have some differences with the Bush administration" is putting the matter mildly - but all the same, just now, I think that Bush and Blair are right that for a workable system of international relations and international law, there has to be a place for military force.

One can say that "containment has worked" and of course that's true.

It has worked as well as it has - it has the shortcomings that it has.

Many of the most miserable, muddled, gruesome messes and tragedies in the world are traceable to the fact that containment works as it does - and results in paralysis, and systems of deceptions and evasions that completely close off clear action - for any purpose - right or wrong. In addition - the stability of containment can, under many circumstances - build up explosively unstable (and wrenchingly ugly) messes.

Force is sometimes necessary, too. If Bush and Blair aren't exactly right on the time and place - they're right on that key principle.

And with that principle central to the disagreement - and a renegotiation of international law necessary if it is to work now - I think now may be a good time for action, everything considered.

There are times when there is no question that - for resolution - there has to be a fight. If the fights can't be resolved at the level of ideas, flesh rends.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense