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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.

lchic - 01:10am Mar 20, 2003 EST (# 10240 of 10248)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Which is more powerful:

A bomb

or

A bounty

lchic - 01:22am Mar 20, 2003 EST (# 10241 of 10248)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Will the Iraqis fight? The American plan is predicated on the notion that the Iraqi army will surrender en masse. There has been an unprecedented level of psychological warfare beforehand. Iraqi military units have been bombarded with some 12m leaflets. There have been broadcasts and e-mails urging them to put down their arms rather than defend what President George Bush has described as a "dying regime". American forces have also been in direct contact with Iraqi soldiers and are said to have reached surrender agreements with some. Will these agreements hold? And even if most of the Iraqi army does give up, what about the elite Republican Guard? They will surely fight.

Assuming that Saddam chooses to fight, it will probably be in Baghdad itself. Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution wonders if the nature of urban warfare—in which small numbers of determined fighters can cause immense delays and casualties—will undermine the assumption that the Iraqi military machine will break http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1647703 http://www.economist.com/

lchic - 01:24am Mar 20, 2003 EST (# 10242 of 10248)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

UN Corruption - Vienna - Transparency Index

"" WHILE the United Nations’ top diplomats have continued exchanging harsh words over Iraq, a committee of UN experts has quietly been gathering this week in Vienna to draft an international treaty to counter a threat that arguably causes as much harm to human lives as weapons of mass destruction: corruption. Every year, crooked politicians, officials and businessmen around the world steal billions of dollars of public money, depriving national and local governments of resources to provide health care, sanitation, education and other vital services. Corruption in public and private life undermines economic development in many countries, further depriving them of the resources to offer their people a decent life.

As realisation of the human costs of corruption has grown

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1646410

lchic - 01:31am Mar 20, 2003 EST (# 10243 of 10248)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Blair Magnanimous

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=388863

Tony Blair offered an olive branch yesterday to the 139 rebel Labour MPs who voted against the Government on Iraq as he sought to bind his party's deep wounds over the imminent war.

Attending his second private meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party in two days, the Prime Minister braced his MPs for "difficult times ahead". He adopted a conciliatory approach to the MPs who on Tuesday night staged the biggest House of Commons revolt ever seen by members of a governing party, saying that he was "proud" of the way that Labour MPs had conducted themselves.

lchic - 01:46am Mar 20, 2003 EST (# 10244 of 10248)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Maps Iraq

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/867601/posts

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/iraq.html

http://www.reliefweb.int/w/map.nsf/wPreview/50B6CEC6E1C76DBB85256CCB006CB008?Opendocument

ME Oil - map

http://www.petroleum-economist.com/contents/publications/petec/

almarst2003 - 04:14am Mar 20, 2003 EST (# 10245 of 10248)

Top White House anti-terror boss resigns - http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030319-040543-3049r

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