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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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rshow55 - 09:24am Mar 27, 2003 EST (# 10554 of 10564)
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.

Thomas L. Friedman's special, "Searching for the Roots of 9/11" for The New York Times and the Discovery Channel. was broadcast last night on the Discovery Channel at 10, Eastern time. I thought it was very well done, and important.

I hope many, many people saw it and paid close attention - and I hope many more do in the future. Sometimes, seeing is believing. We're dealing with deep emotions, deep contradictions, deep conflicts between different ideas and ideals of order - and people who hunger for order, and will fight for it.

Order exists for basic, inescapable reasons. Our lives would be unthinkable if it were not true that patterns recur, often enough, recognizably enough, for us to deal with our world as well as we do.

Some basic, recurring patterns not only repeat - the patterns look the same over ranges of scale - and for analogous circumstances. Sometimes stunningly so. http://www.math.umass.edu/~mconnors/fractal/similar/similar.html

People live in cultures - in the large, and the many cultures of the professions and other associations that people have. Whole cultures, large and small, can be elaborately wrong, yet passionately sure of themselves. This is surely true of all cultures, in various ways. All cultures that sustain themselves also have some things straight - straight enough to sustain the culture - as it exists. And they are as muddled and conflicted as they are.

Some things, it seems, people have a hard time seeing - and sometimes only seeing works to get to believing.

Watching "Searching for the Roots of 9/11" I was impressed at how vividly on display key opposites were.

The logic (and illogic) of the people shown was plain to see.

The orderliness (and disorderliness) of their beliefs and passions was plain to see.

Their feelings of certainty (and uncertainty) were plain to see.

I hope a lot of people watched it carefully.

With time and events - some things that seem clear become muddled, but some questions get answers. It is now certain that many of the most basic assumptions behind the invasion of Iraq have proven wrong.

almarst2003 - 09:39am Mar 27, 2003 EST (# 10555 of 10564)

Preventive War Opens Way to New Rules on Conflict - http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=1EXX0PGWWGUQUCRBAEKSFEY?type=focusIraqNews&storyID=2456632

I PREVENT YOU ... BEFORE YOUR PREVENT ME ... BEFORE I PREVENT YOU ...

almarst2003 - 09:47am Mar 27, 2003 EST (# 10556 of 10564)

"They shot my brother, and this is his blood." - http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030326.usout0326/BNStory/International

almarst2003 - 09:51am Mar 27, 2003 EST (# 10557 of 10564)

"Precise" and "Surgical": NBC's Bombing Claims Lack Verification

http://www.fair.org/activism/nbc-bombs.html

When allegations are made about civilian deaths and destruction from the bombing, the stories are treated with skepticism, often framed as claims made by the Iraqis: "The BBC and the Arab network Al-Jazeera have devoted significant time to what Iraq suggested were innocent victims targeted in the bombings" (NBC Nightly News, 3/22/03).

Yet it is plain that some bombs are going off course. Syrian civilians in a bus in northern Iraq were killed in one attack, two cruise missiles have landed in Turkey (Dateline NBC, 3/23/03) and several missiles have reportedly hit southwestern Iran (Washington Post, 3/24/03).

Some reporters in Baghdad have been able to document some of the civilian effects of the bombing; John Daniszewski reported in the Los Angeles Times (3/25/03) that "the deaths and injuries from misdirected or errant bombs, or from shrapnel and fragments that spray into nearby homes even when the munitions find their intended target, are making more and more people believe that the United States is heedless of the Iraqi public." Such information gives some needed perspective about claims of "precision" or "surgical" bombardment.

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