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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  /

    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.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (10676 previous messages)

rshow55 - 07:39pm Mar 28, 2003 EST (# 10677 of 10682) Delete Message
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.

-- and yet not necessarily be right based on the argument alone.

When it matters enough, for a practical purpose -i people can check things - and resolve issues worth resolving.

(Clergymen, including my grandfather, have been clear about that for many generations. 7017 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.gkbRarE66tD.2153802@.f28e622/8538

Sometimes faith is indispensible. But sometimes, on practical things, faith is simply negligence. There needs to be an obligation to check - and check competently, when it matters enough. )

When soldiers are terrified, and bullets are rending flesh, it ought to matter enough.

out.

almarst2003 - 08:24pm Mar 28, 2003 EST (# 10678 of 10682)

Did Bush (not his administration!) failed victim of a Christian "Golden rule"?

dccougar - 12:40am Mar 29, 2003 EST (# 10679 of 10682)
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.

As I said, Alarmist, Al Qaeda is looking for new recruits. Here is a cool Flash video at their recruitment site....

(^: http://cagle.slate.msn.com/mondo/MondoAlQaeda.asp :^)

lchic - 06:37am Mar 29, 2003 EST (# 10680 of 10682)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Space Agency Culture Comes Under Scrutiny

' ... taking a deeper look at signs that NASA may not have reformed its management culture to favor a free flow of ideas and internal criticism ... '

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/29/national/nationalspecial/29SHUT.html

lchic - 06:51am Mar 29, 2003 EST (# 10681 of 10682)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Saddam's friends - docco

Produced in 2003, SADDAM’S FRIENDS showing on SBS Television on Tuesday, March 25 at 8.30pm, looks at how Western powers, including America, France and Germany, armed Saddam Hussein.

In 1974 the French government, then led by Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, sold Iraq a nuclear reactor in return for lucrative deals including cheap oil. International sceptics asked why an oil rich country would need nuclear power but the French government insisted the reactor would be monitored and would not pose a military threat.

In 1979 Saddam Hussein ordered Iraq’s physicists to redirect their research from peaceful to military applications. One of them, Dr Hussein Sharistani, refused and was tortured and imprisoned in solitary confinement for ten years. In 1981 Israel bombed the plant but the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) saw an escalation of military support for secular Iraq against fundamentalist Iran. French supplied nuclear fuel, Germany sold Iraq the means of producing chemical and bacteriological weapons and, after a visit by Donald Rumsfeld (now Secretary of Defence), America sold Hussein sophisticated Harpoon missiles. It is also alleged that America sent live viruses, including anthrax, to Iraqi military units.

Former CIA director Gordon Oehler explains how between 1987 and 1989 German companies sold Iraq all the material it needed for another nuclear plant capable of producing nuclear weapons. The program claims that the German government authorised the sale. Kenneth Timmerman, author of “The Death Lobby”, says that it was also German technology which enabled the creation of the toxic chemical gases Hussein dropped on the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988, killing 5,000 people. Mirage fighter jets from France were used for the mission. Former Defence Minister Jean Pierre Chevenement says Halabja “only took on importance in the 1990s. At the time no one said anything yet the Americans knew all about it.”

At the end of the Iran-Iraq war Timmerman claims that Iraq owed the French the equivalent of 6 billion euros. With the end of the conflict Hussein concentrated on repatriating thousands of Arab scientists and engineers from all over the world and personally supervised their integration into the Iraqi system.

Iraqi nuclear physicist Dr Khidhir Hamza fled Iraq in 1994. He claims that at that time there were 12 000 people involved in researching nuclear weaponry.

SADDAM’S FRIENDS is a French production.

____________________

Alan Dupont -- says time for a US RETHINK - on Iraq - military tactics

Strategic analyst, Australia http://rspas.anu.edu.au/sdsc/staff.php

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