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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.

almarst2003 - 02:57am Mar 30, 2003 EST (# 10758 of 10762)

Here’s what the Neocons are saying today:

William Kristol: “In a certain way, the willingness to stick it out would be as impressive as” a quick victory, because such toughness would dispute the “core [Osama] bin Laden claim that America is a weak horse,” that after suffering 19 casualties in Somalia, “they fled.”

Michael A. Ledeen: “I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say, but all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war.”

Here’s what they were saying, oh, the other day.

Richard Perle, recently resigned chairman of the Defense Policy Board, in a PBS interview July 11, 2002: “Saddam is much weaker than we think he is. He’s weaker militarily. We know he’s got about a third of what he had in 1991.... “But it’s a house of cards. He rules by fear because he knows there is no underlying support. Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder. ”

Ken Adelman, former U.N. ambassador, in an Op-Ed for the Washington Post, Feb. 13, 2002: “I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they’ve become much weaker; (3) we’ve become much stronger; and (4) now we’re playing for keeps.

Vice President Dick Cheney, on NBC’s “Meet the Press” March 16: “The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but that they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that... “My guess is even significant elements of the Republican Guard are likely as well to want to avoid conflict with the U.S. forces and are likely to step aside.”

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN March 23: “The course of this war is clear. The outcome is clear. The regime of Saddam Hussein is gone. It’s over. It will not be there in a relatively reasonably predictable period of time... “And the people in Iraq need to know that: that it will not be long before they will be liberated.”

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars March 11: “Over and over, we hear reports of Iraqis here in the United States who manage to communicate with their friends and families in Iraq, and what they are hearing is amazing. Their friends and relatives want to know what is taking the Americans so long. When are you coming?... “In a meeting last week at the White House, one of these Iraqi-Americans said, ‘A war with Saddam Hussein would be a war for Iraq, not against Iraq....’ “The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberator. They know that America will not come as a conqueror. Our plan — as President Bush has said — is to ‘remain as long as necessary and not a day more.’”

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a breakfast meeting March 4, 2003: “What you’d like to do is have it be a short, short conflict. The best way to do that is have such a shock on the system, the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on the end is inevitable.”

Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair writer, in a debate Jan. 28, 2003: “This will be no war — there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention. “The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling ... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on.”

http://www.msnbc.com/news/752664.asp?0dm=C13TO

almarst2003 - 03:03am Mar 30, 2003 EST (# 10759 of 10762)

"Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq’s nuclear program?" ...

... Summary: Several US Senators and US Representatives voted to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq based on Bush's claim Iraq was trying to build a nuclear bomb. The story turned out to be faked.

http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/article.asp?id=582

almarst2003 - 03:11am Mar 30, 2003 EST (# 10760 of 10762)

"You cannot defy the will of the world," the President proclaimed. "You have used weapons of mass destruction before. We are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again." - http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/03/119547.php

United States supplied Iraq with much of the raw material for creating a chemical and biological warfare program.

When Iraq engaged in chemical and biological warfare in the 1980s, barely a peep of moral outrage could be heard from Washington, as it kept supplying Saddam with the materials he needed to build weapons.

From 1980 to 1988, Iraq and Iran waged a terrible war against each other, a war that might not have begun if President Jimmy Carter had not given the Iraqis a green light to attack Iran, in response to repeated provocations. Throughout much of the war, the United States provided military aid and intelligence information to both sides, hoping that each would inflict severe damage on the other. Noam Chomsky suggests that this strategy is a way for America to keep control of its oil supply:

"It's been a leading, driving doctrine of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent indigenous force will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price."

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