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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 (10871 previous messages)

mazza9 - 11:18pm Mar 31, 2003 EST (# 10872 of 10879)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

...and Buck showalter won his first game as the Rangers Skipper!

almarst2003 - 11:21pm Mar 31, 2003 EST (# 10873 of 10879)

mazza - "I never realized how easy it was to make meaningless posts." ... "Th th th th dots all folks!"

Don't be so shy of your success. You deserve it!

almarst2003 - 11:42pm Mar 31, 2003 EST (# 10874 of 10879)

US troops accused of excess force - http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,926999,00.html

Steven Morris Tuesday April 1, 2003 The Guardian

Correspondents in Iraq have come upon a number of incidents in which the US military, especially the marines, have appeared to act with excessive force. Here are some examples. The bridge at Nassiriya After suffering heavy losses in the southern city of Nassiriya, US marines were ordered to fire at any vehicle which drove at American positions, Sunday Times reporter Mark Franchetti reported. He described how one night "we listened a dozen times as the machine guns opened fire, cutting through cars and trucks like paper".

Next morning he said he saw 15 vehicles, including a mini-van and two lorries, riddled with bullet holes. He said he counted 12 dead civilians lying in the road or in nearby ditches.

One man's body was still on fire. A girl aged no more than five lay dead in a ditch beside the body of a man who may have been her father. On the bridge an Iraqi civilian lay next to the carcass of a donkey. A father, baby girl and boy had been buried in a shallow grave. Franchetti said the civilians had been trying to leave the town, probably for fear of being killed by US helicopter attacks or heavy artillery. He wrote: "Their mistake had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the coalition's supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young American marines with orders to shoot anything that moved."

Cluster bombs A surgical assistant at the Saddam hospital in Nassiriya, Mustafa Mohammed Ali, told the Guardian's James Meek that US aircraft had dropped three or four cluster bombs on civilian areas in the city, killing 10 and wounding 200.

He said he understood the US forces going straight to Baghdad to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but added: "I don't want forces to come into [this] city. They have an objective, they go straight to the target. There's no room in the hospital because of the wounded." When he saw the bodies of two dead marines, he revealed that he cheered silently.

Meek also told the story of a 50-year-old businessman and farmer, Said Yagur, who said marines searched his house and took his son, Nathen, his Kalashnikov rifle and 3m dinars (about £500). The marines argued the money was probably destined for terrorist activities. After protests by the father, who rose up against Saddam Hussein after the last Gulf War and had his house shelled by the dictator's artillery, they let the son go and returned the gun and money.

The road to Baghdad Reporters have seen more than a dozen burnt-out buses and trucks and the bodies of at least 60 Iraqi men on the road north of Nassiriya. A photograph carried in the Guardian last week showed a bus which had been attacked by US troops. Bloodstained corpses lay nearby.

Reuters journalist Sean Maguire said there were four bodies outside the bus and - according to the marines - 16 more inside. The Americans told him the dead men wore a mix of civilian and military clothing and were in possession of papers "that appeared to identify them as Republican Guard". But Brigadier General John Kelly admitted to Maguire: "We have very little time to decide if a truck or bus is going to be hostile." The reporter described the bullet-ridden bus and the bodies as "evidence of the ruthless efficiency with which lead marine units are clearing the road north of Nassiriya to make way for a military convoy".

Exuberance A British officer was alarmed when the American marines who were escorting him through the port of Umm Qasr let loose a volley of rifle fire at a house on the outskirts of town.

The officer told Reuters reporter David Fox: "They said they had been sniped out from there a few days ago so they like to give them a warning every now and then. That is something we [the British] would never condone." A US special forces officer said it was sometimes diffi

almarst2003 - 12:09am Apr 1, 2003 EST (# 10875 of 10879)

A HEAVY-DIRTY "LIBERATORS"

Devastation on Road to Baghdad - http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/01/international/worldspecial/01AIRB.html By JIM DWYER

ITH THE 101ST AIRBORNE DIVISION, near Hilla, in central Iraq, March 31 — It was possible today to drive 30 miles north from Najaf toward Baghdad and not see a single living person other than American soldiers.

The roads were littered with the hulks of pickup trucks and taxi cabs that had been fired on by Americans forces. As for the occupants of several of those cars — singled out as members paramilitary forces loyal to President Saddam Hussein — their bodies were sprawled on the ground nearby.

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