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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.

almarst2020 - 08:16pm Apr 26, 2002 EST (#1809 of 1841)

Arms Control Today - Parsing the Nuclear Posture Review - http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_03/panelmarch02.asp

"It is important to remember that the ABM Treaty was based on the premise that limitations on anti-ballistic missile systems create more favorable conditions for agreements to limit and eliminate strategic nuclear weapons. Despite a number of missed opportunities on the part of U.S. and Russian leaders over the last three decades to reduce and eliminate offensive nuclear weapons, the ABM Treaty did create the predictability and confidence that allowed for important limitations and reductions in superpower arsenals that have benefited the United States and international security."

lchic - 08:22pm Apr 26, 2002 EST (#1810 of 1841)
Mix a little GU.com with NYT.com - NET the wider perspective!

Poor old George ... getting a sad reputation for being weak and ineffectual - the world can read him .. but now USA academics are saying this outloud. (WeekendAustralian) ... they're may be saying things like
"The Emperor has no clothes"
"Too much power, in the wrong hands, can be a dangerous thing"

_____________

The only American Minnie we know of is a mouse!

Dead Pan :

An example of straight faced dead pan delivery lchic 4/26/02 4:25pm a smile or a wink - that comes from mAzzA ... as realisation dawns.

almarst2020 - 10:31pm Apr 26, 2002 EST (#1811 of 1841)

Two Russian strategic nuclear bombers flew within 37 miles of Alaska recently in a rare probe of U.S. air defenses... The Russian bomber probe took place as U.S. and Russian officials in Moscow failed to reach the terms of a new accord on strategic arms reduction. It also took place amid recent criticism by officials in Moscow of U.S. intelligence-sharing on terrorism... This is not the kind of cooperation in resisting international terrorism that we had counted on," he said, noting that Russian requests for more U.S. intelligence were denied. - http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020426-3530826.htm

lchic - 04:32am Apr 27, 2002 EST (#1812 of 1841)
Mix a little GU.com with NYT.com - NET the wider perspective!

Isn't Alaska just across the ditch from Siberia :)

lchic - 04:35am Apr 27, 2002 EST (#1813 of 1841)
Mix a little GU.com with NYT.com - NET the wider perspective!

India : Poor Fella my Country :

"The death of the Queen Mother, India's last empress, provoked little comment among Indians. With the Raj a distant memory, most see the US rather than Britain as their role model. http://www.guardian.co.uk/queenmother/article/0,2763,706196,00.html

almarst2020 - 09:18am Apr 27, 2002 EST (#1814 of 1841)

Saudi Telethon Host Calls for Enslaving Jewish Women - http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document042602.asp

lchic - 10:48am Apr 27, 2002 EST (#1815 of 1841)
Mix a little GU.com with NYT.com - NET the wider perspective!

Will those, and world-women bring a 'class action' against that media outlet? They should, and Mary Robinson is exactly the person to SPEAK OUT!

rshow55 - 11:00am Apr 27, 2002 EST (#1816 of 1841)

Arms Control Today - Parsing the Nuclear Posture Review - http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_03/panelmarch02.asp is very important. It includes a lot of important stuff.

Including this from Rose Gottemoeller, senior associate with the Non-Proliferation Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:

"Given the NPR’s emphasis on this hedging strategy against Russia as well as against other, more inchoate threats, I believe that it is enormously important over the next six months to give Putin the one thing that he wants: a legally binding strategic framework. Certainly, that was the quid pro quo, in my view, for President Putin’s acquiescence to Bush’s announcement of the U.S. intent to withdraw from the ABM Treaty. He felt he got one thing, and one thing alone, that he needed: an agreement from Bush to move forward with some kind of legally binding document by the next summit, which will be held in the early summer in Russia.

With that in mind, I’d like to make a few remarks about how I think we can get out of the situation the United States is in now, where, the Russians are very strongly complaining about what they call the “irreversibility problem” emerging from the NPR. That is, the U.S. hedge strategy and the large number of warheads Washington plans to maintain on the shelf will, in essence, create a situation where Russia will not get any true reductions out of the strategic arms reduction process promised and previously announced by the two presidents.

The ethical role of media communicators is crucial.

And where the creative challenges are very large, too. There have been times in the past where the truth has been somehow, too weak.

TURNING AWAY FROM THE HOLOCAUST by Max Frankel Nov 14, 2001 ..

On nukes, a similar failure could end the world. We need to better.

Ideas that ought to propogate aren't doing so. But I think there are fewer "chain breakers" than there used to be. Maybe soon, enough fewer.

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