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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.

lchic - 02:42am Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11037 of 11042)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

If the Middle East - buzzed

Became an engine - hummed

How might such a functioning sound economy improve the lot of Africa ?

almarst2003 - 05:58am Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11038 of 11042)

dccougar - http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/ is NOT Al-Jazeera nor Pravda, if you care to take a look

almarst2003 - 05:59am Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11039 of 11042)

If they get away with it now, before long they will get a new itch, feel fresh excitement, sense new opportunities, and name a new Hitler-of-the-week. The distorters of reality, who advocated this war with shrill screams and lied in order to make it happen, are America’s enemies. They are far greater threat to the constitutional order, identity, and way of life of the United States than Saddam had ever been. - http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic/NewsST033103.html

almarst2003 - 06:20am Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11040 of 11042)

An ambitious cabal, disdainful of democracy and besotted with the devilish belief they are on a Mission From God, has its hands on America's control levers. They have dressed themselves up in the flag. The uninformed, misinformed and, often Nazi-caliber racists on talk radio (Michael Savage), join with government in damning dissent. Their book-burners-in-training are honing their skills by immolating dissenters' anti-war yard signs.

The rise in attacks on mosques is a related symptom, one frighteningly reminiscent of the swastika scribblers of another era. Those jacking up the hate are elevated to the status of seers. To wit, one of America's chief vitriol-slingers is Daniel Pipes, a shill for Israel's ultra-right Likud party. He is demanding that all of the 6 million Muslims in America be monitored and their activities regulated. He wants campuses purged of attitudes sympathetic to Islam and Arabs. Pipes also claims that his "research" shows 15 percent of Muslims are proto-terrorists. At an Emory University forum earlier this year, his claim was exposed as a fraud and he admitted under fire that he has no evidence. Yet, he remains a frequent network chattering head denouncing Islam.

We are demanding that other nations -- Canada, for example -- "muzzle anti-U.S. sentiment." At home, taking a page straight from Joseph Goebbels, the Bushies time terrorist alerts (likely bogus) to tweak public anxiety. When citizens are fixated on survival, attention is deflected from Bush's domestic and economic catastrophes, and his wholesale squandering of the nation's wealth to benefit his privileged class.

The horribly deceitful Ari Fleischer has warned Americans to "watch what they say." His bullhorns, such as Savage, are calling for dissidents to be jailed. Others, like Ann Coulter, call those not in the goose-stepping parade "traitors." She suggests government "physically intimidate liberals."

Those that don't pay heed are starting to pay the price. You may have heard that Stephen Downs of Albany, N.Y., was arrested after refusing to take off a "Give Peace a Chance" T-shirt in a mall. The ludicrousness of that attracted international press attention. There have been many, many similar but largely unnoted incidents, such as what happened to Andrew O'Connor in New Mexico. After opining in an online chat room that Bush "was out of control" (a tautology, I'd argue), O'Connor was besieged by the Secret Service, who handcuffed him and interrogated him for hours on his political views.

And what you haven't had hardly a hint about (one buried story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) is what the Bush cartel plans next. John Ashcroft is cobbling together an expansion of the grossly mis-monikered PATRIOT Act. Bush wants the power to strip people of their citizenship and to conduct secret arrests -- all without judicial oversight. We'd create our own army of the "disappeareds." Will they be terrorists, or just those who oppose the Reich? You will have no right to know. Or to ask.

So, yes, I think the jackboots are being polished.

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2003-04-02/fishwrapper.html

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