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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?

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almarst2003 - 06:44am Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11041 of 11048)

A strategic blunder? - http://www.townhall.com/columnists/paulcraigroberts/pcr20030403.shtml

The American invasion has made a Muslim hero out of Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator who has spent his political life suppressing Islamic political parties. Even worse, the invasion has achieved the "Palestinization" of the Muslim world and has united Muslims against us.

Muslims see the invasion of Iraq not as liberation but as conquest and re-colonization. Samir Ragab, the staid chairman of the hitherto moderate Egyptian Gazette, editorialized on March 27: "The U.S. and Israel are one and the same thing. Their common objective is to enfeeble Arabs and tear their nation to pieces."

"It is genocide to me," says Cairo Times reporter Summer Said. Even Christian Arabs have turned against us: George Elnaber, a 36-year-old owner of an Amman, Jordan, supermarket says: "Bush is an occupier and terrorist. We hate Americans more than we hate Saddam now."

Similar sentiments are being expressed millionsfold throughout the Middle East and Muslim Asia. They reflect the overnight radicalization of the Muslim world, which will affect politics. On March 31, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said: "When it is over, if it is over, this war will have horrible consequences. Instead of having one bin Laden, we will have 100 bin Ladens."

Secular Middle Eastern rulers, who have suppressed Islamic political parties, are isolated from the populations that they govern. Islamic political movements were making headway, most notably in Pakistan and Turkey, prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The invasion has energized Islamic politicians. Leaders of the Mutahida Majlas-e-Aamal (MMA), a ruling religious party alliance in Northwest Pakistan, responded by demanding that Pakistan's "coward leaders" be pushed aside so that Pakistan's nuclear arms can be used "for the protection of the Muslim world." Not even our NATO ally Turkey would permit us to move troops across its territory.

Deluded, perhaps, by the pro-war propaganda gushing from the U.S. news media and neoconservative magazines, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have foolishly further inflamed Muslim opinion by issuing "warnings" to Syria and Iran. Such warnings are regarded as threats. In an interview with the Beirut daily newspaper A-Safir, Syrian President Bashar Assad responded to the threats, "We will not wait until we become the next target."

Clearly, U.S. policymakers lack understanding of the volatile region of the world in which they are exercising a heavy hand. With amazing hubris, U.S. policymakers have stirred up thousands of Islamic terrorists whose future victims could dwarf in number the deaths of Sept. 11 and the Iraq war combined.

The same policymakers have exacerbated distrust of the United States throughout the world. The Russian government publicly announced that it expects the Americans to plant weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to justify the excuse used to invade Iraq. The Russians said that they will believe no such American claim without independent international inspection. What kind of cooperation can a country so distrusted expect?

The U.S. invasion of Iraq is a strategic blunder, the costs of which will mount over the next half century. If there is to be a silver lining to this military adventure, perhaps it will be the realization among the American public that the neoconservative agenda of conquest of the Muslim Middle East is beyond our available strength, thus diverting America from a disastrous course, which would consume our blood and treasure.

lchic - 06:50am Apr 4, 2003 EST (# 11042 of 11048)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Why not just look for truth and get back to fact

The facts are : ___________________________________