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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.

rshow55 - 06:56am Jun 9, 2003 EST (# 12418 of 12430)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

I knew of Oscar Rothaus' work - and used a lot of it - back then I did a lot of work with Markov chains - applied to crypto, combat theory, and technical search strategy - but I never actually talked to Rothaus - though I attended a couple of his lectures. My only math course at Cornell was a "D" in baby calculus - and that was intended. But Professor James W. Marchand, the brilliant polymath linguist, Germanic studies teacher, medievalist, and mathematician (as I recall, Jim had 3 earned Ph.D.'s) did teach me a lot about Markov chains - much connected to Rothaus's DOD related work. Meetings with James W. Marchand constituted the bulk of my liberal arts and "general" education - they were informal, and a great gift to me.

rshow55 - 07:06am Jun 9, 2003 EST (# 12419 of 12430)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Back then I was outraged at Chomsky, who had insisted that human linguistic function could not be Markovian - something I thought grossly misstated at the time.

Haven't changed my mind - but I haven't looked at those issues in years.

I don't remember the details - but it wasn't often that I reacted so strongly against an intellectual position - whatever one might think of his broader politics - I think, in linguistics (and some related crypto) "the bad guys won."

almarst2002 - 07:23am Jun 9, 2003 EST (# 12420 of 12430)

Lies and Consequences - http://www.jbs.org/visitor/rotnol/030525_transcript.htm

In other words, the Bush administration lied us into war in Iraq, just as the Clinton administration lied us into war in Kosovo.

almarst2002 - 07:35am Jun 9, 2003 EST (# 12421 of 12430)

Intelligence officers are holding a "smoking gun" which proves that they were subjected to a series of demands by Tony Blair's staff in the run-up to the Iraq war.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=413481

WHO COULD IMAGINE? SUCH A NICE GUY. NEVER FORGET TO TO SMILE, SAY HI AND OCCUSIONALLY, HELP A NEIGHBOR

almarst2002 - 07:45am Jun 9, 2003 EST (# 12422 of 12430)

TONY Blair’s first dossier on the justification for war against Iraq was almost entirely put together from information freely available on the internet, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

A second dossier on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) which was released five months after the first has been dubbed the "dodgy dossier" after it emerged much of it was based on a student’s PhD thesis.

A series of arresting, one-line comments from the Blair dossier are also mirrored in old CIA reports.

Only two fresh claims stand out: the ability to use WMD in 45 minutes, which the Ministry of Defence has said came from a single uncorroborated source, and the suggestion that Iraq was scouring Africa for nuclear fuel.

"The dossier was the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee," insisted a spokesman.

http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/politics.cfm?id=635942003

BEVERE. THE CLOSE CONTACT MAY PASS THE GERMS.

almarst2002 - 08:02am Jun 9, 2003 EST (# 12423 of 12430)

A striking finding in the new PIPA/Knowledge Networks poll is that many Americans are unaware that weapons of mass destruction have not been found in Iraq. While 59% of those polled correctly said the US has not found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, 41% said they believed that the US has found such weapons (34%) or were unsure (7%).

Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments: "For some Americans, their desire to support the war may be leading them to screen out information that weapons of mass destruction have not been found. Given the intensive news coverage and high levels of public attention to the topic, this level of misinformation suggests that some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance."

"To some extent this misperception can be attributed to repeated headlines that there has been a promising lead in the effort to find evidence of such weapons' headlines that are not counterbalanced by prominent reporting that these leads have not been fruitful. But there is also reason to believe that this misperception may be unconsciously motivated, as the mistaken belief is substantially greater among those who favored the war."

http://pipa.org/whatsnew/html/new_6_04_03.html

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