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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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rshow55 - 12:01pm Jun 17, 2003 EST (# 12570 of 12573)
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.

Jorian , I trust you read the rest of the last few postings. "Futile speculations" - after a while - can gain some statistical weight. And there are ways of asking questions that are not always futile - even when questions are asked of the TIMES - or top TIMES management.

I was very interested in this Op.Ed piece:

When Forever Is Far Too Long By DANIEL BERGNER http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/opinion/17BERG.html

" Our embrace of the natural-life sentence is seen as alien by almost all the countries that share our culture and legal heritage. "

12439 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.34iPbLUYgLf.1230592@.f28e622/14092 includes this,

My Sept 27 2000 posting http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/6 continues with five partly true but partly misleading paragraphs - where I was "too easy on myself" and perhaps less courageous than I should have been.

and I'll add a little detail in bold

"Change a simple mathematical circumstance, or perceptions of it, and perceptions of military risk shifted radically. If we could lie to the Russians, and say we'd cracked the problem, we might scare the hell out of them, at trivial cost. Just a little theatrics in the service of bluff. Scaring the other side, with bluffs (lies) is standard military practice. I found myself asked by President Nixon to get involved in what I took to be serous Russian scaring. I refused to go along, after talking to some people on the other side, because of my old fighting experience. It was my judgement, right or wrong, that the Russians were already plenty scared enough, and if scared much more, they might lose control, and fight without wanting to. I may have made a big mistake.

No doubt it is "a big mistake" to tell the President of the United States to "get f***ed" from my position - but I'm not the only person or organization to defy Nixon, and I felt - for reasons that I could not escape - that to go along would be to take a LARGE risk of an explosive instability that could have destroyed the world. It would have been, in my view, dereliction of duty. Whatever Casey promised Nixon I don't know. I've told the truth, insofar as I reasonably could, about my relationship to Casey - and on any interpretation I can think of, the AEA investors deserve to be paid.

I think I should be "let out of jail" as well. Assuming, as I have to, that I was ever "in". At the level where I worked, paperwork is scarce.

Dereliction of Duty By PAUL KRUGMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/17/opinion/17KRUG.html

( Or maybe my terms of incarceration could be improved. They aren't too bad . . . but could be better. The CIA knows if they have records and paperwork - I have no idea. )

rshow55 - 12:58pm Jun 17, 2003 EST (# 12571 of 12573)
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'm not average, exactly - or everybody's ideal - but I think folks can be unfair, and anyhow this is a great song !

Your Feet's Too Big (Benson, Fisher) http://www.heptune.com/yourfeet.html

Transcribed from Fats Waller and His Rhythm, vocals by Fats Waller; recorded 11/3/39;

Don't want ya 'cause your feet's too big!

Mad at you 'cause your feet's too big!

I really hate ya' 'cause your feet's too big!

(2 following messages)

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