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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 - 09:32am Jul 21, 2003 EST (# 13065 of 13068)
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.

An excellent contribution to national and world discourse:

A Bloody Peace in Iraq http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/opinion/21MON1.html

Germany and Japan were not transformed into prosperous democracies overnight after World War II, and it would be unrealistic to expect miracles in Iraq. Yet as the weeks pass, it seems undeniable that the Bush administration grievously miscalculated the human and financial costs of the American occupation. That failure, which is starting to register with Americans of all political persuasions and promises to become an election issue, cannot be easily dismissed with glib assurances of better days to come or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's favorite refrain that the war ended just weeks ago. This exercise in American power is going to be a lot longer and bloodier than President Bush ever said.

This page opposed an invasion that lacked the endorsement of the United Nations Security Council, and it now seems clear the Bush administration exaggerated its central argument for the mission — the threat of Baghdad's unconventional weapons. Nevertheless, establishing a free and peaceful Iraq as a linchpin for progress throughout the Middle East is a goal worth struggling for, even at great costs. We are there now, and it is essential to stay the course. But if Washington is to retain the public support needed to see the job through, it can't pretend that everything is on track. The soldiers returning home every week in body bags make that plain.

Most of the administration's critics predicted that Washington would win the war but botch the peace, and so far they have turned out to be disturbingly prescient. The administration seemed to think that when the war ended, Iraq's government institutions, ranging from the army to the waterworks, could simply be placed under new leadership and returned to operation, providing order and basic services to a free Iraq. Everything about the American plan, including the size and composition of occupying military forces, was misconceived. Last fall, top Pentagon officials scoffed at Gen. Eric Shinseki when the Army chief of staff predicted that several hundred thousand American troops might be needed to control Iraq after a war. Today there are 150,000, and the number is expected to grow. Mr. Rumsfeld's defense of the Pentagon's reaction appears to be that it all depends on your definition of "several," and it has not been convincing.

There was also a naïve assumption that opposition would melt away once Saddam Hussein was displaced. Recently, with the American death toll mounting by the day, Gen. John Abizaid, the new American commander in Iraq, accurately described the continuing combat as a guerrilla war — a term that image makers at the White House and Pentagon had studiously avoided. The scale of combat is nothing like the guerrilla warfare in Vietnam, but the conflict in Iraq promises to be protracted and expensive. The tab is currently running at close to $4 billion a month.

By invading Iraq without Security Council approval, Washington greatly complicated the task of enlisting foreign help during the postwar period. Secretary of State Colin Powell is now belatedly discussing a new Security Council resolution that would open the way for France, India and other countries to send peacekeeping forces to Iraq. That is critical to easing the burden on American troops.

It is not too late to set Iraq on a more promising course, but that will require the kind of staying power and cooperation with other nations that this administration has rarely shown much interest in mustering.

There are many interesting citations if one searches "UN or U.N." -on this thread that cast light, and give context, to A Bloody Peace in Iraq http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/opinion/21MON1.html

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