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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 - 09:44am Aug 22, 2003 EST (# 13354 of 13357)
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.

Toscanini and Fats Waller were both masters - but they were different masters of different things.

Both, earlier on, had to struggle some to learn to tie their shoes.

Moral indignation and frustration are useful (and unavoidable) if you have to deal with children for very long. Or adults, for that mattter. Decisions have to be made, too. But for basic reasons - there has to be more to it than just indignation and frustration.

We need to clean up some messes - and in some very sharp ways it is clear that some specific people are specifically at fault. Things are muddled. Some of the muddle is intentional. And things are serious. Lives are being devalued and wasted, wrenched, and ended. Things could be better. And there are reasons to be afraid they could get a lot worse than they are.

A lot of bad things have been done on purpose - and that matters.

But some of the worst things are happening (or being permitted to happen) because people don't know any better. Or partly for that reason.

For instance, I'm damned mad at George W. Bush, but even so, I think there are times when he's doing the best he knows how. I don't know if he knows anything about me - but he might feel the same about me, in spots. It seems to me that Putin has his limitations - and some of the mess set out in Arms and the Man By PETER LANDESMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/magazine/17BOUT.html wouldn't be as bad as they are if Putin had Russia under better control. Maybe Putin is doing the best he knows how, too.

I'm not doing my job as well as I'd like - but sometimes I hope for better things - and I'm trying to work out a story, just now. About a wrenching disaster that was kind of funny, too. And only as bad as it was.

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Because things are as serious as they are - we need to face up to the basics. The things that Eisenhower warned about in his Farewell Address have happened. Watergate happened - and some key problems weren't fixed. This is a mess. We have to be careful. And sometimes angry. But there's a lot to preserve, and that takes care.

almarst2002 - 09:48am Aug 22, 2003 EST (# 13355 of 13357)

The LIES and MESSES have a nasty tendency to MULTIPLY and PILE in "legitimate" self-defense... Untill the BIG bang blows it and surounding cheering crowd AWAY

rshow55 - 09:52am Aug 22, 2003 EST (# 13356 of 13357)
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.

Whatever private motivations may have been - the explicit discussions about the invasion of Iraq - and the justification of sanctions for many years before - were connected to weapons of mass destruction.

One need not dispute any bad thing said about Saddam to look at the essential argument as it was made to the world, and at the United Nations.

On October 17, the Iraqi government made a statement that, by diplomatic standards, looks very straightforward - and in retrospect, truthful. They weren't asking to be trusted, but to be checked. I've put the text on my web site to facilitate its consideration.

Iraq States Its Case By MOHAMMED ALDOURI October 17, 2002 http://www.mrshowalter.net/Iraq%20States%20Its%20Case.htm

The facts we now know are not inconsistent in any substantial way with the case Aldouri made, ugly though the Saddam regime was in other ways.

The central case against Saddam's government that was made at the UN, and to the world, hinged on WMD. Here is the case as set out at the news conference with U.S. President Bush, Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, Prime Minister of Portugal, Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Britain and Jose Maria Aznar, Prime Minister of Spain after the Azores meeting:

News Conference on Iraq http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/16/international/16IRAQ-TEXT.html

However noble and advanced the US, Spain, and UK may be as nations, and however sympathetic one may be with Bush, Blair, and Aznar - the facts they were so confident of have turned out to be wrong.

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We have a lot to sort out - and some problems that have to be faced - if better answers in the future are going to be possible.

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And "good intentions" were surely not the whole story.

almarst2002 - 10:01am Aug 22, 2003 EST (# 13357 of 13357)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

Some missing parts of a "STORY"...

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