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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 - 11:48am Sep 8, 2003 EST (# 13566 of 13566)
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.

Hi, gisterme - one thing you would see if you went back and looked at your posts - is that you've worked hard.

Another thing you might see, or remember - is that you've sometimes asked me for answers - and I haven't given them to you.

That's true of Almarst , too.

There are some things one can say to criticise President Bush's speech last night

TEXT President Bush's Address to the Nation http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/08/international/08PTEX.html

and I agree with a lot said in The President's Speech http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/08/opinion/08MON1.html

but, everything considered, I think it was a pretty good speech - a step in the right direction. Not that I'm sure I'd disagree with some things I'd guess would occur to Almarst , reading the speech.

My college president sister's father in law, now passed away, gave a wonderful toast at her wedding:

" Here's to it . . . . from it . . . . and to it again.

" If you don't do it . . . when you get to it to do it . . . .

" You never get to it, to do it again.

You can't reverse time. But sometimes you can get to a situation like something that happened in the past - and do it better.

Sometimes much better.

I've been spending a lot of thought - wondering about things I thought about doing, and didn't - and whether I should have - and about what might be done now.

A big question for me is this.

"Why didn't I level with people about my background, from Eisenhower on - much earlier?

Working that through has interested me - and I've got plenty of regrets. Times I wish I could have answered your questions, and Almarst's questions more clearly. All the same - it seems to me that a lot of progress has been made - sometimes more than I expected. And I don't think I've always done badly.

I think that lchic has been superb - not only in her postings - but in her many hours of talking to me - guiding me -keeping me straight.

In 13565 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.Sm5cb432EZo.7880966@.f28e622/15257 I talk of "miracles." Could I handle those "miracles" if they happened? Or "miracles" like them?

I think so. I also think that if such "miracles" happened - it would help Putin, Annan, Bush, and other leaders do things they are expected to do. Not because I'm important. But because problems I was assigned to do - and have worked on - are important.

I think I could help Bush spend that 87 billion better - in terms of what he wants to do .

It seems to me that I'm doing what Eisenhower and Casey asked me to do - and that on a lot of things - it is working. It seems to me that most of the useful intellectual work I've done in my life has been done since I started working with lchic - and it seems to me that this thread just might be worth it - even for you.

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