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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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lchic - 09:42pm Oct 7, 2003 EST (# 14604 of 14616)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Phillip Adams

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,7493464%5E12272,00.html

Bush-whacked by White House follies

October 08, 2003

You'll recall how the US responded to al-Qa'ida's destruction of the World Trade Centre twin towers. It mounted a full-scale attack on a neighbouring and more important New York landmark: the UN building on the East River.

Having joined the US in deriding, dividing and demoralising the UN, Australia now echoes George W. Bush's demands for its reform. After ignoring and overriding its objections to the war in Iraq, having helped hound Hans Blix and his weapons inspectors from the scene, having accused the UN of everything from irrelevance to moral cowardice, we back Bush in his UN-bashing.

Now the US returns to the East River, to the place it had pilloried and pauperised, to demand its help. And while Dubya plays the surreal role of intransigent mendicant, his wife appears in Paris. And why does the French President kiss her knuckles? Because she's there to end the 20-year US dummy-spit with UNICEF.

So what we have is a pincer movement. Hubby makes demands with menace while the Missus lays on the charm. Neither distracts from the magnitude of the administration's blunderings in Iraq. Brushing aside the disinformation campaign about weapons of mass destruction, we see in the north the beginnings of an ethnic war between Kurds and Turkomans. In the centre, another between Shiites and Sunnites. Everywhere, well-organised guerilla movements, swollen with Islamic jihadists arriving in Iraq from across the Middle East to battle the infidels. Not to mention the radical Shiites rallying their followers to form some sort of Islamic theocracy. Bush insists the removal of Saddam Hussein is a price worth paying, though thousands collaterally damaged wouldn't agree.

Yes, Hussein was a monster, but an increasingly muzzled one. The horror stories, like the mass graves, date from when Hussein was Washington's buddy, battling the mullahs in Iran. Even his gassing of the Kurds was conducted under US auspices, as documents recently and reluctantly released attest. The US invaded a dysfunctional and largely disarmed Iraq, badly damaged by the 1991 Gulf War and the sanctions, and militarily weakened, as we now know, by years of weapons inspections. All in all, it seems reasonable to observe that Hussein was on the skids. So was killing thousands of Iraqis and wrecking the nation's infrastructure necessary? Given that the WMDs didn't exist? Given that there was no connection between Baghdad and al-Qa'ida, let alone between Baghdad and September 11?

The coalition chose to believe the self-serving fables told by Iraqi exiles. Accepted Donald Rumsfeld's argument about troop numbers adequate for the invasion but not for the aftermath. The US forgot about a police force or any sort of judicial system to punish looters. When it realised the scale of its miscalculation, it started recruiting thugs from one of Hussein's most detested agencies, the Mukhabarat.

Despite their promises to fix things fast and the decision to privatise just about everything (without asking for views, let alone the permission of the Iraqi people), they've failed to fix up the supply of electricity, water and oil. These days, Iraqis can't even buy petrol for their vehicles. There was also the lunatic proposition that, by imposing democracy by force, the US, UK (and us) would inspire the region to transform itself. What a load of ideological claptrap.

AS if the fiasco in Iraq weren't bad enough, Washington's new approach to the UN seems decidedly inept. It was Bush's go-it-alone, mind-your-own-business, get-out-of-the-way approach to the UN that, as well as costing it the friendship of longstanding allies, dangerously undermined that immensely important institution. And the poor UN, going into Baghdad out of a sense of duty, gets bombed for its trouble.

Dozens died on Aug

lchic - 09:43pm Oct 7, 2003 EST (# 14605 of 14616)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

.. Dozens died on August 19, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, chief of the UN mission, one of its best and brightest, someone with the credentials to have taken over from Kofi Annan in due course. Before the bombing, UN officials were warning that if a legitimate government weren't established in Iraq quickly, a government that could be seen as autonomous and effective, the growing anarchy might engulf the region. Little wonder the UN is pulling out of the physical rubble and political ruin that US ineptitude has created.

It's becoming obvious to US voters that the Bush regime has lost the peace. Tony Blair is also snatching defeat from the alleged victory. Oh, he'd probably win another election, given the paucity of opposition. But he lingers on as an immensely reduced figure. Howard, too, might fluke another term, given the sorry state of the ALP. Nonetheless, his attachment to the US and the UK and to great dollops of clapped-out rhetoric looks increasingly inept.

So who to blame for the mess? No problem – let's blame the UN. Which was right about the war in the first place.

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