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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

lchic - 07:42am Oct 12, 2003 EST (# 14812 of 14823)
Truth outs in the end : truth has to be morally forcing : build on truth it's a stong foundation

bbc | Iraq's economy will shrink 22% this year, having fallen 21% in 2002 and 12% in 2001, the United Nations and the World Bank have estimated.

The figures, which have been published ahead of a major meeting of donor nations, suggest that reconstruction work in Iraq will be slower to take effect than originally hoped.

Average income in Iraq fell from $3,600 per person in 1980 to between $770 and $1,020 by 2001 and will be just $450-610 by the end of 2003, the UN and World Bank said.

Even by the end of 2004, the two organisations estimate that average income could be lower than in 2001.

Plans to restore oil and gas production, refining, and pipeline capacity remain unclear

World Bank : The figures are contained in the latest version of the World Bank's Joint Iraq Needs Assessment which is to be presented to international donors on 23 October. ......

... unemployment / oil revenues / reconstruction

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3181248.stm

wrcooper - 10:30am Oct 12, 2003 EST (# 14813 of 14823)

In re: http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.hRgzbrokNWv.2110762@.f28e622/16519

klsanford0

Among all the threats we face, that of a intercontinental missile strike figures toward the bottom or at the bottom. Yet the DoD will be spending a disproportionately huge amount of money trying to defend against it. Either this is tunnel thinking held over from Cold War priorities, or it's sheer porkbarrel politics. The diehards claim the threat is real, but post-9/11 realities cast NMD in a pale light. Any pennyante rogue nation, like North Korea, who wanted, suicidally, to strike at the homeland of the United States wouldn't launch an easily trackable ICBM from within its own borders, thereby incurring a massive counterstrike. It would pack the warhead in a ship container full of insundries and souvenirs rigged with a remote switch or a timer and detonate it in Los Angeles harbor. Or, if they did have fissile material, they'd build a backpack bomb and smuggle a suicide bomber across our borders along some lonely stretch of uninhabited coastline and march him into downtown Manhattan.

Let's get real.

I might be in favor of a minimal R&D effort to continue to study the options, but Bush's rush to deployment of an unworkable system costing billions of scarily scarce federal dollars is the height of irresponsibility. It does nothing to further national security; in fact I'd argue that, by diverting our attention from more immediate threats, it lessens it.

klsanford0 - 01:42pm Oct 12, 2003 EST (# 14814 of 14823)

WRC:

"post-9/11 realities cast NMD in a pale light."

No, you are wrong. You seem to think that the west faces only one type of threat, that of terrorism....perhaps the world will change quite a bit in the next ten or twenty years, who knows the future..? One seeks to protect against the unknown as well....against threats not yet imminent, right..? In fact the 9/11 shows most clearly, not what you say, but precisely the utter unpredictablity of the threat, n'est-ce pas...?

It is of no moment that the MD of whatever type does not now work well, or currently at all. Presumably, it may well work in the future. You do not know that it will not. The threat MD is designed to protect against has little to do with the terrorism, even state-sponsored. The MD exists and is researched because of the existence of Ballistic missiles and their highly destructive nuclear warheads. Any defensive concept other than the MAD is highly preferable, as MAD relies literally on the Nuclear destruction of one's own nation. The West should rightly be desperate to avoid its own destruction under the MAD.....it's the very worst option for deterrence. It puts you and me under the nuclear gun.....and I don't like living with some moronic Communist pointing a gun directly at my head...that's not how I live my life.

Here in Canada we are overjoyed about MD...overjoyed...it's perfect for us. We get the best and most expensive R & D money can buy for a North American defense...USA must by default protect us too...and pay not one cent for it. It's just about perfect...

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