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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.

rshow55 - 08:13am Jul 16, 2002 EST (#3086 of 3339)

wrcooper 7/15/02 9:43pm and wrcooper 7/15/02 9:49pm . . . cast doubt on my clarity, and the validity of my thought processes -- and speak of the virtues of brevity. Brevity is precious when it fits what it is supposed to. But brevity is only useful when it summarizes much material, and is true.

Is my writing defective? People can look for themselves. And check for themselves.

Here are samples of my recent postings. Each posting clear and to the point, I think. Any criticisms about their clarity?

MD3013 rshow55 7/11/02 9:06pm ... MD3014 rshow55 7/11/02 9:17pm
MD3021 rshowalt 7/12/02 5:41pm ... MD3032 rshow55 7/13/02 12:18pm
MD3036 rshow55 7/13/02 1:07pm ... MD3046 rshow55 7/13/02 10:59pm

My other postings can be sampled. Any specific examples of badly written, muddy, or uncheckable ones? Please point some out, by number, so that I can look at them, and so that others can, too.

I especially like this posting: MD2000 rshow55 5/4/02 10:39am

Mazza - cooper - johnson - do you dispute it?

lchic - 08:18am Jul 16, 2002 EST (#3087 of 3339)

Fisk - on Pearl - the dots are imperfectly connected

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=315378

rshow55 - 08:19am Jul 16, 2002 EST (#3088 of 3339)

Somehow, I find that I can't use my customary posting procedure. Whoever in the government keeps fooling with my computer -- please undo it.

I feel like reposting this:

rshowalter - 04:48am Jul 29, 2001 EST #7562
Robert Showalter mrshowalter@thedawn.com

http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee86193/42 contains this:

" There's a problem with long and complex. And another problem with short. . . . . The long and the short of it, I think, is that you need both long and short."

In the end - I'd like to help get across some simple messages:

1. Missile defense is not only a bad strategic idea -- it is also a huge technical fraud, with no technical viability whatsoever, and that can be shown in public.

2. The US military industrial complex is now, in decisive ways, fundamentally fraudulent and corrupt.

3. For a while, the rest of the world has to take responsibility for action without dependence on the cooperation of the United States, or deference to its good judgement, until some basic issues in the United States get righted.

The problem with these messages is not that they are complicated, but that people are not yet ready to hear them, in ways that can let them "detonate" through the culture, as true ideas, at the right time, can do. But people are more ready than before. The flow of the news, and editorial opinion, in this paper and many others, worldwide, illustrates that.

Let me cite a poem, that I feel is fairly concise, on the issue of "detonation" -- Chain Breakers . . . . http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/618

lchic - 08:43am Jul 16, 2002 EST (#3089 of 3339)

If the government was a 'good' government it wouldn't intimidate via obstruction!

lchic - 09:09am Jul 16, 2002 EST (#3090 of 3339)

The world awaits Greenspan

The recent push and clamour in IT, to develop systems, to patch up holes re Year2000, together with the demise of gutted companies, has left many highly skilled IT workers looking for work.

Nations with long term vision would try to re-utilise this gifted labour force encouraging (and paying) them to implement selected valuable and necessary projects.

lchic - 09:14am Jul 16, 2002 EST (#3091 of 3339)

First dots
then spots
next chicken pox

Scratch the president

lchic - 09:18am Jul 16, 2002 EST (#3092 of 3339)

"" a sordid tale of cronyism, of misuse of power, of cozy backroom money-grubbing
^{http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/16/opinion/16KRIS.html}

rshowalt - 10:25am Jul 16, 2002 EST (#3093 of 3339)

Talked to my shrink yesterday -- and he'd talked to the CIA. Now, if the CIA would only acknowledge in writing or in a clearly traceable way that I could use, what they've told me, and him -- a lot might be sorted out.

I'm working carefully, and with honorable conduct and the national interest in mind. Some facts about the past, that matter for the present and the future, ought to be clarified. They can be, by "connecting the dots." There are a lot of checkable "dots" on this thread - including parts, now removed, from Sept 2000 on.

I've said before that the payoffs to getting me debriefed would be substantial - very much in the national interest- and stand by that.

A key posting about checkable facts: MD2116 rshow55 5/9/02 9:34am

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense