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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 - 06:52pm Aug 16, 2002 EST (# 3746 of 3748)

Mazza, I've spent some hours talking to you over the phone - and I have some sympathy for you. All the same - sometimes you amaze me.

Of the hundreds of postings you've made -- a few have had some little merit. Very few. Not including the one above.

Bogus logic?

We made a mess we COULD clean up - as we should have. You equate a plane crash to Chernobyl?

As for what you remember -- you remember in ways that are so biased that it astonishes me.

If we'd said "I'm sorry" and sorted though problems - - and said "oops" when we should have said "oops" -- the world would be a much safer place.

rshow55 - 06:54pm Aug 16, 2002 EST (# 3747 of 3748)

I'm real proud of the postings from 3730 lchic 8/16/02 7:03am to 3741 rshow55 8/16/02 9:04am

In 3733 rshow55 8/16/02 8:39am I cite some background and in 3734 rshow55 8/16/02 8:42am I list some things that I think this the thread has accomplished.

I wonder if anybody who cares to post disagrees?

Some ideas take a long time to take off -- then conditions change, and notions propagate through the culture. MD2000 rshow55 5/4/02 11:36am
Chain Breakers http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/618

Some things are statistical. Other things are not.

Is it a coincidence that the United States is now at odds with so many other countries?

The Odds of That by LISA BELKIN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/magazine/11COINCIDENCE.html

Lots of things are statistical. But counting and a sense of context both matter.

rshow55 - 08:12pm Aug 16, 2002 EST (# 3748 of 3748)

MD2314 rshow55 5/19/02 3:03pm is one of fourteen postings referencing MD 1075-1076 rshow55 4/4/02 1:20pm

We can sort some key things out, in the national interest. All it takes is the will, and a willingness to acknowledge that technical details matter - when ignoring them can waste limited resources, cause us to take unnecessary risks, and permit unnecessary tragedies.

MD1620 rshow55 4/21/02 7:55pm to MD1629 rshow55 4/21/02 8:11pm show arguments lchic and I have worked hard on. Especially 1623 rshow55 4/21/02 7:59pm

" ...different people, with different views, have to cooperate in ways that fit human and practical realities, and it often works. It happens because, in areas where accomodation occurs, there are common bodies of fact , that people may feel differently about, but about which they agree in operational terms. So that people can be "reading from the same page" -- and with the pages objectively right.

We need some islands of technical fact to be determined, beyond reasonable doubt, or in a clear context.

We need those "islands" to be clear, at a level beyond politics - - at a level where people with very different interests and feelings can refer to "the same page" - and a page including points that can be both widely understood, and widely trusted.

Unless we can get these "islands of technical fact" we're very unlikely to reach good decisions. And the human stakes, and the stakes for the whole world, are high enough that we need good decisions.

Other nations have a right to expect rational and honest conduct from us. And to ask questions about our press releases and our claims. Lies are unstable. And they SHOULD BE.

I'm trying to do exactly what Bill Casey would have wanted me to do, and trying to be true to my other obligations, as well. Some things need to be fixed.

The United States deserves better than to have to depend on lies.

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