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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 - 08:34am Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4394 of 4409)

"" Even President Bush has made the connection: "It is important for Americans to know that the traffic in drugs finances the work of terror, sustaining terrorists, that terrorists use drug profits to fund their cells to commit acts of murder."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,794691,00.html

Isn't he of the 'Oliver North' tradition himself?

lchic - 08:37am Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4395 of 4409)

- Isn't the point re 'addicts' is that they are just that - addicted.

- Afghanistan, wasn't the US criticised for leaving the poppy crop economy well alone !

lchic - 08:44am Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4396 of 4409)

"Saudi Arabia is just a large prison." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/middle_east/806642.stm

commondata - 08:44am Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4397 of 4409)

And on and on. Great read:

Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do : The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country by Peter McWilliams, Jean Sedillos

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0931580587/qid=1032439438/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/102-7655475-9015317?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

mazza9 - 08:48am Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4398 of 4409)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

"..and government of lchic, by lchic and for lchic".....Is this your idea of improving the US government? Why don't you mind your own business?

commondata - 08:53am Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4399 of 4409)

"..and government of lchic, by lchic and for lchic.." ... could not help but improve US governance.

rshow55 - 08:56am Sep 19, 2002 EST (# 4400 of 4409)
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.

Arming the Arms Inspectors By JESSICA T. MATHEWS and CHARLES G. BOYD http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/19/opinion/19MATH.html is superb - - and very promising. As an "abstract solution" - I think it is a thing of discipline and realistic, practical beauty.

What a wonderful thing, for the whole world - if decisions went as Mathews and Boyd suggest !

It seems to me that people ought to consider two questions:

How could the points of the proposal be "fought out" in time - in the ways where "battles of ideas" have to get to closure (with adjustments of positions as they make sense) ?

How could the proposal, with sensible adjustments - be sold effectively, and in time - so that it would actually happen?

If this solution were actually argued to closure - and, with modifications, implemented - we'd be well on the way to a safer, better world - for America, for western culture - for islamic culture and its people -- for the whole world.

Muddles like missle defense would get solved almost automatically if the procedures and honesties this would require actually came into being, and actually were worked through to success.

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