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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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almarst2002 - 03:40am Sep 20, 2002 EST (# 4440 of 4448)

http://www.fair.org/media-beat/020912.html

If a fictional country named Qari subjected the United States to the same threats that Washington is now aiming at Iraq, the dispatch would read something like this:

Qari is justified in striking any country believed to be planning an attack against it, Qari's vice president Kcid Yenehc said today, defending his nation's new foreign policy doctrine on pre-emptive military action.

George W. Bush has accelerated the U.S. biological weapons programs and is "actively and aggressively" seeking further development of nuclear warheads, said Yenehc, citing unspecified intelligence gathered over the past year. "And increasingly, we believe Qari will become the target of those activities," Yenehc said.

Top Qarian officials took to the Sunday talk shows as part of President Hsub's effort to convince the public that action against Bush is urgently needed. The officials made the case that the world cannot wait to find out about the American president's development of weapons of mass destruction. "Imagine the deaths of vast numbers of innocent men, women and children," Qari defense secretary Dlanod H. Dlefsmur said.

"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," Qari's national security adviser, Azzeelodnoc Ecir, told a national TV audience. She added: "How long are we going to wait to deal with what is clearly a gathering threat against Qari, against our allies and against many other countries?"

Hsub recently addressed the United Nations to build his case for action against the United States. But Qari foreign minister Niloc Llewop said whatever the United Nations decides, Hsub will reserve the right to go it alone against the United States.

"President Hsub will retain all of his authority and options to act in a way that may be appropriate for us to act unilaterally to defend ourselves," Llewop said.

Hsub outlined a new doctrine in June, warning he will take "pre-emptive action, when necessary, to defend our liberty and to defend our lives." Critics, some of them in countries allied with Qari, have questioned whether military action to achieve the Qarian government's goal of overthrowing Bush from power is legal under international law.

But Yenehc said in the case of the United States, such action is justified. "If we have reason to believe someone is preparing an attack against Qari, has developed that capability, harbors those aspirations, then I think Qari is justified in dealing with that, if necessary, by military force," he said.

Bush has the technical expertise and designs for more advanced nuclear arms, and has been seeking a type of aluminum tube needed to enrich uranium for such weapons, Yenehc and Llewop said. "He is in fact actively and aggressively seeking to acquire more destructive weapons," Yenehc said.

The U.S. vice president has denied that his country is trying to collect nuclear material or building up sites that international nuclear weapons inspectors used to visit. Dick Cheney, speaking to reporters in Washington, charged that Qari is seeking an excuse to attack the United States. "They are telling lies and lies to make others believe them," Cheney said.

Hsub administration officials expressed deep skepticism about giving George another chance to open up his country to weapons inspectors. Officials say Hsub is considering giving George a last-ditch deadline for allowing unfettered access to weapons inspectors.

"The issue is not inspectors or inspections. That is a tool," Llewop said. "Disarmament is the issue. And we will stay focused on that, and we believe that regime change is the surest way to make sure that George Bush is disarmed."

Yenehc said that if Qari led an attack on the United States, then Qarian forces would have to stay there for a prolonged period afterward to ensure "we stood up a new government and helped the American people decide how they

lchic - 06:34am Sep 20, 2002 EST (# 4441 of 4448)

This last post exactly demonstrates what has already run through my mind, and those of the 'rest of the world' - namely Bush double speak.

Everything he condems Iraq for, he (Bush) has in abundance.

Bush is a defacto President - not clearly voted in.

It's interesting that in the USA demonOcracy ... whoops ... democracy, that those in power are the dollar-powered.

Why, does the RICH crowd, that surrounded elderBush, still need power?

I did quote an Accountant who told me that when auditing, those who stuck to their posts - never broke for a holiday, were people to watch. They might be sitting with a fraudulent scheme ... which would be discovered by standin replacements.

What have ElderBush, Cheney, and that crowd got to gain by 'taking' Iraq?

The answer, reading the above, relates to their interests in oil, interests in commisions from defense contracts, and their NEED to HANG on to POWER to ensure this.

Do they care about the US economy, the people, the health of the country as it relates to regular people?

"" ... right now it looks as if the economy is stalling, and also as if the people in charge have no idea what to do ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/opinion/20KRUG.html
... the job situation is increasingly dismal. A 5.7 percent unemployment rate doesn't sound that bad, but an unusually large number of workers have given up searching for jobs. The overall unemployment rate also doesn't reflect the rapidly growing number of people who are truly desperate, because they have been out of work for six months or more. And the employment situation has lately taken a significant turn for the worse: the number of people filing new claims for unemployment insurance, a leading indicator of future unemployment, has increased sharply over the past month.
.... the most striking similarity between now and a decade ago, it seems to me, is political. For all the differences between the moderate father and the deeply conservative son, now as then we have an administration whose key figures are fundamentally uninterested in and uncomfortable with economic policy.
That statement may strike you as strange: wasn't the tax cut George W. Bush's central achievement before Osama bin Laden came along? But the tax cut was never intended as an economic policy: it was a political gesture ....

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