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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.

gisterme - 12:24pm Oct 3, 2002 EST (# 4745 of 4746)

rshow55 10/3/02 9:06am

"...Some of the things gisterme said were outrageous - - big lies - - and it makes sense to deal with those things carefully..."

Okay, Robert. Please go ahead and reveal the big lies I've told. If I've said anyting untruthful I would very much like to be corrected...or does "deal with these things carefully" mean "but I won't back up the allegation".

commondata - 12:48pm Oct 3, 2002 EST (# 4746 of 4746)

gisterme 10/3/02 12:18pm

The article I took the quote from also comes with a more Republican outlook, "There is a threat," Lott told Fox. "It's real, it's here, it's now. We need to move beyond the old way of thinking."

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/07/15/missile.test/

If there is a real threat, here and now, that the missile defense system could remove then it's from others' ballistic missiles. The negotiation of the destruction of these weapons is a moral and logical imperative. Robert is right when he says IT IS NEVER ALRIGHT TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS. That doesn't seem like a difficult thing to understand. The diversion of massive human resources into something more constructive will immediately benefit millions of people across the planet. That's not naive. It could be done. Carefully, in ways that Robert has outlined, if you like.

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense