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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 - 08:04am Oct 8, 2002 EST (# 4757 of 4763)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

"" J.P
The reason the West will lift sanctions eventually is because of pressure from the oil companies to do so. They are desperate to get back into Iraq, especially with oil reserves at a record level, thanks to the embargo. At the same time, they will make a fortune rebuilding the Iraqi oil industry. The Vietnam War began to end - albeit slowly - when US business told President Johnson that his war was a loser. http://www.johnpilger.com/iraq/transcript

wrcooper - 12:37pm Oct 8, 2002 EST (# 4758 of 4763)

I think it is intriguing that Bush made no reference in his speech last night to BMD. He mentioned that North Korea had a missile capability and that Saddam was building mid-range missiles that could target Israel and Turkey and other countries in the region. But the President's emphasis was on weapons of mass destruction that could be delivered to terrorist cells operating in the U.S. homeland.

Of course this is the threat that critics of the BMD program have been insisting all along is the real threat. ICBMs launched at us from rogue states is a highly unlikely scenario. The BMD shield is a gambit aimed at forestalling ICBM development, hoping to convince potentially hostile states that they'll never be able to blackmail the U.S. with a threat of nuclear war.

Are we seeing a subtle change in policy? How can the administration argue so forcefully for BMD when it has now broadcast the obvious truth that the real threat is from chemical and biological (maybe nuclear) weapons that can be smuggled onto our shores?

How come noone in the media picked up on this?

lchic - 01:28am Oct 9, 2002 EST (# 4759 of 4763)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

"" 3. The real reason is simple and obvious. After the end of the Cold War the US sees itself in a unique position of global dominance over all other countries and now wants to make this permanent. The NMD-TMDs project is an attempt to achieve for the US absolute security (even from the nuclear weapons of an opponent) and unilateral global dominance, specifically over Russia and China.

4. The US believes it can achieve both these goals by developing a mix of offensive and defensive nuclear war-fighting capacities. This, it believes, will give the US the capacity to ‘win a nuclear war’ and to threaten a nuclear exchange which it can then ‘win’, thus giving it what it believes will be a great political advantage over all other countries.

http://www.abolition2000.org/issues/bmd-fact-sheet.html http://www.fas.org/rlg/950517-50th.htm

lchic - 01:45am Oct 9, 2002 EST (# 4760 of 4763)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

"" Pentagon, describe how chemical and biological exercises, until now undisclosed, used deadly substances like VX and sarin to test the vulnerability of American forces to unconventional attack .. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/09/politics/09NERV.html

lchic - .... using the same logic ... were soldiers laid in rows under tank treads to test for damage?

What shape are those 'tested' in today ... anyone around?

commondata - 05:13am Oct 9, 2002 EST (# 4761 of 4763)

gisterme 10/8/02 12:59am

I've been trying to come up with plausible modes of system failure that would explain the disappearance of non-contiguous, non-terminal posts belonging only to me. I can't.

White House 'exaggerating Iraqi threat'. Who'd have thought?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,807286,00.html

Mr Albright, who heads the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington thinktank, said: "There's a catfight going on about this right now. On one side you have most of the experts on gas centrifuges. On the other you have one guy sitting in the CIA."

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