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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 - 04:22pm Dec 13, 2002 EST (# 6579 of 6588)

rshow55 12/9/02 8:46pm

"...It wouldn't take too many straight questions - ..."

Such as???

"...backed by enough force..."

Force? What force? Are we talking coersion here? Gun-point or torture perhaps?

"...to demand answers - all on subjects in the open literature - to lay a great deal of muddle aside -

Deleting 98% of what's been posted on this forum would lay a great deal of muddle aside.

"...and show that, in any reasonable military sense, MD can't work - even as a bluff..."

That's not true and you know it, Robert. You haven't even come close to showing that on this forum over the last couple of years despite all your millions of words.

"...Though one can do some very impressive (and expensive) stunts on the assumption that the enemy is too stupid to use even the simplest realistic countermeasures..."

Or one can make such claims assuming that nobody else has any common sense either. I wonder which is easier to do.

gisterme - 04:32pm Dec 13, 2002 EST (# 6580 of 6588)

"...So what does the civilized world intend to do to put an end to him, to negativity, to inhumaine suffering ... and to his actions that have steeply inclined each nation's 'cost of living' ..."

"...Pity Gisterme's not around to comment here..."

That's an easy question to answer, lchic. What the civilized world will do with Laden and all his ilk is hunt them down, one-by-one and bring them to justice. What it will never do is recognize those creatures as being representative of main-stream Islam so long as they are not.

gisterme - 04:42pm Dec 13, 2002 EST (# 6581 of 6588)

rshow55 12/10/02 12:00pm

"...I was referred to this board for what I thought would be a one day meeting. And have been working here ever since..."

One-day meeting? Huh? On a public forum??? I've heard that there's a very famous bridge for sale in NYC... :-)

gisterme - 04:54pm Dec 13, 2002 EST (# 6582 of 6588)

mazza9 12/11/02 11:27am

"...Say to Yemen, "You want them go get them!""

I think that might be exactly what Yemen did, Lou. Suppose those Scuds were really headed for Iraq. Once discovered do you think Iraq would claim them? Not these days. So Yemen could have seen an opportunity to simultaneously snag some free Scuds and delay Saddam's fate just by speaking up and taking a little embarassment.

Gotta wonder.

gisterme - 05:14pm Dec 13, 2002 EST (# 6583 of 6588)

rshow55 12/11/02 2:27pm

"...If people were clear about what they were fighting about - really clear - some fights might get sharper - but generally those fights would be well contained..."

That's a good point, Robert. Al Qaida is currently trying to make mainstream Islam think that the modern westen nations are trying to destroy Islam. That's a lie that tends toward making it unclear what the fight is about. In my view, the Israel/Palestine situation is a microcosm of that.

The point is that evil uses lies together with a pre-existing condition of ignorance to incite otherwise innocent people to spill human blood. One can see the same method repeated throughout history.

mazza9 - 05:42pm Dec 13, 2002 EST (# 6584 of 6588)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Gisterm:

Did you notice that the antonym of unclear is nuclear?

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