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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.

lunarchick - 12:45pm Jan 2, 2003 EST (# 7222 of 7232)

brain Lobster/GSP - biogenic magnetite - responds to magnetic waves

robkettenburg01 - 01:21pm Jan 2, 2003 EST (# 7223 of 7232)

Bush Calls for Nuclear Weapon-Free Korean Peninsula - Everybody in North Korea is LAUGHING!

RobKettenburg

rshow55 - 01:24pm Jan 2, 2003 EST (# 7224 of 7232)
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.

I think people in America, responsible for action, ought to ask themselves how hard it would be for them to look at things sympathetically from Saddam's point of view - and the point of view of the Iraqi people.

To fight well, or avoid fights, it is useful to be able to do that. Unless you can, your ideas of order, symmetry, and harmony are likely to be muddled, ugly, and dangerous.

I'd say just the same to Saddam, and Iraqis, thinking about the American perspective.

Mazza makes some interesting points, and this is just a start on my effort to respond to them.

Negotiation does imply that both parties will AGREE to a set of cirmcumstances and abide by the agreement.

Mazza asks:

"What if one party has demonstrated a proclivity for lies and deception?

One party has. But that's not the whole story.

"What if one of the parties is known to not abide by any agreement?"

That isn't the case here. Iraq has abided by many agreements - if you count. Or so I've read and heard. It certainly has lied and decieved in some other ways.

Here's an important, and general question:

. What if both parties have demonstrated a proclivity for lies and deception?

That's the general case, and the case here.

A lot of very good agreements get made, and work well, in such cases.

rshow55 - 01:28pm Jan 2, 2003 EST (# 7225 of 7232)
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.

Other points that I'll refer to:

A lot of things are going well , and all involved have shown a lot of forebearance and skill recently.

. If you can help it, it is important not to get into avoidable fights about sex and issues of status and function about which compromise is either impossible, or can only be possible carefully and slowly.

When Arabs say they are being humiliated - - are Americans and others clear about what is being discussed for the people involved?

We need to make peace. If we fight, it ought not to happen unwittingly, because of avoidable misunderstandings.

Pardon me for taking time - but it seems to me that there's plenty of time - and this is a good time to take care, and time, and stay rested.

And a good time to remember to think through issues of order, symmetry, and harmony from all the points of view that matter to the practical case. That can take a while - but be effort well spent.

The Iraqis don't have a monopoly on stupidity or bad manners - though they have more than enough of both. Americans aren't flawless in analogous areas.

My hope has been, and remains, that Iraq complies with both the letter and intent of the UN sanctions, that the current Iraqi regime stays intact, or is only changed by processes of internal Iraqi politics - and that Iraq becomes a peaceful, prosperous, much happier country.

If that is possible, that would surely be in the interest of the United States, as well.

The press, in every country, can mess things up. Things set out in the press are to be discussed - with enough reticence that things don't get out of hand. I'd apply that to plenty of pieces in the American press, even in the TIMES - and to the piece reported by Koring, as well.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense