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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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wanderer85us
- 11:40am Jan 15, 2003 EST (#
7661 of 7679) Bush is stupid.
"The United States of America has gone mad JOHN LE CARRÉ
America has entered one of its periods of historical
madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than
McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term
potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction
to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped
for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms
that have made America the envy of the world are being
systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media
and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a
debate that should be ringing out in every town square is
confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press. The
imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it
was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta
would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it
came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless
favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for
the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally
abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be
telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard
for UN resolutions. But bin Laden conveniently swept all that
under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent
of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget
has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion.
A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the
pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per
cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less
clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American
lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what
cost — because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent
and humane people — in Iraqi lives? How Bush and his junta
succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to
Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring
tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us
that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible
for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American
public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and
kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully
orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow
conspirators nicely into the next election. Those who are not
with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy.
Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love
to see Saddam’s downfall — just not on Bush’s terms and not by
his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous
hypocrisy. The religious cant that will send American troops
into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this
surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has
very particular political opinions. God appointed America to
save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed
Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and
anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b)
anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist. God also
has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are
equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family
numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the
CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.
Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior
executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company;
1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick
Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil
company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with
the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her.
And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the
integrity of God’s work. In 1993, while ex-President George
Bush was visiting the ever-democratic Kingdom of Kuwait to
receive thanks for liberating them, somebody tr
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