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TechnoratiStop Me If You've Heard This One Before
In an apparent last-ditch effort to expand the country's national missile defence (NMD) capabilities before he leaves office, President George W. Bush has declared "a real and urgent need" to take action that will protect the United States and its allies from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Oh wait, not Iraq! Iran! To protect the United States and its allies from weapons of mass destruction in Iran. To wit, ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States.
There isn't really any hard evidence to support the president's belief that Iran has these ballistic missiles or that they represent an imminent threat, but he undoubtedly trusts his instincts for getting this kind of thing right.
Either it's deja vu all over again or he's pandering to American's industrial and military complex for which NDM represents gazillions of dollars.
The multi-billion dollar weaponization of space, was first envisioned by president Ronald Reagan.
Destroyed in Space
It calls for the development of a fantastic defensive system with ultra-sophisticated radar that has a near instantaneous ability to recognize when a missile has been launched against the U.S. and launch counter-measures to intercept and destroy the weapon it while it's still in space.
Cool or what?
Phase One was widely called "Star Wars" (to invoke the image of the fantastic futuristic capabilities of Luke Skywalker), and established NMD interceptors in Alaska and California, mainly to protect the continental states from being attacked by Korea, rogue states or an accidental launch.
While President Bush was swift to reassure the country "that we got (sic) a lot of really smart people working on this project and proving it can work," there have been some hard-to-overlook shall we say glitches with the system, the first being that it is not necessarily able to distinguish between real missiles and decoy missiles, and perhaps turkey buzzards.
And when it does, it doesn't always intercept them.
"Star Wars -- the Sequel," as being promoted by President Bush is a $4.04-billion program that would place a ground-based mid-course defence (GMD) element of the NMD system in Poland and the Czech Republic to protect America's allies in Europe against this newly declared threat of a nuclear strike from Tehran.
Critics in Europe
According to a report released in July by the Congressional Research Service: "The proposed system has encountered resistance in some European countries and beyond. Critics in Poland and the Czech Republic assert that neither country currently faces a notable threat from Iran, but that if American GMD facilities were installed, both countries might be targeted by missiles from rogue states, and possibly Russia.
"Some Europeans claim that that GMD is another manifestation of American unilateralism and assert that the Bush administration did not consult sufficiently with NATO allies or with Russia."
To be sure Vladimir Putin isn't a fan of NMD.
He fears that "Star Wars -- the Sequel" will upset U.S.-Russian-European relations and reignite an arms race.
The Russian president has agreed to co-operate only if the NMD facilities were built in Azerbaijan -- not Eastern Europe.
Clearly, he is a clever fellow for he knows exactly what the Bush administration would say if he announced that Russia was going to install an anti-ballistic missile system in Cuba to protect North America from North Korean missiles.
It would be wholly unacceptable to the U.S., and of course Canada whose position on NMD has never changed.
We're against the militarization of space in principle and practice, regardless of who the U.S. declares as its enemy du jour.
-- Donna Marie-Artuso
Copyright © 2007, Canoe Inc.
9 Comments so far
Show AllBarn Burner said:
"ezeflyer wants:"reforming the tax code so that we can say, "no, my dollars go here…"
Judging from the people I talk to that would be the end of all social programs."
Giving our tax money to bribed politicians to give to the M/I/I complex, Halliburton, Big Oil, Big Nukes and Blackwater isn't working very well either. Could We the People do any worse? They can easily bribe 500 of our "leaders", but would have a hard time bribing 300 million of us.
Dichterfreund makes very poignant points.
We survived the 'cold war' because MAD implies two parties who, at the very least, want to keep the planet from being destroyed. Basic self preservation. Some sort of sanity. Bushco has circumvented this most basic of human insincts, and infused the society with ideas of being raptured. So, all bets are off. We are on a totally different playing field now...
ezeflyer wants:"reforming the tax code so that we can say, "no, my dollars go here…"
Judging from the people I talk to that would be the end of all social programs. A majority of the people in the USA that pay taxes think they will never need a social safety net and of course we pay "all those taxes" to support welfare queens driving Caddies to pick-up their check.
Maybe star wars will be clever enough to blow up clinics that perform abortions and welfare agencies.
The kooks are trying to gin up the California fires as the work of terrorist arsonists. Being kooks, they don't see that if they were right, then all the rest of their program --fightin' 'em there so they don't come here -- contradicts them.
This was the same lunacy that von Rumsfeld was working on in the first 8 months of the regime.
"somebody in the white house that can't even pronounce "nuclear""
Sadly, the Smirk is not the only one who pronounces it 'nukyaler'; I often hear complainants on progressive radio pronouncing it the same way at other times.
The insane, horiffying rationale for all this is that we survived the Cold War without nuclear war, so why worry? Recently I saw the film "Fail Safe", which has largely been overlooked in recent years in favor of "Dr. Strangelove," but somehow "Fail Safe" feels more dreadfully contemporary.
ezeflyer,
Rapidly achieveable ideas and proposals? Oh, like reforming the tax code so that we can say, "no, my dollars go here..."
I don't often criticize our own ilk, but you certainly have a disconnect here. We can't even get democrats to stop the turd in the white house by not funding the war, something they certainly can do, and we apparently all want.
The best "rapidly achievable idea" is to try educating the people so that we won't end up with somebody in the white house that can't even pronounce "nuclear" yet has his finger on the friggin' button.
We complain, because until we get a big enough groundswell to show we the people mean business nothing's going to change.
Part of educating the people includes people on this site. We have to stop argueing over petty stuff and join together. The problem is we aren't the types to be single-issue voters, so the platform can't come up with 4 surefire vote-getters like abortion, gun rights, tax cuts and institutionalizing religious radicalism. Hey, how about if we all take those 4 and vote in blocks as single issue poeple?
"It would be wholly unacceptable to the U.S., and of course Canada whose position on NMD has never changed."
Canada's position is wholly dependent on Stevie Harper's assessment of how best to achieve a follow-up to Brian Mullroney's legacy -- both with respect to selling out the country and gaining his personal post-prime ministerial aims. In this case, you're probably right, but not on account of any perceived constancy in "Canada's" stance in the past.
Can we refuse to pay taxes if they will be going to the M/I/I complex? How about some Democrat (ha ha) introducing a bill that lets the people decide where their tax money is going? Or to at least have a binding public referendum on the war?
Along with complaining about things, I would like to see some rapidly achievable ideas and proposals here.
Ahmadinejad and Olmert seem to be cut by the same mold. One carries a revolting beard boasting about the killings of homosexuals, the other can't hide his hands drenched in civilians blood.
Whatever the secret most secret treacherous alliances between the two, it's about time for us to demand more information about their bloody fantasies instead of reading and accepting such colossal deception in gullible and unacceptable passivity.
Enough already! are we book and media consumers these stupid? obviously not.
time for the world press to change gears and ask the 'tough' questions, or maybe... to be tough means just to assassinate as much civilians as possible including little children? The tough ones however have a weak spot. they fear something as simple as the truth and they will do all what is in their might to supress it. Including the torture of children.
Trita Parsi's book "treacherous alliances' opens a page the press seems fearful to read openly. why?
I'm surprised that there is no mention of the GMD agreement with Japan. Russia sent emissaries late last week to protest the new NMD setup in Japan aimed West - again on Russia's borders.
Maybe we are trying to protect ourselves from the fallout after our premptive strike against Iran causes China and Russia and who knows who else to leap to Iran's defense.