Canada opts out of missile defense

[MIKE BURN]

Quote:

---

Canada won't join missile defense shield



Thursday, February 24, 2005 Posted: 1842 GMT (0242 HKT)



TORONTO, Ontario (AP) -- Prime Minister Paul Martin said Thursday that Canada would opt out of the contentious U.S. missile defense program, a move that will further strain brittle relations between the neighbors but please Canadians who fear it could lead to an international arms race.



Martin, ending nearly two years of debate over whether Canada should participate in the development or operation of the multibillion-dollar program, said Ottawa would remain a close ally of Washington in the fight against global terrorism and continental security.



He said he intended to talk to President Bush later Thursday and that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been informed of the decision earlier this week.

---

[DreamTone7]

"...but please Canadians who fear it could lead to an international arms race."



An arms race with who?

[ans]

Russia, I'd guess

[DreamTone7]

...nah...Russia is pretty defunct...most of their stuff has fallen into disrepair and doesn't even work. The only country "rattling their sabers" is North Korea...not much of a race there.

[ans]

You're correct of course, no race re North Korea . . . the Russia thought goes back to late last century:



www.fas.org/nuke/guide/ru...e/0027.htm

[bitwhys]

Just as a reminder, it was BUSH who ended the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, giving six months notice on December 13th 2001.



the Rove-speak is that Canada has given up Soveriegnty by not having a say in how missiles are deployed.



like the Pentagon would listen if we said "no"



they can play thsir games without us. and they will. at least this way they aren't going to try drag our name into it.

[russky natasha]

Wrong.



After the free-market anarchy of the 90s, under wily old Putin the Russian economy is now growing at an average of about 7% per year.



Russia conducted its first joint military exercizes with China a coupla months ago. The Chinese manufacturing economy is growing at an enormous rate, and it's funding and buying Russian weapons technology. Even though America is trying to influence the politics of all the areas on Russia's and China's perimeters with dirty tricks, and with some success, this will never destroy their national solidarity.



The American Empire is a non-starter. It's trade-deficit is too large, it's becoming dependent on oil from all over the world and far-eastern manufacturing, and despite its air and sea-power its land forces are ineffective, good only for bullying tin-pot states, as Conal said on the other thread, and political support amongst the population can swing wildly.



Russia and China are both moving rapidly towards French-style state-governed free-market capitalism. During his visit Bush just lambasted Putin for not moving towards 'democracy' (i.e. American corporate control) but Putin just brushed him off. Putin is cleaning out the criminal oligarchs and bringing the state back into play, but this time as an organizer of market capitalism (which is what Lenin was doing with the NEP in the 1920s before that thug Stalin intervened).



You guys just don't have the knowledge or imagination to foresee just how powerful they will become in the next few decades. Can you inmagine the size of the ground forces they could muster in joint defensive wars? Can you imagine how powerful their economies will get with their resources and populations sizes and the dynamism of market-capitalism regulated by state authority? They both have a more stable anthropological base than America - centuries of egalitarian families rather than Anglo-American primogeniture has given them a 'loyal sibling' mind-set built for sacrifice and solidarity, as the Russians proved in Stalingrad. Most Americans are 'me generation' heads-up-their-asses hedonists who hate the whole idea of collective sacrifice - too mean and selfish to even pay taxes, most of them. And they (especially Russia) have huge natural resources that Bush would just die for - if you get my drift.



And to top all this the shadow of the strong Euro and a weakening dollar looms over America, and China and Europe are doing business deals all the time - a Chinese manufacturer has just taken over the British car company Rover. The more candid American right-wing analysts know all about this, that they're about to be a stillborn Empire, which is why they're getting edgy and desperate. I hope they don't do anything rash, but the likes of Bush, Rice and all their Christian Zionist and corporate minions are collectively stupid enough to do exactly that.



The whole balance of power is about to shift radically in the coming decades. Do some proper research, guys, will you, and stop goo-goo-ga-googling on right-wing disinformation sites and posting their stupid rubbish and lies here.



Oh, and try to work out how to get your own domestic economy working again - that's the only real thing the rest of the world will allow you to do by the middle of this century.

[russky natasha]

Hey, Ans, that Cook article is way out of date, only very partially correct and the bib is full of tunnel-visioned militarists and policy-wonk lightweights - y'know, the ones who always get it wrong and lead us into trouble.



Stop goo-goo-ga-googling for chrissake and read some proper research and decent literature, will ya?



Start with Emmanuel Todd's 'After The Empire'. Todd got very famous for predicting the fall of the Soviet Union in the 70s for precisely the correct reasons when all the dumb Anglo-American lightweights were talking rubbish about centuries of Cold War.



Now he's predicting the rapid fall of American global influence in the coming decades. And he is largely correct.



You need more quality reading and less quantity.



Frickin' amateurs. Sheesh!

[DreamTone7]

RN - "Putin is cleaning out the criminal oligarchs and bringing the state back into play..."



LMBO!



Putin is closely allied with the Russian mob! Cleaning them out? HA! When was the last time you were in Russia, RN?



Ground-forces, yeah, Russia's got 'em if she wants to muster 'em...but we're talking about an arms race here. Factories that develope and produce such (missles, bombs, etc) in Russia are all but out of business. They can't even keep control of the weapons-grade uranium they do have left! Have you been to Kirov lately, RN?



Somebody is dreaming, methinks.

[bitwhys]

What's your point DreamTone?



there's no arms race?



that's fine with me but if that's the case then why the hell is Bush so determined to upgrade his "defense"? (yeah, right).



btw, I do believe Ambassador Cellucci has actually managed to threaten us...



"We will deploy"



nice.



and Amerika wonders why everyone's pissed at them these days.

[questionnaire]

Well, I've been away for a few days and I see from the evidence on the drop-down browser menu that my charges have been wasting their time again. Well, that's all stopped now.



As a brief comment while I'm here, Natasha and Colin are quite right, and I'm pleased that at such a tender age they can shoot down DT and Ron-boy's outdated, pedantic and tunnel-visioned arguments with consummate ease (although they'll have to sharpen up a bit more before they can take on the big boys):



MOSCOW, February 4th, 2005 - "Russia’s economic climate is good, World Bank President James Wolfensohn told reporters in Moscow on Thursday. The evidence was Russia’s impressive growth of seven percent last year alongside rising gold and foreign currency reserves, he said."



The British Financial Times, acknowledged by global investors as a reliable source of information, also verifies this.



Bitwhys is aware of this because he reads widely, whilst DT and Ron restrict themselves to right-wing 'America is the greatest' propaganda sites.



All serious pundits from across the political spectrum are expecting the global balance of power to shift radically over the next few decades, which is the main reason for the USA's frenetic activity at the moment. But it's too late, the East is on the rise, and the thing the Americans love - capitalism - combined with the thing the Americans hate - state-administered collectivism - will ensure that the rise is rapid.



We face interesting times over the next few decades, far too complex for Ron and DT to be able to comment upon. So it's back to research for me.

[ans]

After the Empire is silly, mean-spirited, and anti-Semitic bile, bigoted to a degree that borders on racist condescension. It is poorly written and foolishly argued. When Todd thinks he has data supporting an argument, he uses them; when he wants to extend the argument to an area where there or inadequate data, he offers sweeping intuitions (Russia's "stability," America's "racial maelstrom"). One wishes, as they say in France, that Todd took the trouble to look in front of his own nose--for in France, the public school system, famous as an engine of "republican integration," is a shambles in poor neighborhoods. This would not, to a researcher trained in empirical social science, necessarily prove anything other than that France is going through a patch of trouble in this area, just as any complicated society does from time to time. But it is from such evidence in other countries that Todd decides America is collapsing into a mad and blind bully.



After the Empire shows all the usual and tired themes of such screeds. There is first of all, as Jean-François Revel showed in last year's L'Obsession anti-américaine, an old quarrel of the French (and European) left with the doctrine of liberty. For all its supposed conversion to liberal ideas, the book remains deeply convinced that international trade, to take one of Todd's manic obsessions, is a form of grand larceny.



IN A SPIRITED ATTACK on French bigotries, the historian Pierre Rigoulot has shown that sinister references to "Jewish lobbies" now take the place of explicit references to a "mongrel nation" and that sort of thing. Rigoulot, whose L'Antiaméricanisme recently was published in France, notes that there is not a canard in the French catalog of American sins that was not common currency during the Vichy regime on the extreme right and the Cold War coming from the extreme left--including our lousy food, our low cultural level, and, one of Todd's favorites, our inept warriors. The hysterical fear of a "predatory capitalism," a declining United States that cannot fight, failed integration, religious bigotry, and the rest of what Todd seems to think emerged in the late 1990s (presumably because he was pro-American in the 1980s) have been around for ages.



Rigoulot, who is a historian about the same age as Todd and underwent a similar cultural history, refers to anti-Americanism in France as a "ready made" system of thinking, and much of it does indeed seem simply a vulgar form of intellectual sloth. But as Rigoulot also points out, sloth combined with hatred is cause for alarm. French anti-Americanism often, though not always, blends into anti-Semitism, which has become politically acceptable in France in the past few years.



Todd himself manages to put in some condescending words about American Jews' overwrought worrying, and he claims French Jews are far more reasonable about their own situation than Americans make them out to be. The reality, as Michel Gurfinkiel and others have noted, is that the violence directed at Jews and Jewish institutions is at a level unseen since World War II. French Jewish emigration, toward Israel and the United States, is likewise at unprecedented levels. Todd prefers the facile cliché that Israel, with the support of the "neoconservatives who will be the gravediggers of the American empire," has lost sight of its original values. The ultimate cliché within the cliché is that a state that defends its people is abandoning its values.



False social science, fashionable clichés, ill-mannered condescension, ahistorical readings of America's own sense of its international mission, gloating predictions of decline and doom--there is absolutely nothing to recommend this sorry excuse for a book.



Roger Kaplan is author of Conservative Socialism: The Decline of Radicalism and the Triumph of the Left in France.

[questionnaire]

Oh, I would think that Kaplan is just pissed off that Todd's book is still being translated and put on bookshelves all over the world 3 years after its publication and his fifth-rate tome 'Conservative Socialism' was, justifiably, a bad flop. Playing the anti-semitic card is way below the belt, the sort of thing you would expect from a neo-con scumbag like Kaplan.



Natasha recommends a book, and you immediately go googling and find an unfavourable review from a jealous neo-con author, and post it. Rather than reading it. That makes you a neo-con internet propagandist.



You can post all the propaganda you want, but the balance of the world is slowly changing - as it inevitably does - and there's nothing you can do about it.



OK, that's it, I'm not going to be sucked back into interminable arguments with low-brow neo-cons.

[bitwhys]

copied with permission...



Okay, let's have a bit of reality on this whole 'missile defence' scheme.



Here is how it is supposed to function. There are two men on adjacent hills. One man takes a double barelled shotgun and looses both barrels at the other. At the last minute, the other man whips out a six shooter and tries to shoot down all the shotgun pellets before they reach him.



Now, its not necessary to be a blithering idiot in order to believe that is going to work... but it certainly helps.



In its most primal form, BMD is premised on the notion that you could use a bullet to shoot down another bullet. That's a very tough trick.



In reality, the problems are far greater than that easy trick. A ballistic missile is a missile designed to literally achieve orbit. It fires very high, achieves orbital heights, and then drops down on target. This means that it is moving at around mach 10.



In order to successfully intercept such an object, you need to have your intercepter travelling much faster, somewhere between mach 15 and mach 30.



To just put it in perspective, our fastest fighter jets can do around mach 3 or 3.5, and there are rumours of a stealth spy jet that can do mach 5.



Now, it gets more complicated, because after all, you're not just racing missiles, you're trying to intercept them. Which means that you have to detect the incoming missile. It's likely that it will complete between 30% and 50% of its launch path before detection. Which means that you've got maybe as much as 70% of its launch path time to stop it.



Some of that time after detection has to be disposed towards actually tracking it and determining its flight path and destination. Now here's the tricky part... you need to determine that flight path to a pinpoint degree... literally within a few inches or feet or yards.



Now, you can't take a snapshot of a bird and figure out where that bird is flying or how fast its going. You have to take a series of shots, or a continuous shot. Same with our missile. On detection, we can't know where its going or how its going to get there. We have to watch it fly for a little while to accurately determine its trajectory and flight path. The longer we watch it, the more accurately we can determine its flight corridor. For instance, if we base our calculations on only 800 feet of travel, in a 6000 mile journey, there's a huge chance for margins of error. If we base our calculations on 1000 miles of travel, we reduce the margin of error significantly. 2000 miles of travel, and the margin is reduced further. But the further it travels, the harder it is to stop. That in itself is a tricky dilemma.



Think about that. You don't just have to know where that missile is right now. But you have to be able to figure out where, within a few feet, that missile is going to be 1000 miles later. And 800 miles later. And 1200 miles later. Essentially, you're calculating an 800 mile long tunnel through the air in which that missile is supposed to be moving. A tiny narrow tunnel.



There's a slight chance that even weather or slight changes in air resistance, moisture content, wind speed can alter that narrow tunnel unpredictably.



Let me make it easy for you. That spectacular bit of computation simply cannot be done in the time you've got to do it. Take all the Crays in the world, link them up, and you still can't do it. The entire BMD strategy, however, is predicated on the notion that we can develop the computer software and computing power to do it.



Now, at this point, a bunch of things can go wrong. There are a variety of stealth techniques that can confuse or evade our tracking system. One of these is simply reducing or chaoticizing the radar profile of our missile. It still gets detected, but it gets all the way through 80% of its launch path before detection. Say goodnight, gracy.



Or, and this is flipping easy, if the flight path is at all erratic, if the missile tumbles, (that is, if it rotates, wobbles, or in free descent starts turning end over end) then it becomes impossible to predict a flight path to the degree of accuracy required. Now the problem here, is that at these speeds and trajectories, tumbling is a fact of life. Both the Americans and the Russians put a huge amount of work into eliminating tumbling in their missiles so as to enhance accuracy. So all you have to do is be a little low tech, or deliberately insert controlled tumbling, and your BMD becomes useless. It becomes impossible to predict a slightly randomized trajectory. You might be able to predict its flight path within half a mile, and you'll know exactly where it lands, but its useless to you... because in order for BMD to work, you've got to predict its flight path down to yards, or even inches. If you send up an interceptor missile that detonates half a mile away, its useless.



Okay, so now we have gotten through the first three steps. Detection, Tracking, Calculation, and there are huge problems with all three, and ways to beat BMD with very little effort, at each step.



Now we come to interception. Now, a ballistic missile is essentially dropping down from near orbit, literally anywhere. So your interceptor, in order to hit its target, is going to have to travel a long ways.



There are some ugly equations to work out. How much of a ballistic missiles flight path will have been completed by the time of detection, by the time its tracked, by the time calculations are developed to tell us where it is? 50% to 70% is my guess.



Which means that our interceptor has between 50% to 30% of the flight path left to stop it. Well, on the one hand, that could be 3000 to 5000 miles. That seems like plenty of room.



Ah, but think for a second. You've got to go out there to intercept it, and that sucker is travelling damned fast. You've got to travel a damned sight faster. Mach 16 vs Mach 8.



Now, assuming everything goes right, your opportunity to intercept is in picoseconds. Literally, two objects are passing each other with a combined velocity between Mach 20 and 30. You've got the merest fraction of a split second. A split second before, your intercepter explodes uselessly, the Ballistic missile splashes through a cloud of debris and dust to reach its target. A split second too late, and the Ballistic missile is long gone, your interceptor travels till it runs out of fuel and falls on some inuit.



See what I mean? Shooting shotgun pellets with an antique colt is a piece of cake compared to this trick.



Anyway, assuming that everything works perfectly, you've managed to shoot down a Ballistic missile. And by working perfectly, I mean you've detected the missile in the first 20% or 30% of its flight path, there were no random factors or evasion measures or radar baffles in that flight path, you tracked the missile for another chunk of that flight path, say 20% to 30% in order to accurately develop a pinpoint prediction within inches of where it was going to be all along the remainder of that path, and then sent up an even faster hypersonic missile which intercepted that flight path at the exact same moment that the enemy missile was arriving at that same point and blows it up.



Got that.



Okay, now let's just say that this is just, slightly, bareably, theoretically possible.



I can point you, by the way, to reams of scientists who are very knowledgable in the fields of rocketry, computers and radar who say its nonsense. That this kind of thing is beyond the capacities of not just our existing technology, but any kind of technology period. Their view is that given the vast distances and speeds involved, the difficulties of perception, that on those kinds of scale, inherent randomizing factors like dust in the air or electromagnetic signal degradation in radar, far exceed the margins of accuracy necessary for this to work.



In short, the inherent and inescapable margins of error are far larger than the degree of precision that you need.



But that's just the theoretical objection.



There are practical objections to this system working. Essentially, that the degree of technological sophistication necessary does not exist and may not be achievable. As one example, this is going to require some of the most elaborate software written on the planet, for some of the most elaborate computing systems. And this is going to be a computer/software system that cannot be fully field tested (in order to have such a test, you would have to fire a ballistic missile and go through the interception exercise, an event which could well accidentally trigger WWIII, and which, even if successful, would cost tens of billions of dollars with each test) - ergo, it has to work perfectly the first time out. Any computer software engineer told this will nod his head, excuse himself to go to a bathroom, and do the honourable thing.



By the same token, the guidance and detection systems in the interceptor missile are simply facing huge technical obstacles in even being able to function and process data at the speeds and conditions for which they need to operate.



And of course, all of the different parts of the system have to work together perfectly and instantaneously in order to accomplish this goal.



So far, every single test that the BMD system has been put through has failed. No successes.



Well, okay, so you've got to crawl before you can walk. True enough. But we're not even crawling. We're sort of thrashing around blindly hoping that if we can just flop the right way we'll break the four minute mile. That's a tad unrealistic.



The reality is that progress on this front is beneath that of a crawl. It might be decades, even several decades before its anywhere capable of walking. And by that time, technology in all other areas, including specific ways to defeat BMD will be progressing normally.



In Canada, in Halifax, there is a fortress called Louisborg. It was begun by the British to defend against a potential American invasion after the war of 1812. It was a European style fortress that didn't take into account the different climate conditions of North America. Thus, it took longer and cost more. Planned to be built in a few years at modest cost, it took 36 years and sucked down the equivalent of billions of pounds. Long before it was ever completed, it was irretrievably obsolete. Now its a tourist attraction, a monument to misguided purpose and futility.



So, huge huge practical objections.



Then there's the infrastructural problems. For this to work, you need to literally blanket North America, and perhaps the world, with a web of highly accurate radar stations on 24/7/365 alert. This web of radar stations must be locked into a grid with each other, so that they all function as a single entity. You then have to invest in linking and networking, and hooking all this data into an incredibly sophisticated computer and software network. And then, you need to build and maintain your interceptors. Now, these interceptor missiles will need to be launch capable within literally a few minutes, which means they'll have to be constantly fueled up, wired, ready to fire. But you can't keep a missile 'ready to fire' for weeks, months or even years at a time. You have to service the damned thing, run systems checks, replace parts, keep the fuel from degrading or going stale, etc. etc.. a missile may only be serviceable about 30% of the time, which means you need three missiles for every possible firing opportunity... Or maybe you figure you'll just get away with luck. And you don't just need three missiles... Remember, you've got about 20 million square miles of territory that you are blanketing with your interceptors. Assuming that each interceptor is good for 100,000 square miles than you need a shitload of missiles.



So in the end, your BMD is costing you trillions and trillions of dollars, sucking up incredible amounts of hardware, man hours, computing time, infrasture. You're going to be building missile silos, radar stations every spare minute. The Pyramids? A weekend project. The Great Wall of China? Home and garden improvements. The Maginot Line? A gazebo compared to this. The Manhattan Project? Tinkering in the garage.



This BMD will potentially end up costing you more than every war you've ever fought in the last 200 years, rolled up together and with compound interest added. It will cost more than Roosevelt's New Deal, Truman's Fair Deal and Johnson's Great Society put together.



But what the hell. Let's say that you figure this is worth doing. So you divert your entire budget into this, shut down schools, give up on roads, auction off the parks, run up the deficit and sell your children into slavery... so that you can get it done.



And it works perfectly.



What does that give you?



Well, you can stop a missile. "A" missile. Maybe you can even stop two missiles. Three if you have a really good day.



Even that is kind of dubious. Dealing with one missile will represent a major concentration of radar and computing power and attention. Launch two missiles simultaneously, and you split that concentration in half, I don't know if the system has enough slack to cope with it. In which case, with attention split, at least one missile gets through. Or, with attention split, both missiles get through. Split attention three ways... four ways... the problem gets worse.



What about 10 missiles. Oh, sorry. Our most wildly optimistic proponents of wmd, in their wildest dreams, don't claim they can stop ten missiles. Launch ten missiles at us, and at least five to seven are going to get through. That's wild optimism on the level of believing that we'll stop three missiles and Santa Claus will get too more for us. Sorry about that. But at least we stopped a three to five. Or one.



What about 100 missiles? Forget it. Maybe you're stopping three. 97 are getting through.



What about 1000 missiles? Game over buddy.



Essentially, the vulnerability of the system is that it can be easily, easily overwhelmed.



And the proponents of Ballistic Missile Defence freely admit this. They admit that their system cannot take on Russia. It cannot take on China. Or, in a pinch, even Britain, France, Israel or India.



That's why all the hysterical talk about North Korea. This entire gargantuan defence complex is going to be built on the premise that its needed to defend us from some little pissant country that won't have the resources to launch more than one or two missiles at us.



That country which we are defending ourselves from with Ballistic Missile Defence DOES NOT ACTUALLY EXIST. THERE IS NO COUNTRY ON THIS PLANET THAT ACTUALLY REPRESENTS THE THREAT OR IS CAPABLE OF THE THREAT THAT WE ARE TRYING TO DEFEND OURSELVES AGAINST. North Korea is only the closest fit that we can find. After North Korea, its maybe Iran, and possibly Yemen after that, and hypothetically Fuckedupistan.



But back to my point. For a real fight, this system is as useful as a condom made of kleenex.



But what if, hypothetically, Ernst Blofeld or Doctor Evil escapes from an alternate dimension, comes here, takes over a country and transforms it into the pissant nuclear power we've actually designed our system to defend against... It could happen!



Are we then able to sit back and sip our Pina Colada's while Doctor Evil gnashes his teeth at the way our BMD has foiled him?



Or is Doctor Evil able to take countermeasures? Is there a way for Doctor Evil to beat our perfect system and give us the tall smoky man with the big flat hat?



Well, I've already talked about a few things that will screw us. Tumbling missiles, radar deflection. There are a few other tricks up Doctor Evil's sleeve, like decoys. There's all sorts of very cheap countermeasures that Doctor Evil can equip his ballistic missiles with that will make it difficult or impossible to stop his attack.



But wait, Doctor Evil gets a light bulb over his head! Why send a ballistic missile at all. (visualize that little pinky to the lip thing) What about a CRUISE MISSILE! A cruise missile is a low flying missile which travels a few hundred or dozen feet up, moving comparatively slowly, with a range of a few hundred to a thousand or so miles. It evades radar, is almost undetectible, follows the contours of the land. It can carry a nuclear payload. And compared to ballistic missiles, they're cheap like borscht.



Against a cruise missile, the BMD system is absolutely useless. So all Doctor Evil has to do is invest in a handful of long range cruise missiles, and he's got us by the short and curlies.



Of course, even long range cruise missiles are short range compared to ballistic missiles. So you'll need to get them relatively close. Doctor Evil will need a warship to get within, oh say five or six hundred miles of the American coast, before he can begin to think of striking. Or if not a warship... a submarine, or a freighter or a fishing trawler. His convenient launch platform might not even need to be a seagoing craft. He could, for instance, refit a passenger jet to carry cruise missiles to within a launch distance.



Of course, he runs the risk of having his passenger jet/air bomber/submarine/warship/freighter/fishing trawler destroyed by America before he can launch... but that has nothing to do with Ballistic Missile Defense, its a completely separate system.



But what are the chances, Doctor Evil reckons, that the United States is going to go around blowing up aircraft or sinking ships way out in international waters... particularly when those aircraft and ships are not exhibiting any kind of overt threat? Zip and Nil.



And of course, once those aircraft and ships have launched their cruise missiles, Doctor Evil doesn't care if the Americans blow them up anyway. They've served their purpose, and death and destruction are on the way.



So.... Doctor Evil thinks to himself, perhaps Ballistic Missiles are not the way to go at all. Perhaps I can get a bigger bang for my buck (literally) in other ways.



And as cheap as cruise missiles are, covert operations may be even cheaper. If you've got a nuclear weapon, and you've got a cadre of fanatical spies/agents/terrorists... why not sneak it onto a freighter, have that freighter sale into San Francisco and New York and .... voila!



Doctor Evil is pretty creative. I'm betting he can figure out all sorts of ways to deliver his little present.



Because, when you think about it, Ballistic Missiles are really a pretty poor way to go... unless you are launching them in vast numbers. Which was how the Russians, Chinese and Americans always thought. As near as I can find, looking at the morally repellent area of nuclear conflict gamesmanship, no one has ever found a rational way to justify or advocate a nuclear micro-strike of only one or a few missiles, except as a demonstration point.



So Doctor Evil is probably going to laugh his @#%$ off at the BMD system. The only thing that will keep his honest is the threat of assured destruction, a deterrence that actually exists without BMD.



So, what does Ballistic Missile Defence amount to? It's a giant blind alley, a waste of money and time.



And you know, people go down blind alleys and waste money and time all the time. Nothing suffers for it. So if the lunatics want to be in charge of this asylum, why not let them?



Well, here's the problem. The Ballistic Missile Defense is the equivalent of France's Maginot Line in the 30's, and China's Great Wall during the ancient period. It won't work.



But the Maginot Line and the Great Wall did more than just not work. They all but destroyed their respective countries. Both the Maginot Line and the Great Wall consumed vast amounts of military and economic resources that could have been used more effectively to defend their countries.



In the 1930's, France's tanks were actually better than Germany's. Charles De Gaulle advocated and was punished for advocating flexible use of tanks as cavalry. During the invasion of France, his forces, using his ideas, were the only French forces that actually forced the Germans to retreat. But De Gaulle had too little to work with, and was given it too late. He was a lonely voice in the wilderness, and every other French military genius was trumpeting the Maginot line as the surefire defence. The French didn't have infinite resources, they had to commit to something. They chose the Maginot line over DeGaulle, and look where it got them. If they hadn't wasted billions upon billions on it, if they'd taken DeGaulle seriously, the war might well have ended with a French victory in 1940.



As for China, think of the thousands of lives, the millions of man hours, the billions of dollars expended on that wall, and how it could have been used elsewhere. Think of the disaster that the wall turned out to be, sucking down hundreds of thousands of troops to man it. Hundreds of thousands of troops who were left stranded and sucking their thumbs while the mongols rode right around that wall and conquered China. The Chinese might well have been a lot further ahead saving their money and putting it to better uses.



Now the United States is proposing to build a great wall of china, or a maginot line in space to stop ballistic missiles. It is doomed to fail. But before it fails, it will swallow up trillions of dollars, millions of man hours, infinite amounts of resources, hardware, computers, networks, weapons, and human sweat and genius.



Ballistic Missile Defence is not just a bad idea. It's a worthless idea. It's a useless idea. It's the sort of spectacularly misguided, foolish, fuckheaded notion that can destroy an entire country. Ballistic Missile Defence is so powerfully mistaken and wrongheaded that it may well wind up cutting America's throat.



It's like this. We have a friend who is a heroin addict, and he likes to shoot up all the time. He likes us, so he wants us to shoot up too. That's the United States on runaway military spending.



So today, he's decided to shoot up rat poison. We're trying to dissuade him from shooting up rat poison. He says, "Look, I'm going to shoot up this rat poison, and if you're my friend, you'll shoot it up too." That's the United States and Canada on ballistic missile defense.



Well, I'm sorry, but we're not going to shoot up on rat poison. We love you, but its not going to happen



****



so why all the effort? haven't read it yet but here's a hint...



Counterspace Operations



gong



pass

[DreamTone7]

"What's your point DreamTone?



there's no arms race?"



Bingo.





"...why the hell is Bush so determined to upgrade his "defense"? "



Perhaps to prevent there ever from becoming one. Anti-Americanism, like all forms of prejudice, could very easily become the next excuse used to fuel something stupid on the part of some country out to make a name for itself in the world...North Korea, for example. If people weren't so blinded by the anti-American dogma, they could more easily see clearly that they are, by pushing the anit-American view, setting the stage for something like this to happen down the road. America is only reacting by staying a step ahead...thus preventing any arms race of the future. A cold war with Russia (when it was stable) was bad enough...a cold war with some less stable upstart country could spell disaster.