I think the US wants NK to fire a missile

[jerry611]

Do you guys think this is possible...

That the Pentagon wants the North Koreans to fire a missile so that we can attempt to shoot it down? If it is successful it sends a message to the world that simply developing ICBMs will not make you immune to invasion anymore. If it fails, it proves we are serious about developing the technology.

The only way to send this message is attempt to shoot down a real missile launched from a rival nation.

Just my theory...

[Redstone]

1. No. they're crazy, but not THAT fucking crazy.

Redstone

[bonito]

2. former CIA directer woosley

on C-span this week said that we should, and it wouldn't be a problem to shoot it down upon launch, interestingly I saw an older clip with him speaking in 1994 about 2 weeks ago and he sounded very much pnac even back then, so it wouldn't surprise me a bit for it to happen.

[ladjf]

4. He has always been a major, consistent war monger.

[ladjf]

3. No, because if the anti-missile didn't work it would be a disaster.

[jerry611]

6. Technically, no it wouldn't.....

It sends a message to the world that we are serious about developing the technology to shoot it down.

In my opinion, any system will be obsolete in about 30 years anyway. The Pentagon is getting committed to Star Wars. They've been working for years on plans of how to use space to achieve the ultimate high ground. Some of the weapons they are looking to develop come right out of sci-fi movies. Everything from electro-magnetic field generators that will destroy the enemy's computers and electronics...to partical beams that can destroy any location on the planet within seconds with 100% accuracy.
Some scary stuff...

[FogerRox]

7. I think the conventional wisdom in the AIr FOrce

Is that the fuckers couldnt hit the broad side of an air craft carrier. With its radar turned on, to be used as a homing beacon. Proving to the world that the fuckin system is a failure.

Unless The Cabal is so insane that they think it will work, and based on that belief, they use it.

[Vidar]

14. We'd never hear about it if it missed.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. I heard an interview on NPR a couple of days ago, and the guy said

that the technology to shoot the missle down would probably NOT work. It would be VERY humiliating for the US internationally, and considering all the taxpayer's $$$$ that is going into the project, it would be a PR disaster in this country as well.
He said either all tests have failed, or those that did not actually fail were conducted in very controlled circumstances. It amounted to the target location info being fed in advance, so the take-down missile knew exactly where the target would be at the moment of expected impact.
Obviously, nothing like that would happen in a real situation.

This administration must be doing all it can to make sure the NK does not shoot anything in this direction because they do not want to have to be in a position to have to shoot it down, knowing they probably will not be able to do so.

[ladjf]

8. Well, I don't think they are considering it, but a cruise missile

could take out their missile before it was launched. They world would consider it an act of war. But, what difference would that make to Bush and his fellow nuts?

[lpbk2713]

9. The BushCo regime regards North Korea as an annoyance.

Nothing more. Simply because they have no oil fields worth plundering.

[spag68]

10. duh!!!!!!! ya think so??????

Shoot a missile order10 more from your friends. 10 billion a year.

[TlalocW]

11. Are the North Koreans

Going to put a homing device in the missile for us? The only times our Missile Defense experiments have worked were when there were homing devices in the target missiles.

TlalocW

[Ready4Change]

12. My theory:

This system has been put in place incase they decide they need a crisis. They will report that NK launched a missile, and that their system intercepted it. This will be followed by footage of the anti-missile launches, and graphics showing the converging plotlines, and perhaps a "range" of possible targets of the NK missile.

Note that NK doesn't have to have fired a missile. How are they going to prove that they DIDN'T launch a missile? Against their lack of proof will be stacked reams and reams of supposed data about "their launch" and our "intercept."

Perhaps a Frigate will "find" some bits of debris in the Pacific. Perhaps no news stations will report how that same frigate tends to be around areas the CIA is active in. The media will be too busy airing footage of some terror stricken mother in Fresno freaking about NK missiles targeting her swimming pool.

[Random_Australian]

13. Your missile defense shield is pretty much worthless shit, so no.

[Junkdrawer]

15. My friend is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He wrote this in 2001

Forum: Rumsfeld's folly: National Missile Defense

Sunday, January 14, 2001

...

Rumsfeld fulfilled his role perfectly, concluding that the intelligence estimate report was incorrect and strongly supporting the proposed National Missile Defense program. With this appointment, it is clear that President-elect George W. Bush intends to fulfill his campaign promise to deploy NMD as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, funding this multibillion-dollar boondoggle - a gilded jobs program for the defense industry - will not serve to make Americans safer.

...


NMD is a system of "exoatmospheric kill vehicles" (EKVs) that are launched into space by conventional ballistic missiles upon the detection of any suspicious missile activity. Guided by several types of onboard, ground-based and satellite-based detectors, the EKVs are supposed to seek and destroy any enemy missiles by directly impacting them in flight (called "hitting a bullet with a bullet"). The whole process is to be monitored by the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado and is estimated to cost between $30 billion and $60 billion to build and maintain.

The NMD program is a direct descendant of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or better known as Star Wars). Sprung from the fevered imagination of Edward Teller and his cronies at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and made national policy by Ronald Reagan in 1983, the idea was to orbit giant satellites in space equipped with nuclear bombs and lasers. Enemy missiles were to be shot down by an intense X-ray beam, powered by a nuclear explosion and lasting only for an instant before the entire satellite was annihilated.

It was not until 1993 - and $30 billion later - that the project was deemed unworkable. Its successor was the equally hare-brained idea of orbiting hundreds of "brilliant pebbles" that would intercept and destroy incoming missiles by smashing into them. This program was justifiably renamed "loose marbles" by at least one senator.

...

In the same address that announced the White House decision, Clinton said, "It would be folly to base the defense of our nation solely on a strategy of waiting until missiles are in the air, and then trying to shoot them down."

One can go further than this and say that it will be technologically impossible to reliably shoot them down for the foreseeable future, especially if simple countermeasures are taken, and that insisting on deploying any flawed system will needlessly put millions of Americans at a heightened risk of nuclear attack.

...


http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/20010114edswan9.asp

BTW: I called my friend last week and his comment was "What a hoot. Anyone who thinks we would try this is not informed on the issue."