Suckers for the 'Son of Star Wars'

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August 29, 2006

It's really no surprise at all that Defense chief Donald Rumsfeld is cranking up the 'missile defense' propaganda, calling for new tests. Although, it was curious to see Rumsfeld this week play down the effectiveness of our nation's missile defense capability when, unprompted, he described the possibility of shooting down a North Korean missile as less than a sure thing.

Asked at a news conference Monday whether he thought the 'shields' we have in place are ready to defend us against a North Korean missile, he hemmed and hawed about the need for further testing of the system before he could be certain. "I want to see it happen," Rumsfeld told reporters. "A full end-to-end" demonstration is needed "where we actually put all the pieces" of the highly complex and far-flung missile defense system together and see whether it would succeed in destroying a warhead in flight.

His leader, Bush, was decidedly more optimistic in July, although he doesn't know any more than what he's told by the military industry cronies that infect his government. "Our missile systems are modest, our anti-ballistic missile systems are modest," Bush explained at a press conference July 7.

"They're new. It's new research. We've gotten -- testing them. And so I can't -- it's hard for me to give you a probability of success . . . I think we had a reasonable chance of shooting it (the NK missile) down." he said.

What else could Bush say? Mostly obscured by the 9-11 tragedy, the ambition to restart Reagan's 'Star Wars' boondoggle was a principle part of the Bush transition team's agenda. The 'Vulcans', reportedly named by Condi Rice after a statue of a Greek god in her hometown, included Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and other PNAC regulars there to flesh out Bush's new foreign policy and tell him who to choose for his Cabinet.

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So, today Rumsfeld announced that he was going to get another 'test' of the missile defense system, firing a missile from Kodiak Island, Alaska, to be intercepted by a rocket fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It won't be the "full end-to-end test" he said he wanted. It's really not much of a test at all.

"We are not going to try to hit the target," said Scott Fancher, head of Boeing Co.'s ground-based missile defense program. "It is not a primary or secondary test objective to hit the target."

"Why not proceed in an orderly way with the kind of the test expert people want to do?" Rumsfeld rationalized. "They do not have to do it to demonstrate to you."

Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry "Trey" Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency, says that although the rocket might hit the missile, that's not really the point of the test, even though it's being described as the largest missile defense test since the last failed one 18 months ago.

So why all the blather from Rumsfeld now about the missile defense boondoggle? It could be that he sees this as his last opportunity to deliver for his defense industry cronies, the ones who keep him in power. Or, he could be working a Rovian ploy to stop the bleeding of Bush's credibility on issues of national defense over his mishandling of Iraq and his inability to catch bin-Laden.

There's another reason for the re-emergence of the missile defense canard that hasn't gotten much ink.

The Pentagon was set back in May to ask Congress for a $1.6b 'anti-missile' base in Eastern Europe to defend against, what they claimed, is a threat to the region from Iran's ballistic missiles. Under consideration were sites in countries like Poland and the Czech Republic. The Iran card was a perfect play at the time, as North Korea hadn't yet launched their missiles. But there was no more of a credible threat from nuclear weapons from Iran than from anyone else.

"As far as we can tell," Gary Samore, former aide on the National Security Council was quoted in a NYT article Aug. 26, "Iran is many years away from having the capability to deliver a military strike against the U.S. If they made a political decision to seriously pursue a space launch vehicle, it would take them a decade or more to develop the capability to launch against the U.S."

The proposal was a flop in Central Europe. The countries under consideration immediately balked at the prospect of aligning with the U.S. against a major economic ally of Russia. Outgoing Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek said just last week that the U.S. won't be building a missile defense base in the Czech Republic.

In fact, the U.S. reportedly made "discreet inquiries" in Britain in early August to see whether they would take the 'Son of Star Wars' systems that Central Europe had spurned. There's a good possibility that Britain turned down the bogus system as well. And they should turn it down. The missile defense scam is nothing more than a feathering of the aerospace industry coffers at the expense of other costly priorities for legitimate and necessary defenses.

The Bush regime desperately wants to re-start Star Wars, or 'Son of Star Wars.' Hawking their rejected earmarks for missile defense R&D was their first thought. Then, they hoped their plan to proliferate their 'missile defense' technology to European provinces 'to counter Iran' would get a boost from all of their flailing around over the NK launches.

It's a war campaign for Bush and his republican cowboys from now until the November elections. If the Bush regime has their way, missile defense will be one of the wedge weapons in their rhetorical arsenal. The result shouldn't be any more effective than this latest orchestrated demonstration of their phony system.


full article: http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ron_full_060829_suckers_for_the__son.htm

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1. They never give up on this bullshit.

--IMM

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2. they're counting on ignorance and faulty memories

and apathy

[noonwitch]

3. I'm for research into applications of the concept

But only if we can financially afford it.

Someday, a meteor will hit the earth, and our astronomers will see it coming for a while beforehand. It seems to my unscientific mind that the technology behind being able to shoot down enemy missles could apply to that situation, too.

If they really could create such a system to protect us from enemy missles, it would be kind of cool.

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4. It's not for meteors.

There could be some crossover in technology, but that's not the issue. For missiles we have to deflect the warhead. For meteors, it's the momentum of a large mass. Just intercepting it above the atmosphere would not divert it from collision with the earth.

Eventually, we could intercept a missile, but there would be counter measures which would ultimately render a costly and complex system obsolete. The "enemy" could harden their missiles, or send decoys. Remember, they're smart too. No weapon system has been built that didn't inspire a counter measure.

Meteors...not so smart.

--IMM

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6. kick

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7. I think a missile shield would just encourage nuts like Bush

into thinking that a nuclear conflict could be survived, making them more likely to choose the option without the same fear of retaliation.

Remember, it's not just other countries which need to be restrained from using nukes. In fact, it's our own president who has advocated in his National Security assessment, for the first time in our history, that it would be okay to use nukes against countries without any nuclear capability or who pose no nuclear threat. We really don't want to encourage him or any other meglomaniac who happens to ascend to office.

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5. .