Message posted by Andre' M. Dall'au on August 24, 2001 at 4:13:12 PST:

Gary,
Excellent summing up the missle defence paradoxes. I personally think we should proceed and give ourselves to ability to defend ourselves in that theatre. Yes, it will be expensive, but they shelved the blossoming space program in the 70's to "better" spend the money, and we have nothing to show for those reallocated dollars. At least we'll have forced our enemies to spend more money for a viable missle threat (hey, it worked for the Soviet Union where they spent themselves out of a country trying to keep up with us). True, there is the rouge group that would seek to smuggle and/or trigger a weapon of mass destruction somewhere in the U.S., and that's where the Intel agencies need to be vigilant. If we do have a missle defence system, and a nation is found to be at fault for sponsoring an act of aggression, we could us that system as a shield to strike back while other nuclear equipped states rattled their sabers. In other words we could enhance our deterrance AND retaliatory capabilities at the same time. As far as space based vs. land based options, those people who advocate "let's keep nuclear war on Earth where it belongs" are true idiots. Hell, we broke every treaty we ever had with the Indians (hey, they finally won a game) no, the other Indians (native-Americans). Why don't we just do what's best for us and the democracies that we are allies with, and build the best system possible. I'm sure the Koreans or Chinese would spend nanoseconds on the ethics of this if they had the capability to build one. We've already seen the disregard the Chinese have for the West (even their own people) and we'd be stupid in thinking they'd play fair EVER. Build it, use it, don't like it, stuff it.

In Reply to: Re: Missile Defence Shield posted by gary on August 24, 2001 at 1:54:22 PST:

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