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Missile Defense — What’s The Rush?

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Missile Defense — What’s The Rush?

from JoeUser Forums

Missile Defense Agency, since Rumsfeld took over has spent billions[ $7.8 billion] on land based star wars for continual testing, none of which has proved operational. Another $7 billion was appropriated for fiscal 2006. In 2004 MDA ran $370,000 over budget, despite the dire needs in Afghanistan and Iraq. The worst part of this is that there are no guidelines to spending, such as “prove weapons are operational and then buy.”

Now, I am not one to fault the Defense Department to try to make new technology work, but in light of the immediate needs of war and no particular threat lurking from future superpowers, it seems to me — and it’s not that we don’t already have strategic missiles — that MDA should put “star wars” on the back burner and pursue it logically and thriftily until new technology and software can be perfected before costly testing. In the meantime, support our troops in battle with the best equipment available. After all, it is not like the Manhattan Project whereby we were in a race to outpace Germany’s rush for the atomic bomb.

politics
11,103 views 35 replies
Reply #26 from JoeUser Forums Top

Fidel never dared make an aggressive overture, why would Chavez?

How quickly we forget the Cuban Missile Crises.

Reply #27 from JoeUser Forums Top
wonder if the Kennedy boys wouldn't have considered allowing Soviet missile sites "an aggressive overture?"
Touche'. Nevertheless, it was the Soviets who made the overture--Fidel was the host.


How quickly we forget the Cuban Missile Crises.
Even so it was during a very hot era of the cold war when the Soviets wanted to balance missiles we had in Europe or Turkey.
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Reply #28 from JoeUser Forums Top
Each piece doesn't add up to much, but if there is another world conflict, he has lots of little bothersome strings to pull, and is in the position to reach out and touch us more easily than most others.
I still say Chavez is a tinhorn and may be mischievous but hardly a threat to us. It sounds to me as though you're inventing another evil axis--Cuba, Venezuela and Columbia.
Reply #29 from JoeUser Forums Top
Well, I am in a way, but it would include Iran and a few others as well. I tend to take these Iranian nuclear plants a bit more seriously than I should, I think. I an beginngint to see them as a trend, i.e. oil rich, poverty-ridden nations using their oil capital to start ugly cottage industries.

He is a joke, don't get me wrong, but a joke with ties to columbians who smuggle millions of pounds of contraband into the US yearly, and who tends to side with everyone who hates us, and who takes leadership classes under Castro. He may be a joke, but it is a tasteless, rather disturbing joke.
Reply #30 from JoeUser Forums Top
Yeah, oil does grease the sleaze. I sometimes empathize with you and want to send in the Marines. For instance, instead of Vietnam we should have launched regime removal on Castro.
Reply #31 from JoeUser Forums Top
I tend to take these Iranian nuclear plants a bit more seriously than I should


iran is not being taken anywhere near as serious as it should be (and shoulda been for quite some time). for several years running, speakers at gatherings of the current generation of revolutionary guards have claimed it wont be much longer before britain gets a taste of what it used to deal out.

the colombians' product continues to get here, but they're no longer that involved in transportation or insertion (it's a mexican thing now). 6 of 1 or a half dozen of the other i guess...except i think they'd demand a huge amount of money to even consider killing their golden goose.
Reply #32 from JoeUser Forums Top
"the colombians' product continues to get here, but they're no longer that involved in transportation or insertion (it's a mexican thing now). 6 of 1 or a half dozen of the other i guess...except i think they'd demand a huge amount of money to even consider killing their golden goose."


Money that Chavez has, and who is just deranged enough to feel justified in using nefariously. There was an organized US flag burning to celebrate 9-11 after the attacks there. People who have now fled Venezuala have stated that he was impressed with 9-11, told his intelligence people to make overtures to harbor terrorists, supposedly sent money to afghanistan, etc.

Dunno how much of it is accurate, but I think he is creepy enough to be considered a tangible threat. I don't think we'll be shooting down Chavez's or anyone else's missiles for a while, though. The Chinese are too good at being "trade partners" to muck that up with anything overt, I think.
Reply #33 from JoeUser Forums Top
Money that Chavez has


i'm not so sure he has enuff yet. think about how much money flows to colombia each year. imagine you're one of those at the end of that flood of cash.

how much would someone have to offer you to even halfway consider doing something so stupid as vaporizing such a fabulously lucrative market?
Reply #34 from JoeUser Forums Top
Chavez isn't as connected with the drug trade as he is with revolutionaries who are on-again-off-again tools of the drug trade. You might be surprised what they might be willing to arrange transport for if it meant tangible hardware for themselves as well. I doubt an attack in the US would slow down our coke consumption much. Like you say, it will probably be Mexicans that get caught sneaking it in anyway.

And I could just be paranoid. I'm not building bomb shelters or anything. I just think that people who pretend sawed-off weirdos like Lil' Kim and Chavez can't get to us needs to remember that somehow tons and tons of stuff, thousands of people, and untold numbers of other things end up illegitimately in the US already. Granted, Fidel could have done something similar, but Fidel doesn't have the Soviet Union any more, and probably wouldn't relish giving us an excuse.
Reply #35 from JoeUser Forums Top
Lil' Kim


wonder how difficult it would be to synch up a clip of him "singing" 'eat my pussy right'?