It would be so easy to pollute this supply.
Duhh....
That's like claiming we don't need a police force because they can't be there to prevent the crime from occurring.
We're discussing DETERRENCE, and controlling the situation, as opposed to being held hostage to international criminals.
Of course, waterways can be contaminated in a bio-terroristic attack.
In fact, cattle and pigs can be contaminated with hoof and mouth disease in an act of economic bio-terrorism.
Terrorists can spread various forms of agricultural viruses aimed at wiping out whole crops.
Wackos like Timothy McVeigh can drive Ryder trucks full of Amphol and dynamite in front of government buildings and blow them to hell, without anyone being able to do anything about it.
You just can't stop such acts of criminal terror. But you can deter them, or more appropriately deter those nations that harbor, support, and train such terrorists by ensuring they will pay the price, no matter what type of rocketry they might possess.
The primary weapon against terrorism is counter-terrorism, including the penetration, "turning", surveillance, and active countering of such groups/individuals. It should be treated as the crime that it is, and perpetrators of it ruthlessly hunted down and dealt with.
As for meteors, can you tell us all with 100% certainty when the next one is planning on paying us a little call? The one over Tunguska in 1908 was pretty significant, as I recall. Laid out trees for miles in all directions.
The one last year apparently passed between the moon and earth, a mere 100,000 miles or so. And there will be one in 2027 which is expected to pass within 38,000 miles of the earth by present calculations.
Considering that we're spending hundreds of millions on treating people who insist on engaging in irresponsible behavior, or paying off a public national debt which is already lower than most of rival nations, while only spending a paltry $4 million dollars on discovering and tracking NEOs that could wipe out all life, strikes me as a rather twisted sense of priorities.
As for alienating us from the rest of the world, the last time we played isolationist, we wound up bailing the rest of the world out of their own morasse.
If the US leads, the rest of the world will follow, whether they want to or not. The responsibility of the US is to ensure that where we lead them is a safer, freer world than we have now.
Hawk |
