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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (154019)	6/18/2001 10:47:38 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 769670

Now you talk of 100%, I see the hatred of the Cole and other bombings. The Cole bomber was a suicide bomber -- very hard to trace. This only supports my point. Terrorists are quite sane enough not to want to be traceable. ICBMs are big, expensive, hard to get, and eminently traceable. There are dozens of other weapons delivery systems -- including smuggling in a suitcase -- that are cheaper, more readily available, and much harder to trace. It hardly makes sense to spend billions on ICBM defense alone at this point. All larger countries if ruled by anyone with half a brain know America is not about taking over the world It may be hard for you to believe, but our power is feared and resented. Also our penchant for unilateral action. Now, I'm sure most countries don't really fear an imminent American first-strike. But they think about the first-strike possibilities opened by a missile defense. I'm quite sure the Chinese think about it a lot. Nadine trust me, I'm an engineer, their are no boondogie in pursuing high technology systems like Missile Defense. The applied science advances have numerous benefits. Many times the greatest advances come about not out of planning but as an artefact of some other goal. Thomas, you made my day, that is the funniest thing I've heard in a long while. You think you're the only engineer on this board? I'm in software, and I worked for a defense contractor in the '80s. No boondogle? You never heard such cries of "yes, boss, we can do that!" to impossible and/or senseless requests. Many times the greatest advances come about not out of planning but as an artefact of some other goal. Of course, most of these "advances" could equally well come from spending 1% of the money directly on applied research. Tell me, what great advances has the SDI spending created to date? Missile defense will divert billions of dollars to defense spending for an unneeded and probably unworkable system. It's just welfare for defense contractors and their employees. But I forget, you like that.