"Washington claims the defense shield is aimed at blocking attacks by rogue nations."

Washington is in fact claiming that the """"""defense shield"""""" is aimed at blocking attacks from Iranian missiles. Those are the same exact type of missiles that Saddam had, you know, the invisible made up ones.

Ukraine will be next to hit the news, followed by Iran before the end of the year.

Life is chess not checkers. Missiles are in fact a bad thing to hit you. If anything, a missile shield is exactly the kind of passive stuff we should do more of instead of invading places. I am all for defencive implacements. It is always best to have a shield and not need it than the other way around.

The fact is, Iran is developing medium ranged ship based missile technology. So that missile shield better span the globe if it is to be effective. I would actually think more people would be down with this kind of passive protection? Is this more to do with you dislike of this administration than any logical grounds to not want to have missile defence abilities at our disposal? Cause im not fan of this administration either, but I can see a strong defence being a good thing more than a bad thing.

Russia getting mad about seems like they are still stuck in a cold war kind of mode of resisting any attempt the US makes to make itself a little safer from threats, no matter how hypathatical they are. I don't think we shouldn't consider them because russia isn't comforatble with it. One thing we can't alow to happen in the big world cooperation is to undermind our own security to oblige someone else. Above all, the government should look to our defence more than cooperating with the world at large.

Anyone that has dealings in millitary intelegence would of told you that pre-war iraq had MWDs. Even the people that are against the war now were very very for having the weapons inspectors get at the weapons that we KNEW they had...hell, we still had some on file what we gave Sadam when we financed him.

Intelegence isn't fool proof, and more over, its a big ass desert out there to hide things in. If anyone remembers, Iraq had about a dozen and a half migs in the first gulf war. Iraq flew them out ASAP to iran who wasn't anally (Iraq and Iran are bitty enimies) and iran happily took them for their own. The same was most likely done with anything Iraq did have, and we did end up finding lots of gas that he was using on the curds after the media had already come to the conclution that there were absoulutly no WMDs found, even though we did find them, just not the nuclear and biological ones we thought were there. Most likely, he never had them, but we will never really know, the point is he didn't submit to UN weapons inspections like he should of. And the US decided (imo in error) to enforce UN laws without UN concent (bad idea).

Anway, this is off topic. Word is Iran may indeed have medium ranged balistic missile tech from a energy deal with China. This isn't in any means ironclad as intel never is, but it looks to be true.

I always try and stress, don't like administrations blow your consideration of the big picture. The world is a messed up place with messed up people that want to do messed up things for their own messed up agendas...and sometimes, they get a hold of power and weapons which is a bad thing. Don't let hate of one person cloud your minds of the things that still should happen for our best interest.

/rant

btw, a Medium-range ballistic missile is right around 1km to 3km in range. An intercontinental ballistic missile is anything north of 5.5km. Iran is belived to have more of medium and Intermediate-ranged missiles. None able to hit US via a ground lauch. But well able to hit via a sea launch which doesn't require to much adaptation.

Zelzal-3,Shahab-3D range 1,000-1,350-1,500 1999
IRSL-X-2 range 2,200-2,672
IRIS 2,3 range 3,500-3,750(2 stage, farily advanced missile)

(all ranges in KMs)

^ A defense shield in and of itself isn't a bad thing. A defense shield that could stop a Russian nuclear attack on the U.S. sounds like a good idea at first blush.

Except...for the fact that we've been relying on the philosophy of Mutually Assured Destruction for the last 60+ years to keep the peace, and a missile shield upsets that balance.

It puts the U.S. in a position where they could do a nuclear first strike, without having to worry about the pesky nuclear response from Russia.

There's also a long-standing treaty that Russia and the U.S. signed not to build them -- count that as another piece of paper Bush has ignored.

This is very dangerous, and the timing couldn't be worse.

How would we feel if Russia installed an anti-missile system in Cuba? I doubt we'd say "well, it's just defensive, no need to worry".

Why hasn't anyone mentioned the elephant in the room, you know the fact that missile defense systems have been proven to be unreliable, have a high rate of failure, often do not hit their targets... ohh and that counter measures against them are easy to develop.

so if we fire, 50 missiles, and we have 25 patriot missile defense systems.

about 15 will get through.

My dad served in Iraq, let me tell you that having some patriot missiles at your side is a nice thing rather than having to stab that foot long neddle in your heart.

It is funny though that we are still talking about Mutually Assured Destruction after the cold war though. It seems more and more like Russia is still in the cold war in certain respects.

I believe you are refering to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that was signed back in 1972, however;

"On June 13, 2002, six months after giving the required notice of intent, the US unilaterally withdrew from the treaty."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty)

It was instead replaced with SORT, "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Offensive_Reductions_Treaty".

In short, we are within our leagal limmits to pursure this, as would russia be in cuba installing missile shields.


Edit: And with the "new" Russia acting more like the "old" russia all the time, I don't think certain measures to protect ourselves should be ignored because they are unpopular. I can bet you dimes to dollars that the places we are installing them at LOVE them more than we do. Russia may hate them, but eastern block countries to this day still have to worry about Russia doing stuff like...well, doing stuff like it is doing now.

I can't state the given effectiveness of a missile sheild. Surely though, any percent is better than zero when you are talking about the complete eradication of a city.

Russia already has anti missile missile tech anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_system

Weapon development and deployment leads to weapon buildup which carried the Cold War as much as any communist vs capitalistic rhetoric.