"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...

"John H" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:00:35 GMT, "Doug Kanter"

wrote:


"John H" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 18:32:19 GMT, "Doug Kanter"

wrote:

"NOYB" wrote in message
arthlink.net...

Closer to perfecting? If you leave Boston, driving to Texas, and
your
car
dies and ends your trip just north of Hartford CT, yes, you are
closer
than when you left Boston, but not enough to user the word "closer"
with
any sense of celebration.

That's not an apt analogy. A better one would be:
You make a trip to Texas 8 different times. Two of those times, your
car
dies somewhere in the midwest...and once, it once wouldn't start in
the
driveway. The other 5 trips went just as planned. The missile defense
tests have hit their mark 5 out of 8 times. I'd say we're "closer to
perfecting" the system. I would estimate that before the end of
Bush's
second term, we'll have at least some semblance of a working system
in
place.

Just one problem: The system could have two purposes.

1) Prevent an attack which we had absolutely nothing to do with
provoking.
This is a good thing.

2) Prevent a RESPONSE to a situation created by a group consisting of
one
idiot and a handful of madmen, who think that a good way to free up
some
oil
supply would be to cripple or eliminate the world's *other* legitimate
customer, China.

#2 is highly likely, considering the fact that your master and his crew
have
already shown that they like to create mayhem where there was none
before.




What's happening now is nothing new. Didn't you follow the space
program
before we successfully landed on the moon? Would you argue that with
each
test...some successful, and some not...that we weren't any "closer to
perfecting" our ability to reach the moon?

Moon missions could've have failed endlessly for 20 years and it would
not
have been the same, since the systems being developed were not needed
to
back up the threats of a madman. There was nothing to lose but the
lives
of
volunteers, and a lot of time spent debating the budget of the thing in
Congress.


Would you rather the response be successful?

The point was that NOYB thinks the system, which is seriously hobbled by
technical problems, is close to be "good enough". In fact, the system has
to
be perfect if it will be placed in operation while Bush is in office
because
as you know, your president *will* say or do something stupid and bust
open
yet another hornet's nest, just like he did in Iraq.


It makes no difference. Canada has said we can't fire anti-missile
missiles
overhead without it's express permission. Surely they've told China the
same
thing. Right?

Canadians are drunk all the time. They'd never notice.

Perhaps we can just make ICBM jammers and deflectors rather than missiles
that will blow them out of the air? A launch coming over the polar ice caps
would be forced down before it hit our northern border. There's not much
worth saving north of Chicago anyhow.