Faith Based Space Weapons

More Missile-Defense Madness

While the world awaits war in Iraq, little attention has been paid to President Bush's military budget proposal for next year—less still to a line item that would have attracted enormous notice in more placid times. This is the Missile Defense program, the successor to what, in Ronald Reagan's day, was called the Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars." The program's budget, which was released to no fanfare on Feb. 3, is startling for a couple of reasons.

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...to go with the big boost, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has asked Congress to exempt Missile Defense from the law that requires all weapons systems to undergo operational tests before being deployed in the field. Carl Levin, the Senate Armed Services Committee's ranking Democrat (and the only lawmaker raising a fuss about this move), noted that the purpose of this law is "to prevent the production and fielding of a weapon system that doesn't work right." Yet Rumsfeld, justifying the bypass, said, "We need to get something out there," in case, say, North Korea attacks us with ballistic missiles soon.

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Finally, if Bush is worried about rogue states and terrorists blowing up Americans, as he has even more reason to be, he should do more to stave off attacks that might take place tomorrow. Last November, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees offered Bush a free ride on this road. It passed an amendment that allowed him to take $814 million out of Missile Defense, transfer it to the Department of Homeland Security, and spend it there in whatever ways he saw fit. Bush turned the offer down.

It vas not in ze plan. Nothing must interfere with ze plan.

Katerina VandenHeuvel said tonight that Rumsfeld should resign. Frankly, I'm not sure he shouldn't be committed. This is so freakishly muddleheaded that somebody, somewhere has got to get him out of there.

He is actually saying that we should spend massive billions to put up a primitive missile shield that has never worked in the past and we shouldn't test it further because "we have to get something out there" in case North Korea attacks. Oooookay.

He thinks that Kim Jong Il and others are really, really stupid (like his boss) and they will stop building ballistic missiles if we put up a useless multi-billion dollar erector set in Alaska and just tell everybody that it can blast every offending missile from the sky kinda like in Star Wars. North Koreans are so dumb they can't even read the Washington Post so they'll never know that missile defense doesn't work and that even if it did, it couldn't possibly stop more than one or two missiles.

So, they'll send a whole bunch! And soon. Just in case the technology might get better later on.

Of course, if Kim Jong Il isn't as stupid as Rumsfeld's boss (actually it's hardly even possible) so he will likely assume that if they do happen to blast 20 or 30 million Americans away, they'll be blown into the stone age by our ICBM's. So, seeing as they cannot possibly be stupid enough to risk that, they will probably not send any missiles our way in the first place.

Kinda neat. I think they should call it Mutually Assured Destruction. (And they should call the untestable missile defense system they are building "Welfare For Rich Republican Contributors")

Meanwhile, Osama's probably been making deals with Pakistan and the former Soviet states for spent uranium and other goodies, but we don't have time for that kind of thing. Micronesia might be planning to unleash a Doomsday machine any day now. We'd better pretend to get prepared by pretending we have a super-duper laser beam bomb annihilator thingy. That'll stop 'em in their tracks.