U.S. Missile Defense Against Iran Makes China/Russia Mad, Might Not Even Work 408
An anonymous reader writes "The United States, since the 1980s, has been trying to make missile defense work. Billions of dollars spent, tons of political capital spent, and not a lot to show. The U.S. does have two viable options: the SM-2 and SM-3, although neither are perfect. The U.S., with European allies, has been deploying missile defense in Europe to block a possible strike from Iranian nuclear tipped missiles (even though they have not made nukes or the missiles to carry them). One problem: such defenses could, in theory, also block Russian and Chinese missiles. Russia is now planning to make more missiles to counter such defenses and could pull out of the New Start Treaty. They may also stop helping U.S. forces to supply themselves in Afghanistan. Is this all worth it for something that might not even work?"
Re:About Russia... (Score:2, Informative)
Very well put.
Read the English Pravda website. That is what a lot of people are believing and swallowing every day.
And people complain about Fox News...
Re:Quite the opposite (Score:5, Informative)
>>> they are both backers of a nuclear Iran, which just sounds wonderful considering the frequency of their "death to America" and "death to Israel" proclamations.
When did these statements happen?
Citation please.
Oh and before you drag-out that tired "wipe Israel off the map" quote..... the phrase wipe off the map does not exist in the Iranian language. It was a very poor translation. What was actually stated by the Iranian president was this: "In a few years the government of Isreal will collapse and fade into history." Somewhat similar to what Reagan said about the communist government of Russia.
Re:Quite the opposite (Score:3, Informative)
Except your stupid attempt at humor ignores a massive difference between Christian and Muslim ideals. Muslim suicide bombers are hailed as martyrs, and they get to go to Heaven. Christian ideals see murderous suicide as a sin, which cannot be forgiven because you are dead, thus sending you to Hell. The idea of the Rapture is that you ascend to Heaven before the Apocalypse, rather than as/after you cause it.
The interesting thing is that both ancient and modern organized Christianity tend to see murderous suicide as a sin, but just plain murder as fine so long as the people you're murdering aren't Christian (and sometimes even just the wrong kind of Christian). In fact, soldiers who fought off pagans in the early years of Christianity occasionally became honored saints (e.g. Demetrius of Thessaloniki [wikipedia.org]. Many Christians also applauded when Christian Europeans were slaughtering American Indians, writing cheerily about how God had protected their communities by inflicting massive plagues on Arawaks and Wampanoags and Powhatans. Heck, many modern American Christians are quite overjoyed at the fact that US soldiers are killing Muslims.
Basically, organized religions in general have definitions of morality that change depending on circumstance, even if they claim differently. You'd think "Thou shalt not kill" would be easy enough to follow, but very few of the religions that claim to believe in that rule have ever come close to actually following that (notable exceptions: Quakers, Jainists).
Re:Quite the opposite the opposite (Score:5, Informative)
Obama IS responsible for due process free execution of several American Citizens based on a secret legal memo (repeat of the GWB policies toward due process free detention).
Obama IS responsible for Yemen's continued imprisonment of a news reporter. His sin? Most likely:
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/obamas_personal_role_in_a_journalists_imprisonment/singleton/ [salon.com]
Seriously, you make light of Obama's failings with things that clearly aren't his fault, but that only serves to obfuscate the fact that he's taken everything that GWB did that was considered radical and dangerous, and made it the new normal. In a world of asshole murdering civil liberty destroying shits, Obama is president.
Here's a partial list, address some of that before you defend this guy:
http://nothingchanged.org/ [nothingchanged.org]
Re:Quite the opposite the opposite (Score:5, Informative)
"Obama is responsible for the effects of Republican led deregulation of the financial industry"
You do know that some of the more catastrophic deregulation was a bipartisan effort and was led by Bill Clinton, Larry Summers and Bob Rubin, especially repealing Glass Steagal and blocking derivatives regulation. You seem to be doing them same thing you are ridiculing, saying its all the other parties fault. Its entrenched power and greed that is at fault, and both parties have it in equal measure.
Re:Quite the opposite the opposite (Score:1, Informative)
On one hand your "open secret" is absolute baloney, i.e. nonsense. On the other, it is beautiful, absolutely beautiful, a textbook example of:
Disinformation [faqs.org]
Disinformation is mostly commonly described as false information created by governments in wartime for military purposes and by totalitarian governments for political purposes in peacetime. Rumors, lies, and other forms of disinformation were made public by the Soviet Union to discredit the United States, the latter being the context in which the word is generally applied. The KGB coined the Russian word dezinformatsiya ; it came into the English language as disinformation. The technique of disinformation goes back at least to 1918 with the end of World War I. Disinformation as a KGB weapon began in 1923 when I. S. Inshlikht, deputy chairman of the GPU, then the name of the KGB, proposed the establishment of a special disinformation office to conduct active intelligence operations.
Soviet active measures. Soviet active measures refer to the influence operations organized by the Soviet government. These include white, gray, and black propaganda, as well as disinformation. White propaganda was created by the Information Department of the Communist Party and included those publicly identified Soviet channels as Radio Moscow, Novosti, and pamphlets and magazines as well as official Soviet government statements. Gray propaganda was organized by the International Department of the Communist Party and used such channels as the foreign Communist Parties and the network of international Soviet fronts. Black propaganda was prepared by the KGB and included agents of influence, covert media placements, and until 1959, assassinations. Forgeries and disinformation were used by the Soviets in all modes. The first effective disinformation campaign was during the Korean Conflict. This was a major Soviet disinformation campaign that generated media attention. The Americans were accused of going into Korean villages during the Korean conflict (1950–1953) and shooting villagers, or killing them with biological weapons and chemical warfare. In fact, the Soviets used anthrax in Korea to kill men, women, and children, and then blamed it on the Americans. . . .
A sensational disinformation story appeared with allegations that the United States deliberately created AIDS in the laboratory to use it as a weapon. The KGB started the story in 1985 with placements in both Soviet and foreign newspapers; by September, 1986, it became a major campaign when an English language paper that actually originated in East Berlin carried the story. "AIDS: Its Nature and Origin," was distributed at the Non-Aligned Movement Summit in Harare, where it contained pseudo scientific verbiage, but the only evidence linking the origin of AIDS to U.S. military laboratories was the following unfounded statement: "The first appearance of AIDS exactly coincides with the opening of a P-4 laboratory at Fort Detrick [Maryland]—taking into account the incubation period. This is also indicated by the fact that the spreading of AIDS to the world emanated from New York, a city in the neighbourhood of Fort Detrick. The assumption that AIDS is a product of the preparation of biological warfare can therefore quite plainly be expressed."
The Soviet disinformation campaign accused the U.S. government of creating the AIDS virus as a weapon against black people and the story quickly appeared worldwide, despite U.S. protests that Fort Detrick, in Maryland, was hundreds of miles from New York. In April 1987, U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop advised the Soviets that if this campaign continued, "direct U.S