Under a Missile Shield and Dreaming

Los Angeles, California-Our pseudo-intelligent political leaders are back at it again. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made it crystal clear Thursday that the United States fully intends to build a new ballistic missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to use a radar base on Azerbaijan Island instead.
President Bush and Secretary Gates want the missile shield to protect the United States from possible aggression from Iran and North Korea. President Putin is concerned that the presence of the missiles in Poland and the X-band radar in the Czech Republic will undermine the effectiveness of Russian ballistic missiles. This opinion is only amplified by efforts by Mr. Gates to base additional short-range interceptor missiles further in Eastern Europe.
Would Mr. Putin please join me at Studio C? Don’t sweat the missile shield; it is unreliable even in the best of circumstance. They have been testing these missiles for years, and at a better than even rate they have been missing. Even when they do strike their targets, some experts would consider the tests to be rigged. Many of the tests have used little or no countermeasures, and they have precise knowledge of the warheads arrival time, origin, and velocity. I wouldn’t trust the system to protect my CR-V if it was parked right next to one of the missile silos.
As for President Bush, this is Darkstar calling. Forget about North Korea and Iran, they are a trivial threat for as far as nuclear ballistic missiles are concerned. Number-one, they don’t own any weapon capable of reaching our shores anyway. Number-two, they would be fools to launch one at us. One pesky thing about missiles is that they come with return addresses. They are glorified projectiles, and with a little effort you can calculate their origin and pummel them. Did you ever read “The Sum of All Fears” by Mr. Clancy? Shipping nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons to other countries is much more of an in thing. It is cheap and a hell to trace the origin after the weapon goes off. If you are sincere about protecting this country, start with the borders first.