ANTI-​​MISSILE TESTS DELAYED AGAIN

If you had to pick just two sen­tences to cap­ture the will­ful stu­pid­ity of the Bush administration’s mis­sile defense push, this pair from Global Security Newswire would do nicely:

The U.S. Defense Department has once again post­poned flight-​​testing new ele­ments of its mis­sile defense sys­tem until the end of November.
Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Henry “Trey” Obering said, how­ever, that the delay would not alter plans to begin oper­at­ing the sys­tem in the next month or two.

Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.), with the Armed Services Committee, asks the right ques­tion: “If youre not con­fi­dent enough to take a chance on a test, how can you say that this can engage suc­cess­fully in a real oper­a­tional mis­sion?“
THERE’S MORE: “Keeping America safe from attack is the cen­tral theme of the president’s re-​​election cam­paign. Why then except for a rally last month at a Boeing plant where a piece of the pro­gram is man­u­fac­tured has he scarcely men­tioned mis­sile defense?” won­ders Slate’s Fred Kaplan. “Perhaps because the pro­gram is hav­ing seri­ous prob­lems and because Bush knows it’s hav­ing problems.”

September 15th, 2004 | Missiles | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.