Posted on 11/17/2005 1:13:40 AM PST by twinself
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. and Polish officials are discussing building a base in Poland from which U.S. interceptors could shoot down long-range missiles as part of a global defence network, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.
It would be the first American strategic missile defence site outside U.S. territory, and would be designed to defend all of Europe against intercontinental-range missiles - primarily those launched from the Middle East.
No decision has been made to proceed with a missile defence base in Poland and alternative sites in Europe are a possibility. But the Pentagon official said Poland appears to be the most likely host country for the kind of American military installation that would have been unthinkable before Poland joined NATO in 1999.
The official discussed the matter only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
The Pentagon has made no public announcement of its discussions with Polish officials, although it has made known its extensive consultations in recent years with NATO allies on the threat posed by ballistic missiles.
On Monday, Poland's new prime minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, said he was opening a public debate on whether to host a U.S. missile defence base.
He did not specifically say Washington was interested in installing ground-based interceptors of the sort that the Pentagon has recently installed in Alaska.
"This is an important issue for Poland, related to our security and to our co-operation with an important ally," Marcinkiewicz said.
He leads a new conservative government in Warsaw that took office on Oct. 31. The previous government had expressed concern that missile defence co-operation with Washington could harm relations with Russia, which had opposed Poland's decision to become a member of NATO.
The U.S. military has no permanent bases in Poland or other Central and Eastern European countries formerly aligned with the Soviet Union. The U.S. does have bases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia such as Kyrgyzstan.
U.S. officials have been discussing with new NATO members Romania and Bulgaria the possibility of basing some U.S. troops there as part of a repositioning of U.S. forces around the world.
U.S. officials have been considering a number of possibilities for extending the American missile defence network to include Europe, although most of the focus has been on defences against short-range missiles.
Long-range missiles are considered an emerging threat, in the view of Bush administration officials, because of the proliferation of technologies that would allow countries such as Iran and possibly Syria or Libya to build extended-range missiles. The threat is especially worrisome when coupled with nuclear warheads.
The current U.S. defence system against long-range missiles is limited mainly to an installation at Fort Greely, Alaska, where at least six missile interceptors are in underground silos, linked to a command and control system. It is designed mainly to shoot down missiles fired at U.S. territory from North Korea, with future expansion planned.
The Pentagon official who discussed the Polish option said that if a missile defence base were built there, it probably would be the only one needed to defend Europe against long-range missiles, although radars, other sensors and interceptors designed to combat shorter range missiles also would be needed for a complete defence.
The official estimated that a site in Poland would not be ready to begin operating before 2010. He offered no estimate on how much it might cost or when U.S. officials were likely to make a decision to proceed. Also undetermined is whether the site would be controlled jointly by U.S. and Polish forces or possibly with a NATO role.
"Man! Where the denial of Holocaust here?"
I know you did not mean to, but the Holocaust had a certain unique terribleness. When you compare lesser events that are quite different you are distorting history in one of two ways - you are either elevating the lesser event (Chechnya) or minimizing the greater event (Holocaust). Sudan would be a more apt current example. Stalin would be an apt historic comparison.
In Chechnya the population had involvement in the events that befell them, even if you think the ensuing Russian response is disproportionate. In addition I wonder about the numbers. I must say Muslims have not impressed me with their historic veracity. They often cry victim when they are being repaid for their aggression. Such were the problems with the revision of the Serbian Bosnian conflict.
Check out this article that explains Holocaust revision through ludicrous comparison. Goldberg is excellent. The left uses the Holocaust example at every turn, as an epithet and as a defense for Muslim appeasement lest the specter of Islamaphobia give rise to a new wave of the dreaded European Nationalism.
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg090403.asp
Yes, I understood that you did not want it in Poland. But your other statements suggested you thought it belonged elsewhere in Europe. Kind of like the group home for problem kids that everyone knows must be built but not in their neighborhood.
"We should also leave NATO, which is worth as much as our alliances in 39."
What is your problem with NATO?
I seem to have gotten you very angry. So I apologize for my statement as I am sure that was not your intention.
Payback? We had missiles all around the Soviet Union at that time.
Well then it may interest you to know that the Chechens allied themselves with the Germans in WW2.
"Although the German front never made it to the border of Chechnya, an active guerrilla movement threatened to undermine the Soviet defenses of the Caucasus (noted writer Valentin Pikul' claims in his historical account Barbarossa that while the city of Grozny was being prepared for a siege in 1942, all of the air bombers stationed on the Caucasian front had to be directed at quelling the Chechen insurrection instead of fighting the German siege of Stalingrad). As well, incidents of covert German airdrops into Chechnya and interceptions of radio exchanges between German and Chechen rebels were frequent."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya
Spoken like a true socialist globalist. Welcome to national reality and national sovereignty, as opposed to those who willing sell theirs to extra national organizations like some Judas. A nation has full right to control what crosses its borders, both as far as people and products and the national entity has the full right to control what their corporations, a contractual entity between a group of citizens and the state, does in and outside its territory. Only Marxists, like you, believe in free trade.
Yeah, image that, I'm against a socialist spending program that does nothing to defend America but wastes our money on a defunct economy. No missile fired against the US from the ME is going to pass anywhere near Poland. Only bases in Cyprus, Georgia, Israel, Romania, Italy or Bulgaria or England would matter.
So, yes, giving money to an EU backwater province for a "defense" that does absolutely nothing for our defense is a waste of money.
Yup, you sound just like those apes who said the same thing about the Serbs so we would support another bunch of islamic maggots. You are no different.
Grozny looks like Warsaw in 1944!!!
And yet you kiss German arse at all opportunities, the people who butchered 10% of your population. Talk about a lapdog's mentalty. But again, the Germans pay your bills so that 19% of your population can lay around and not work and still not starve. Get to work and make something of your nation instead of relying on others to pay you.
That's why its Chechen militias who do most of the fighting against these poor insulted boy scout islamics for whom you are a useful idiot and appologist. God, you sound just like our leftest here. You and Ted Kennedy would make great friends.
Explains why your neighbors finally partioned you after 500 years of your aggressions and persecution of your neighbors, back stabbing your neighbors and invading local peoples. You even hired the Teutonics to exterminate the pagan Prussians. Then you yourselves invaded and conquered the Teutonics after they did your dirty work for you. Very nice and honest of you.
Hell you even sided with Hitler while it served your territorial gains and then switched sides real quick after getting a chunk of a neutral nation.
Jews didn't blow up the USS Cole. Jews didn't die in drove in Afghanistan and on the Pakistani border in shoot outs with Pakistani soldiers. Jews didn't decapitate American and other hostages in Iraq. Jews didn't massacre schools. The maggots you whore for did. You are no better then Al-Jaazer, another Islamic apologist fool.
Grozny and Berlin is a good comparison.
Moral clarity is a scarce commodity. Aggressor and defenders are now the same.
The simple fact that 200,000+ Chechens live peacefully in Moscow shows Vox_PL to be the pro-Islamic appologist that he is. We have quite a few like him in Congress.
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