Remember the scoffing when Ronald Reagan first proposed a ballistic missile defense? A typical example: in 1985 an aide to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin, the Wisconsin Democrat, announced, "Star Wars research is an imprudent use of taxpayers' dollars. By continuing it, we're essentially throwing money into a bottomless pit." The skepticism continues. In 2004, Eugene Habiger, who headed the U.S. Strategic Command in the mid-1990s, said, "A system is being deployed that doesn't have any credible capability." And the Union of Concerned Scientists--who else?--recently issued a tract claiming that there is "no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against real attack."
34 posted on 05/09/2006 6:35:42 PM PDT by Donald Rumsfeld Fan
("fake but accurate": NY Times)