MN Johnnie: You nailed it. Amb Cooper always wants more and I love him. We have what we have: which was still hugely expensive. Asking for more at this point is a non starter.
There are stll many benefits of the system in place (and growing).
John
http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2006/09/missile-defense-many-positive-impacts.html
Prove it...Show Me the Money!
We have what we have: which was still hugely expensive.
That expense is playing to the critics. There is a managerial approach that fixes that. Its called "gitting 'r done". A Deployment of known reliable inexpensive components. Above all other priorities.
Asking for more at this point is a non starter.
Guess we know who is pussy-whipped. Anyways, fortunately, if the IWG is correct, we Don't really need significantly more. Just need a free hand, less interference, micro-managing and political sabotage.
As for more being a non-starter...that under Ronal Reagan would have been the occasion for some serious Presidential attacks in the open against the obstructionist. And that should be the case today, if that certain someone was truly serious about deployments. I'm not so sure he is...
I.e., The killing of TBMD. The killing of BP-II. The killing of the Aegis SM-3 Flight-IIa fix. The killing of THEL. And no, these are not merely examples of "the best" (which is sometimes used as a pretext) being the Enemy of the Good Enough. Often no alternative programs at all were funded when the programs were killed. So I don't buy that anymore...at all...since all the decisions uniformly keep us from really being defended against the 360-degree threat. Which is the real threat. No enemy is going to want to make it easy for us to fingerprint the author of their attacks.
Conclusion: W's deployments are simply not very serious or credible looking to me. They have to be less so to real enemies.
This undeniable core political failure at the top makes for serious rethinking of W's real agenda: The old maxim applies:
"Once is Happenstance. Twice is Coincidence. The third time it's Enemy action"Another freeper when appraised of the openly adverse facts surmised, gee, then "maybe there is some kind of major Black Programs that we just don't know about."
We could always hope for that, but as you must know, such a capability, so long as it's kept a secret from our enemies (hence us as well), would never constitute effective deterrence. And by all accounts within the industry, "it ain't 'a happen'n McGee!"
Is this a consensus opinion among us conservatives?
Frankly, it isn't with me. I want to fulfill the promise of strategic defense. Now. It is within reach. And any congress critters, liberal, or OMB bean-counters or FoggyBottom turncoats...or "promises promises" W [whose promises to Putin means more evidently than to us] ...which says "no"...can get out of my way...or get run over.
It is time to get very very much in all of their faces. Do we have any courage of our convictions, or not?
We need to make this a political steam-roller, on the order of the national rejection of Illegal Alien Amnesty
A national litmus test vote issue for '06 as well.