Missile Offense
WSJ ^ | September 10, 2008 | Editorial
Posted on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 12:47:27 AM by jazusamo
The Kremlin has been dusting off old Bolshevik intimidation techniques since the U.S. signed a missile defense partnership with Poland last month. The Russian foreign ministry promised that its response “would go beyond diplomacy,” and a Russian general mused that this meant its nuclear missiles would have to target Poland. Who would have thought such talk would find an accommodating ear in the U.S. Congress?
That will be the question when Illinois Republican Representative Mark Kirk offers an amendment in the coming days to the Defense Appropriations bill to restore funding for missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.
The money was struck in May by Democrats who justified the cuts by claiming that the Iranian threat was not developing quickly and a deal with Poland hadn’t been signed. Now Iran has tried to orbit its first satellite and a deal with Poland is in place, so we’ll soon see if House Democrats and Barack Obama change with the new reality.
Even as Polish leaders were risking Russia’s wrath by signing the U.S. deal, California Democrat Ellen Tauscher declared that the missile defense partnership was proceeding way too fast. Ms. Tauscher wrote on the left-wing Huffington Post last month that the U.S.-Polish pact would “build an ideologically-based system that is untested and certainly not ready, against a threat that has not yet emerged.”
Ms. Tauscher chairs the House Strategic Forces Subcommittee and so can be a real obstacle to the Polish deal...
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