Posted on 09/17/2009 7:09:46 AM PDT by balls
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration plans to announce on Thursday that it will scrap former President George W. Bush’s planned missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic and instead deploy a reconfigured system aimed more at intercepting shorter-range Iranian missiles, according to people familiar with the plans.
President Obama decided not to deploy a sophisticated radar system in the Czech Republic or 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland, as Mr. Bush had planned. Instead, the new system his administration is developing would deploy smaller SM-3 missiles, at first aboard ships and later probably either in southern Europe or Turkey, those familiar with the plans said.
The White House will announce the decision Thursday morning and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who was first appointed by Mr. Bush, will then discuss it with reporters at 10:30 a.m. It amounts to one of the biggest national security reversals by the new administration, one that will upset Czech and Polish allies and possibly please Russia, which adamantly objected to the Bush plan. But Obama administration officials stressed that they are not abandoning missile defense, only redesigning it to meet the more immediate Iranian threat.
“The way forward enhances our homeland defense and protects our forces abroad as well as our European allies,” said an administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid upstaging the announcement by Mr. Gates. “Our review has been driven by an updated intelligence assessment of Iran’s missile programs and new advances in our missile defense capabilities and technologies.”
Administration officials said the Bush missile defense architecture was better designed to counter potential long-range missiles by Iran, but recent tests and intelligence have indicated that Tehran is moving more rapidly toward developing short- and medium-range missiles.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
1. There are a lot of “American” targets in Europe.
2. Ballistic Missiles from Iran to NY, would pass over Europe.
I think I posted something when Obama made that amateurish overture to the Soviet..., I mean Russians, soon after he came into office that the U.S. would abandon missile defense in Europe for help with Iran. If I recall, I opined that the Russians knew they didn’t have to give an inch, and Obama would still kill the program.
So, in the course, of a week, we have caved to North Korea, caved to Iran, betrayed our best European allies, knifed Honduras in the back, and sucked up to an American hating dictator in Venezuela. Nice.
(I forgot to add, we caved to Hamas, and stabbed Israel in the back as well.)
Figuratively giving away the Czech Republic...are they TRYING to look like Chamberlain?
“barry you” lol
Yes FDR was the first Democrat that loved Stalin and gave him half of Germany and Europe aside from a Huge pile of Money and War material if he would have let the Nazis kill them we would not have wasted the resources and 35 years playing with the Communists.The Zero is only continuing that legacy.
This this really the worst case where Obama shows the ‘Jimmy Carter appease with weakness’ strategy. It’s Obama giving back the USSR what they took in WWII, and lost under Reagan.
That is what it appears to be once this Democrat flavor is added to anything failure is the after taste.
We just did screw Europe. Unfortunately we still had some friends there. Not to mention all the US military bases.
I can understand the argument against us being the world police...but if not us then who? We are rapidly declining as a world power, and who will step in the fill the void? China and Russia. It won’t be pretty.
Showing this much weakness to our enemies is going to lead to war eventually, and we’ve already been ground down by 2 long wars.
I think a thread needs to be started called “If George W. Bush . . . .” and start it out with IrishMike’s excellent post and then let everyone add from there. I look back on these 9 months and it seems like almost every day something Obama and/or his minions does or says leaves me outraged. There’s been so much I can’t keep up anymore.
Truer words were never spoken considering your post on this thread.
If you don't understand the concept of standing up for what is right in defending our allies and ourselves in these troubled time, then no amount of explanations can get it through to you.
To steal from John Wayne, "You might be walking around, but you are as brain-dead as a beaver hat."
Why not let countries police themselves? We need to get our own house in order, or the decline will be permanent. Welfare recipients don't get jobs, and countries who can con us into protecting them don't protect themselves.
When do our allies defend us?
Isn’t defending Europe really defending us? We have to keep the savages in check or we will be next.
Capitulation to the Russians.
Screwing our friends the Poles and Czechs.
Relying on intel that the Iranians are far from developing long range missiles, stupid, naive or just cover.
Obama has catapulted our debt on his domestic agenda which dwarfs Johnson’s Great Society, and now has no money left to spend on non essential projects like defending our country.
And who needs weapon systems or defense systems when he can talk and appease his way out of any fight with our enemies.
I agree. I just showed IrishMike’s list to a co-worker and she busted out laughing because we were given a "Bushism" calendar by the resident Liberals here. This list could be the start of an Obama Nation calendar because every day there is a new outrage or embarrassment coming from the ___________ (I will let you fill in the blank).
To bring down an ICBM you have to hit it mid-phase not early phase. The plan would always have been to have an early warningr adar closer to the Iranian border which would then alert the tracking radar, set further back in central Europe, which would work in conjunction with the interceptor missiles.
An ICBM, or any long-range missile, has three phases — launch, mid-flight and final or detonation phase. The second phase, in mid-glight, is by the far the longest and therefore easier to lock on to the missile.
Also setting the radar in the Czech Republic gives much greater span than setting it closer so the intreceptors could still bring down an Iranian missile that was fired say at London, Paris or Berlin as well at the United States (which, for the moment, is way outside anything Iran has, but they key is to plan for the future)
Tone Deaf [Andrew Stuttaford]
“You can agree or not with Obama’s decision to abandon plans to build those missile-defense systems in the Czech Republic and Poland, but we ought to be able to agree that publicly announcing this on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland is an act of quite remarkable insensitivity.”
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmNjZDJjYmI5OTgxMDhjZGExNjM2YjM1MjUyMGY0NzU=
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