February 20, 2002
Media compilation #49: When the Pentagon Wants to Rule the World
Dear journalist
Some of the articles below are already a couple weeks old but they cover an issue that is hardly being addressed by most mainstream media, which is the decisive influence the military-industrial complex is having on the U.S. foreign policy. When politicians allow hawkish views win the day, what the future holds for us all may become very bleak indeed, because violence is NEVER the proper solution to any conflict and can only breed ever more violent consequences as is exemplified in Israel.
There is not much time left to sway policymakers towards saner, more humane policies...
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
- Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914)
CONTENTS
1. European Union Questions the US - Fury at president's 'axis of evil' speech
2. Bush Counts On War Without End
3. Bush and Sharon agree on policy
4. Proposed World Treaty Banning Space Based Weapons
5. The Future of Warfare -- Or "Single Dumbest" Bush Idea?
SEE ALSO:
US targets Saddam: Pentagon and CIA making plans for war against Iraq this year (Feb 14, 2002)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,649917,00.html
The Pentagon and the CIA have begun preparations for an assault on Iraq involving up to 200,000 US troops that is likely to be launched later this year with the aim of removing Saddam Hussein from power, US and diplomatic sources told the Guardian yesterday. President George Bush's war cabinet, known as the "principals committee", agreed at a pivotal meeting in late January that the policy of containment has failed and that active steps should be taken to topple the Iraqi leader. CLIP
America's Imperial War (By George Monbiot - February 12)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4354289,00.html
The liberals who supported the bombing of Afghanistan have aligned themselves with a ruthless military machine.
A CENTURY OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS - From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan
http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/interventions.htm
A US president writes (Not, unfortunately, the current one)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,650374,00.html
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." (President Dwight D Eisenhower, 1953)
Why a world in crisis, when solutions abound? (8 February 2002)
http://www.simedia.org/new/SI-com8.html
Calls for a worldwide Marshall Plan (as suggested by Walter Kronkite last week on Larry King live)
1.
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002
From: David Weston <dweston@cqm.co.uk>
Subject: European Union Questions the US
Will Tony get cross with Chris? Chris Patten makes... a scathing attack on American foreign policy ... But George Bush said: "Either you're for us, or you are for the terrorists." Isn't Patten laying himself open to charges of being a 'terrorist'? And won't he be subjected to the new anti-terrorist laws?
David J. Weston
Democracy for a Change.
Patten lays into Bush's America
Fury at president's 'axis of evil' speech
Jonathan Freedland in Brussels
Saturday February 9, 2002
The Guardian
Chris Patten, the EU commissioner in charge of Europe's international relations, has launched a scathing attack on American foreign policy - accusing the Bush administration of a dangerously "absolutist and simplistic" stance towards the rest of the world.
As EU officials warned of a rift opening up between Europe and the US wider than at any time for half a century, Mr Patten tells the Guardian it is time European governments spoke up and stopped Washington before it goes into "unilateralist overdrive".
"Gulliver can't go it alone, and I don't think it's helpful if we regard ourselves as so Lilliputian that we can't speak up and say it," he says in today's interview.
Mr Patten's broadside came as the French prime minister, Lionel Jospin, warned the US yesterday not to give in to "the strong temptation of unilateralism".
Like France, Mr Patten singled out Mr Bush's branding of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as "an axis of evil".
"I find it hard to believe that's a thought-through policy," he says, adding that the phrase was deeply "unhelpful".
EU officials concede that the US and Europe could now be on a collision course over Iran, with the EU determined to forge a trade and cooperation agreement with Tehran just as Washington has deemed it an "evil" sponsor of terror.
Mr Patten insists that the European policy of "constructive engagement" with Iranian moderates and North Korea is much more likely to bring results than a US policy which so far consists of "more rhetoric than substance".
The commissioner's remarks represent the most public statement yet of what has become a growing sense of alarm in Europe's capitals at the increasingly belligerent tone adopted by Washington.
One senior EU official said: "It is humiliating and demeaning if we feel we have to go and get our homework marked by Dick Cheney and Condi Rice. We've got to stop thinking that the only policy we can have is one that doesn't get vetoed by the United States."
Publicly, the British government continues to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Mr Bush. But senior Labour figures admit they are deeply troubled by the newly aggressive thrust of US thinking - especially the hints that America could widen the war against terrorism to a clutch of new countries. They are likely to seize on Mr Patten's remarks as they press their case with Tony Blair.
In the interview the former Conservative party chairman delivers a devastatingly comprehensive critique of US strategy. He upbraids Washington for showing much more interest in stamping out terrorism than in tackling terror's root causes.
"When you're addressing that agenda, frankly, smart bombs have their place but smart development assistance seems to me even more significant," he said.
That view is widely held in Europe, typified by Mr Blair's much-quoted "heal the world" speech last year in Brighton. But it barely gets a hearing in today's Washington, Mr Patten concedes, especially since the dramatic success of the US-led military operation in Afghanistan. That has fed a new US mood of "intense triumphalism", according to EU officials, with secretary of state Colin Powell regarded as "a lone voice of reason".
Mr Bush's "axis of evil" speech appears to have been the last straw for EU policymakers. In today's interview, Mr Patten offers withering condemnation of the phrase.
Besides balking at the word "evil", he disputes whether the three countries named are an axis at all, insisting there is no evidence that they are working together on weapons of mass destruction. But Mr Patten also expresses great irritation with Washington for undermining long-established EU efforts to reach out to Tehran and Pyongyang.
"There is more to be said for trying to engage and to draw these societies into the international community than to cut them off," he says.
But Mr Patten's greatest ire is reserved for America's go-it-alone approach to international relations. "However mighty you are, even if you're the greatest superpower in the world, you cannot do it all on your own."
He calls on Europe's 15 member states to put aside their traditional wariness of angering the US and to speak up, forging an international stance of their own on issues ranging from the Middle East to global warming.
---
*** Democracy for a Change ***
* is an initiative based on the premise that 'Democracy' ('demos'=people and 'kratia'=power) is our highest civic governance ideal;
* asserts that we thus currently live, not in a Democracy, but in a Plutocracy, that is, governance by the wealthy;
* asserts that the present method of funding political parties and the political process, corrupts the ways the rules are made which affect our daily lives;
* asserts that: "When the electorate pay the piper, only then will they be able to call the legislative tune, and make Democracy a reality.";
* urges electors to press their elected representatives to legislate immediately the funding of the political process, only from individual registered voters (and then up to a low limit), to be matched by the legislature, with absolutely no funding from any other source - corporate business, or corporate union, or any other special interests;
* asserts that Democracy extends beyond the mere giving away of one's power every few years to persons whose opinions and decisions are governed by financial forces unaccountable to the electorate. Thus, Citizens' Vetoes on all existing legislation; Referendum on any proposed legislation; and Recall of any and all officials, elected or otherwise,who are breaking the law, should be the normal democratic state of governance;
* asserts that 'Democracy' only exists when the people have full recall powers of both legislation and officials.
- David J. Weston, Democracy for a Change.
For further info contact <dweston@cqm.co.uk>
2.
From: http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm
Bush Counts On War Without End
by Thomas Walkom
Toronto Star
February 05, 2002
The war against terrorism is a brilliant construct. It may not have been started by George W. Bush, but it certainly works to his advantage.
It has provided oomph to the sagging U.S. economy and a new raison d'etre for the alliance of politicos, defence contractors and security specialists who make up what former U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower christened the military-industrial complex.
What makes this war so superior, in political terms, is its vagueness. Since the terrorist, by definition, can be anyone the man in the next apartment, the person lurking on the subway platform we can never be sure who the enemy is. More important, we can never know when we've won. As a result, this war has the capacity to go on forever. It will be called off only when those in charge choose to do so. And why would they?
Thanks to the war, Bush has been transformed from a figure of fun into a national icon. Before Sept. 11, the U.S. president was viewed as a slightly moronic frat boy mocked even on prime-time television. The very legitimacy of his election was in question.
Now the frat boy is a war president, every patriotic American's commander-in-chief. Those who mock Bush now -- those who even dare criticize him -- do so at their peril.
For Bush, an end to the war against terrorism could spell political disaster. Look what happened to his father. George Bush Sr. was an immensely popular president when he was waging war against Iraq. But as soon as the fighting stopped, his ratings tumbled. Without war to focus their attention, Americans remembered why they disliked the elder Bush and threw him out of the White House.
By contrast, Bush Jr. has discovered the perfect way to avoid his father's fate, war without end. The war against terror can go on indefinitely because, unlike the Gulf War, or World War II or even the Cold War, it involves no measurable criteria of success.
Is Afghanistan defeated and its former Taliban government in chains? No matter, says U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Afghanistan is small potatoes, the Taliban mere tools. The terrorists, we are told, live on. They are everywhere, part of the international conspiracy known as Al Qaeda.
Yet even Al Qaeda escapes definition. Each time its alleged leaders are identified, we are warned that more are hiding in the shadows. And whenever the world's attention flags, a new discovery is made. A notebook found in a bombed-out house in Kabul proves that Al Qaeda is planning a nuclear attack. A videotape found in Singapore demonstrates that Al Qaeda is preparing another terror bombing.
Luckily for us, these fanatic anti-modernists make plenty of videos. They video each other plotting, video attack plans, video their dinner parties, then leave the videos lying about.
Luckily also, they write down many of their schemes in English. In November, for instance, journalists searching through a Kabul home said to be an Al Qaeda training centre found hand-printed plans, in English, on how to manufacture a multi-million-dollar, homemade stealth bomber.
Other reporters found jars of "foul smelling liquids" and notebooks filled with equations, all of which were taken as evidence of an Al Qaeda germ warfare factory.
Even when the New York Times reported that the most well-publicized find plans for the manufacture of a homemade nuclear bomb had probably been cribbed from a hoax website, the thunder of fear and condemnation continued.
Not since novelist Ian Fleming invented SPECTRE, the shadowy force of evil dedicated to eliminating 007 agent James Bond, has the world's imagination been seized in quite the same way. Is there a rebellion in the Philippines? Al Qaeda is responsible. A plot in Malaysia? Al Qaeda again.
Like Fleming's SPECTRE, Al Qaeda has access to unlimited funds. Its leaders, like the villains of Bond movies, live in vast underground complexes staffed by fanatical minions.
Even the occasional intervention of reality has no effect. In Afghanistan, the underground complexes turn out to be cramped, primitive caves rather than sumptuous subterranean cities. No matter. All it proves is that the real Al Qaeda headquarters are somewhere else perhaps Yemen or Somalia.
In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the enemy of the state is personified in Emmanuel Goldstein. Goldstein is the Osama bin Laden figure of the novel, an elusive figure who is never seen, never captured but believed by all patriotic citizens of Oceania (Orwell's fictitious state, an amalgamation of North America and Europe) to be an evil genius bent on their destruction.
Since Goldstein is never captured, Oceania's battle against him must never cease. Sometime it wages war on one country said to be aiding the nefarious Goldstein, sometimes on another. The battleground may change but the war never ends. It cannot. The government's very existence depends upon it.
3.
From: http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_feb3.html
February 3, 2002
Bush and Sharon agree on policy
By ERIC MARGOLIS
Contributing Foreign Editor
When President George Bush called for a "crusade" against terrorism last fall, flustered aides quickly claimed he had misspoken and really didn't mean to invoke the medieval Christian invasions of Muslim nations.
But in his bellicose state of the union speech last week, evangelical Christian George Bush left no doubt that a crusade was exactly what he had meant. Better a crusade than facing the spreading Enron scandal or explaining away a looming deficit brought on by reckless spending.
Or explaining the mess made by the administration in Afghanistan: spreading chaos and warfare; Russia's takeover of the north; full force resumption of heroin exports to the U.S. thanks to the overthrow of Taliban; 5,000-plus civilians killed by punitive U.S. bombing; murder or inhumane treatment of captured enemy fighters; and, of course, the escape of Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida leadership.
No matter. Afghanistan, trumpets the White House, was a great military victory that will be duplicated against other Muslim malefactors who resist America's will.
Bush proclaimed in Churchillian tones that an 'axis of evil' composed of 'terrorist nations' Iraq, Iran, and North Korea threatened the U.S. and the world. This silly, simplistic reduction of complex foreign policy issues into comic book terms, and Bush's threats of more military action around the world, made good political theatre in the U.S., where war fever has been stoked to fever pitch by the White House and the all too accommodating American media.
Interestingly, the most-wanted on America's new hit list -- Iraq, Iran, and North Korea -- just happen to also be top enemies of Israel. (North Korea supplies missile components and technology to Israel's Arab foes and Pakistan.)
A near unanimity of policy and views has developed between the Bush administration's super-hawks and Israel's hard right Likud government led by Ariel Sharon. Both are intent on liquidating any Muslims who resist, both have declared war on the PLO and its chief, Yasser Arafat, both view resistance by Muslims as "terrorism," and both disregard international law and UN resolutions.
In short, Gen. Sharon's iron-fisted policies have become those of George Bush. Bush's speech made it disturbingly clear that the U.S. has become the enemy of the Muslim world. Muslim nations must either bow to American diktat or be deemed hostile.
White House claims that Iran is a mortal danger to the U.S. because: a) it supports Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, and b) is trying to develop limited strategic weapons. This shows how disconnected from reality the administration has become, and how much its policies are being shaped by parties who do not always place America's interests first.
Guerrilla war
Hezbollah waged a long, dirty guerrilla war against Israel's long occupation of southern Lebanon. Israel and its media supporters branded Hezbollah "terrorists." But most nations regarded Hezbollah as a legitimate national resistance movement fighting to free Lebanon from Israeli occupation, which was repeatedly ruled illegal by the UN and in violation of international law.
Iran helped arm and finance Hezbollah, whose guerrillas were to Iran what the Nicaraguan Contras and Afghan "freedom fighters" were to America. To brand Iran a "terrorist state" because of its support of a legitimate resistance movement is mendacious and Orwellian.
Iran has opposed U.S. hegemony in the Mideast, sometimes by covert operations. But bombings of U.S. military bases, long blamed on Iran, were done by the al-Qaida group. Before damning Iran, look at America's own record.
During WWII, the U.S., Britain, and the USSR invaded Iran, an independent nation. In 1953, the U.S. and Britain overthrew Iran's government when it sought to gain control of its own oil resources. The U.S. put Shah Mohammed Pahlavi on the throne and kept his outrageously corrupt, kleptomaniac regime in power through the army and the dreaded U.S. and Israel-trained secret police, SAVAK, which tortured and killed tens of thousands of Iranians.
Funding Iraqi military
After the Shah was overthrown by the 1979 Iranian revolution, the U.S. sent Iraq's Saddam Hussein to invade Iran and crush its Islamic government. The U.S. secretly supplied Iraq with money, arms, intelligence, and chemical and biological weapons. The U.S. shot down an Iranian civilian airliner and waged a naval war against Iran in the Gulf. Iraq's invasion cost Iran 250,000 - 500,000 dead.
The U.S. repeatedly sought to overthrow the Iranian government, even financing the terrorist Mujihadin-i-Khalq organization, which assassinated much of Iran's leadership with bombs.
Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons, but is developing medium-ranged missiles that may reach Israel. Such weapons, claims Iran, are for self-defense, to counter Israel's nuclear/bioware arsenal. Israel has openly threatened Iran with nuclear attack. If Iran's missile and strategic weapons program is "terrorism," then Pakistan, India, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Taiwan, South Korea, Turkey, and many other nations are equally guilty.
Instead of threatening war against Iran, a nation of 68 million, the U.S. should be pressing all Mideast nations -- including Israel -- to scrap their weapons of mass destruction and work for peace in Palestine. The terrible 9/11 attacks were the result of America's five decades of policy blunders in the Mideast. The U.S. does not need any more enemies.
---
In the Feb 9 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald there was an article with the heading:
CHENEY said Hang Arafat
The Israeli Defence Minister says the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, told him Israel could "hang" Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as far as he was concerned, an Israeli newspaper reported yesterday. "The Vice-President told me: "As far as I am concerned, you can even hang him," Binyamin Ben Eliezer told Yediot Aharonot, adding that he heards similar comments from advisers of the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. There was no response from the US to the claim. The US National Security Adviser, Condoleeza Rice, and Mr Cheney told him in Washington on Thursday that talking to Arafat was "a waste of time," and the vice-president was the most extreme on this point, Mr. Ben Eliezer told a press conference in the US Capital.
THIS IS *REALLY* IMPORTANT!
Press Release announcing a World Treaty Banning Space Based Weapons
More details at http://www.peaceinspace.com
NEW SPACE PARADIGM
U.S. HOUSE AND SENATE LEGISLATION and WORLD TREATY BANNING SPACE-BASED WEAPONS TO BE SIGNED in 2002
The purpose of H.R. 3616 Space Preservation Act, 2002 introduced by Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a forthcoming Senate Bill and of the compatible World Treaty Banning Space-based Weapons is: “To preserve the cooperative, peaceful uses of space for the benefit of all humankind by permanently prohibiting the basing of weapons in space.”
"The U.S. legislation requires the U.S. President “to take action to adopt and implement a world treaty banning space-based weapons.” The WORLD treaty replaces the ABM Treaty that President Bush announced the U.S. would unilaterally break in June. This legislation and World Treaty to ban space-based weapons in 2002, beg our attention at this one moment in history, BEFORE weapons are placed in space. The benefits are unlimited, including a world cooperative space program that replaces space-based weapons, the war industry and war mindset.
This new national and world law brings humanity into a Space Age paradigm of real solutions to urgent human (health, education, poverty and suffering…war and terrorism) and environmental (energy, global warming, pollution…) problems. It stimulates a new space economy in the absence of fear with a security system and applications of space technology to enhance communication and earth observation. We replace and eliminate dangerous technologies and transform the war industry into a space industry that recognizes who we are in these bodies and in the Universe. We create peace on earth through peace in our sacred space.
The U.S. legislation and World Treaty Banning Space-based Weapons provide:
- a new framework for a space stimulus plan;
- a sustainable national and world economy, including a security system based on building world cooperative and inexorably linked civil, commercial and military space development and exploration programs;
- a permanent ban on space-based weapons;
- the creation of a space peacekeeping agency to verify and enforce the ban;
- compatible wording with the U.S. legislation; UN space/peace treaties and international treaty proposals.
The U.S. legislation and World Treaty Banning Space-based Weapons are based on:
- world law related to peaceful uses of outer space including the 1967 Outer Space Treaty;
- Universal laws and principals;
- most recent U.N. General Assembly resolutions preventing an arms race in space.
Passing this legislation and World Treaty in 2002 is vital, to cap the arms race. It reduces and eliminates ground-based weapons that damage or destroy objects or people in space, and reduces, with eventual elimination, dangerous weapons and technologies on earth.
Further testing of missile defense space-based weapons must be halted, BEFORE President Bush breaks the ABM Treaty, and BEFORE an unstoppable momentum of vested interests deploy them under the guise of “MERELY testing.”
December 13, 2001, Bush announced the U.S. would unilaterally abrogate the ABM Treaty in June, thus accelerating the space-based weapons program amid atmosphere of fear and terrorism. Weaponization of space increases global instability and probable global warfare with weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons, biological, chemical, or other weapons, sustaining suffering, poverty, environmental damage and death of more and more species including humans.
Space-based weapons are dangerous, destabilizing, too costly ($148 billion so far), and do not protect anyone or anything from terrorists. This legislation and treaty will cap the arms race forever and allow space R&D and exploration programs to continue with a non-space-based weapons mandate and commitment to direct Space Age technology, products and services to solve problems on earth.
This is the new space paradigm, a new way of thinking which unleashes minds to create safe and clean alternative Space Age technologies, products, and services to stimulate the economy including more jobs and training programs to directly solve urgent humanitarian problems. World cooperative space R&D and exploration programs potentialize technology and information services to provide strong national and global security systems based on modernizing ground forces, including enhanced world cooperative communication, information sharing and alternative technology application. The WORLD Treaty halts worldwide R&D, testing, production, manufacturing and deployment of ALL space-based weapons as does the U.S. legislation. A multitude of vital benefits and opportunities are then available to everyone including a united humanity.
Despite decades of effort to halt it, the largest R&D program in history now exists and it is mandated to weaponize space above us. Removing that mandate by signing into U.S. national and world law the ban on space-based weapons will not stop ground-based weapons systems or basic R&D programs, however it does stop R&D, testing, production, manufacturing and deployment intended for space-based weaponry. This allows reduction and eventual elimination of dangerous and costly ground-based systems, their replacement and alternatives.
This ban actually frees minds in the military industrial/business, intelligence, lab university complex to create technologies, products and services we need in the Space Age in which we live. This ban will cause “Second Order Change” that allows us to enter into a new space paradigm in which we live in peace and harmony on earth and in space.
With intent and commitment the space-based weapons industry is capable of transforming into a world cooperative military, civil and commercial space industry without weapons in space. The war and weapons economy are transformed into a Space Age economy. Veils of secrecy lift. Resources, including alternative energy and clean propulsion systems, pollution free technologies, and means of caring for all life on earth are supported so they can and do emerge. The truth sets us all free.
ICIS educates individuals, groups, decision makers and the collective consciousness about pending US legislation and World Treaty, to halt the mandate to weaponize space and to outlaw space-based weapons. Let’s envision what IS and WILL BE in space with benefits flowing to all on earth. See the military role changing in space as they discover technology and information services to solve earthbound problems. Presently the militaries of the world depend on surveillance, reconnaissance, navigation and communication satellites, radar and sensors to enhance intelligence and because they use them as “force multipliers’ in war and defensive situations. The militaries can apply these same technologies to help humans, animals and our environment while continuing to work on their non-space based weapon systems with corporations and businesses in the new space paradigm. This is a first step to change the way we think on earth.
We can have space-based battle-stations and weapons pointed down our throats, designed to control the earth and space from space, or we can have space craft, space-based habitats, hospitals, schools and universities, laboratories and industries, hotels and resorts, farms, elevators, and places in space where future generations can live, work and explore.
Imagine how much there is to learn about healing techniques from designing a space-based hospital in zero gravity. Imagine visiting a space-based hotel and resort. Space tourism has begun. Imagine new technologies released that are non-polluting when the collective consciousness awakens to space alternatives. As humans evolve into space with a new collective consciousness and positive intent, we learn more about ourselves in these bodies and about who we are in the universes. What do you choose?
Weaponization or Co-operation in Space.
It is our RESPONSIBILITY to globally communicate the new Space Age paradigm and new thinking; the US legislation and compatible World Treaty and related benefits and to unite as One to ensure the World Treaty to Ban Space Based Weapons is signed.
The legislation H.R. 3616 has been introduced and the Senate version will soon follow. The compatible sister companion World Treaty Banning Space-based Weapons will soon be officially introduced and signed by nation-state leaders. The ICIS 90-Day Plan of Action including education, potential, benefits and escalating support for this ban is to be announced in February. A globally televised World Interactive Treaty Signing (WITS) event is scheduled to take place in May.
Timing is of the essence. We have only a few months before the ABM Treaty is scheduled to be abrogated in June. People are calling, faxing congress members and world leaders (free via http://www.peaceinspace.com website) and writing and calling members of US congress and administration, and nation-state/world leaders, to request support and signatures. Leaders of Canada, Russia, and China have publicly stated they are ready to ban space-based weapons. People are contacting leaders to request they introduce and sign the World Treaty and invite all other leaders to do the same.
ICIS FAQ ~ Frequently Asked Questions (see website) provides continual updates of sample letters and addresses.
Keeping weapons out of space is one of the most important and perhaps the most important contribution our generation can make, to end suffering of all life forms on our planet and for the children. Peace on earth begins with us. You, me and every other human being, hold the key to Space and Peace on Earth...
4.
THIS IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE AS TO WHY A WORLD TREATY BANNING SPACE-BASED WEAPONS IS SO URGENTLY NEEDED
The Future of Warfare -- Or "Single Dumbest" Bush Idea? (29 August 2001)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/WAT108A.html
The U.S. military is drawing up plans for a space bomber that could drop precision bombs from a height of more than 100 kilometres while flying 15 times faster than conventional bombers. Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, last month ordered the Pentagon to look into developing a spacecraft that "would be valuable for conducting rapid global strikes," according to a planning document issued under his name and obtained by The Los Angeles Times. The bomber would blast off like a long-range missile and travel over its targets at 15 times the speed and 10 times the altitude of current heavy bombers. The proposed vehicles would be flying so high and fast they would not even need explosives in their bombs. The projectiles would be able to crash through concrete bunkers and into underground missile silos like meteorites through speed and weight alone. The bomber would be able to strike targets on the other side of the world within minutes and return to its base within an hour-and-a-half. It would also be out of reach of conventional air defence systems.
CLIP
However, the craft could set off a new arms race in the stratosphere and has already drawn criticism as an example of the increasing militarization of space. Tom Daschle, the Democratic Senate leader, has called the plan "the single dumbest thing I've heard from this administration." European and Asian nations already nervous about the United States's growing lead in military hardware would see the craft as an unsettling new example and raise new questions about American "hegemonism," he predicted. The Bush administration's plans for military uses of space have been under intense scrutiny because of previous hints about taking a more assertive approach in this area. The proposed craft could easily be adapted to defend U.S. satellites or strike those of enemies, analysts say.
CLIP
