Weapons Of Miss Destruction

Saturday

Why attack is better than defense.

USA Today reports that the US military are firing defense missiles from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands to intercept rockets fired from Vandenburg Air Force Base in California 4,200 miles away.

The only problem is that the missiles don't bring down their targets. Some deterrent! The last successful test interception was in October 2002.

"It strikes me as a little odd that we would deploy a system that hasn't succeeded and expect that to serve a deterrent value," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., told Rumsfeld during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"I agree with that point, that there's no deterrent if something is known to not work," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld also said the best way to develop a system is to get it into the ground, work out the problems and keep testing so the capability evolves into the early stages of a missile defense. "If you didn't do anything until you could do everything, you probably wouldn't do anything," he said.

And there I was feeling relatively safe in my bed. We can't even shoot down our own damn missiles.

The tests generally occur at night, often lighting up the sky with a brilliant display of explosions, burning debris and sonic booms.An expensive firework display even by today's standards.

Kwajalein Island is off limits to unofficial visitors except as a transit point to neighboring Ebeye Island, home to about 10000 Marshallese laborers who work on Kwajalein but aren't allowed to live there. Bikini Atoll natives now live on the NE end of Kwajalein Atoll where the Environmental Protection Agency gives them annual medicals.

Bikini Atol - wasn't that the nice little island that the nuclear bomb tests made uninhabitable?

"As soon as the war ended, we located the one spot on earth that hadn't been touched by the war and blew it to hell." - Bob Hope.

The inhabitants were asked to leave temporarily so that the United States could begin testing atomic bombs for "the good of mankind and to end all world wars." Sixty years later they still haven't been able to return. You're quite right Donald - "If you didn't do anything until you could do everything, you probably wouldn't do anything." I'm sure the people of Bikini agree. Have you cleaned up their atoll or paid them their compensation yet?