National Missile Defense Bill

[Frodo]

Full Text of the National Missile Defense Bill

Official Title of Legislation:

HR 4: To declare it to be the policy of the United States to deploy a national missile defense.

Project Vote Smart's Synopsis:

Vote to pass a bill that announces official support for the policy of deploying a national missile defense system intended to defend the United States from long-range missiles.


House Passage Vote: 3/18/1999: Passed: 317-105 (Roll no. 59).

Senate Passage Vote: 5/18/1999: Passed: Unanimous Consent.

Presidential Action: 7/22/1999: Signed by President. Became Public Law #106-038.
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I thought it might be timely to post this, given Iran is on a fast track to likely developing nuclear weapons. 

[MODU]

I'd vote in favor of it.

[MasterJedi]

I'd have voted for it definitly.

[Beet]

Obviously this is a potentially important insurance policy and worth investing in for the long term, as long as more mundane anti-terrorism concerns remain well-funded, so I'd support it.

[MODU]

Frodo,

Do you think you can move your Warner banner above or below your Kramer banner?  Having them side by side requires a lot of scrolling back and forth on the screen to the read the messages.

Thanks. 

[Frodo]

Of course I'd vote 'Aye'.

Frodo,

Do you think you can move your Warner banner above or below your Kramer banner?  Having them side by side requires a lot of scrolling back and forth on the screen to the read the messages.

Thanks. 

Perhaps your computer is configured differently -on mine, the Kramer banner is situated on top of the Warner banner. 

[MODU]

Of course I'd vote 'Aye'.

Frodo,

Do you think you can move your Warner banner above or below your Kramer banner?  Having them side by side requires a lot of scrolling back and forth on the screen to the read the messages.

Thanks. 

Perhaps your computer is configured differently -on mine, the Kramer banner is situated on top of the Warner banner. 

Huh . . . now that's interesting.  *dies laughin*  Ok, in that case, I'll stick with my medication. 

[Flying Dog]

In 1999 I would have voted aye, but we have too big a deficit to afford it right now.

[Blue Rectangle]

Of course I'd vote 'Aye'.

Frodo,

Do you think you can move your Warner banner above or below your Kramer banner?  Having them side by side requires a lot of scrolling back and forth on the screen to the read the messages.

Thanks. 

Perhaps your computer is configured differently -on mine, the Kramer banner is situated on top of the Warner banner. 

I have the same problem as MODU.

And a strong "aye" for the poll question.

[A18]

One of the few legitimate functions of the federal government. I'd vote in favor of it.

[Bdub]

I would vote in favor of it.

[Citizen James]

Nay.

At that point in time (and this point as well), such a weapon system was unfeasable, and a waste of taxpayer funds.

In times of surplus, I could understand limited research - but as stands depoying a system that doesn't even work is little more than a huge pile of pork.

I would have prefered to focus funds (as I wrote my congressman well before 9/11) on better intellegence gathering and rapid deployment of special forces to better deal with the growing threat of terrorism.

After all, what good is a multi-billion dollar system which can be rendered useless by a $50,000 moving van and a little smuggling know-how.  Or a fishing boat, or a shipping container, etc...

[MasterJedi]

No, it would encourage "rogue states" to simply abandon delivery systems such as bassistic missiles (Iran's missiles could never reach anywhere near the US anyway) in favour of more unortodox means, which terrorists would be trying to develop in the first place so it won't protect against them. It would be a big waste of money. Even randomly firing cruise missiles on middle-eastern countries would be more effective...

They do that already.

And I love how people say "we can only try to protect ourselfs if there's a surplus otherwise we shouldn't try it". -_-

[Citizen James]

No, it would encourage "rogue states" to simply abandon delivery systems such as bassistic missiles (Iran's missiles could never reach anywhere near the US anyway) in favour of more unortodox means, which terrorists would be trying to develop in the first place so it won't protect against them. It would be a big waste of money. Even randomly firing cruise missiles on middle-eastern countries would be more effective...

They do that already.

And I love how people say "we can only try to protect ourselfs if there's a surplus otherwise we shouldn't try it". -_-

In times of surplus we can afford to toss a few bucks at pie-in-the-sky projects like SDI or training psychic dolphins as pure research in the hopes that we might get lucky and make some sort of breakthrough.

It's like buying a lottery ticket when you have plenty of extra money - odds are it won't come to anything useful, but who knows.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Nay. Waste of money. There's no Soviet Union around anymore to point missles at us, who what's the need?

[MN--Troy]

Nay.


After all, what good is a multi-billion dollar system which can be rendered useless by a $50,000 moving van and a little smuggling know-how.  Or a fishing boat, or a shipping container, etc...

Of course a smuggled NBC container via a moving van  renders a multi-billion dollar missle defense system useless because a muli-billion dollar missile defense system is only going to be used  to protect against missile threats.

Both threats are different and have to be dealt with different means. We have a defense to the "smuggled NBC container threat", but we have no defense against a possible missile threat.

[The Duke]

Nay.

At that point in time (and this point as well), such a weapon system was unfeasable, and a waste of taxpayer funds.

In times of surplus, I could understand limited research - but as stands depoying a system that doesn't even work is little more than a huge pile of pork.

I would have prefered to focus funds (as I wrote my congressman well before 9/11) on better intellegence gathering and rapid deployment of special forces to better deal with the growing threat of terrorism.

After all, what good is a multi-billion dollar system which can be rendered useless by a $50,000 moving van and a little smuggling know-how.  Or a fishing boat, or a shipping container, etc...

You're essentially saying that any defense system that does not neutralize all potential threats should not be pursued.  I vehemently disagree.

We have many different kinds of defenses for many types of attack and many types of situatios we may find ourself in.  Simply because there is one particular threat that missile defense doesn't render harmless doesn't mena that missile defense had ought not be pursued, since an effective missile defense system could render some threast harmless, which is all that anyone can reasonably ask of any defense system.

Green Berets can defeat militants in Iraq, but they cannot defeat a missile attack.  A missile shield can defeat a missile attack, but can do nothing against militants in Iraq.  You have to have a diverse array of defenses to deal with the diverse array of threats you will face.

[The Duke]

In times of surplus we can afford to toss a few bucks at pie-in-the-sky projects like SDI or training psychic dolphins as pure research in the hopes that we might get lucky and make some sort of breakthrough.

It's like buying a lottery ticket when you have plenty of extra money - odds are it won't come to anything useful, but who knows.

The most expensive research project that I can think of the military ever undertaking is the Manhattan Project.  We undertook it at a time when we were quite busy fighting a conventional war and at a time when we were running the largest budget deficits in history.

Was the Manhattan Project a mistake?

[David S]

I'd probably vote for a system capable of fending off a small attack from a terrorist state, but I would want evidence that such a system was actually feasible before dumping a ton of money into it. Also, I would not lose sight of the fact that  a ballistic missle is not the only means of getting a WMD into the country.

[Citizen James]

Nay.

At that point in time (and this point as well), such a weapon system was unfeasable, and a waste of taxpayer funds.

In times of surplus, I could understand limited research - but as stands depoying a system that doesn't even work is little more than a huge pile of pork.

I would have prefered to focus funds (as I wrote my congressman well before 9/11) on better intellegence gathering and rapid deployment of special forces to better deal with the growing threat of terrorism.

After all, what good is a multi-billion dollar system which can be rendered useless by a $50,000 moving van and a little smuggling know-how.  Or a fishing boat, or a shipping container, etc...

You're essentially saying that any defense system that does not neutralize all potential threats should not be pursued.  I vehemently disagree.

We have many different kinds of defenses for many types of attack and many types of situatios we may find ourself in.  Simply because there is one particular threat that missile defense doesn't render harmless doesn't mena that missile defense had ought not be pursued, since an effective missile defense system could render some threast harmless, which is all that anyone can reasonably ask of any defense system.

Green Berets can defeat militants in Iraq, but they cannot defeat a missile attack.  A missile shield can defeat a missile attack, but can do nothing against militants in Iraq.  You have to have a diverse array of defenses to deal with the diverse array of threats you will face.

Assume for a moment that our enemies are not complete idiots.  Evil fanatics to be sure, but not totally stupid. 

ICBM's are quite literally rocket science.  Nukes aren't exactly easy to make (and the though the basics of both are fairly easy to understand, the details are much more difficult)  They are also easy for a satilite possessing culture to trace back to the point of origin.  They take up a lot of space, and are not easy to hide - especially early tech multi-stage rockets.

In addition, the system rarely works even if rigged to work (any guesses as to how likely our enemies would be willing to put homing signals on their warheads were they to develop such a technology?)   Were an enemy hopelessly naive enough to design an ICBM, the odds of it self destructing due to poor craftmanship would be more likely than being intersepted by the humungous barell of pork.

Which brings up the simple question - why would an enemy use a tactic which is the least likely to be effective and the most likely to end in their eradication?

With a smuggled bomb it is always possible to deny responsibility, or hide your origin and sponsors.  It is also far easier to make and deploy by other means.   We might as well worry about our enemies developing teleporters to deliver WMDs.

If someone wanted to build offshore nets just in case al-queda decided to equip sharks with lasers on their head, people would (hopefully) laugh them out of town.   How about the idea of our enemies creating weather control devices (Katrina was pretty devistating.  The death toll isn't known yet but may be comparable to 9-11.) You could kill two birds with one stone by blaming our enemies and taking the heat off of global warming.

Of course, since some idiot cut funding to securing many of the nukes of the former soviet union, there may be a few floating around out there.   That's a source that we wouldn't be able to trace back to other potential providers of radioactive material (Iran, Pakistan, etc).

In times of surplus we can afford to toss a few bucks at pie-in-the-sky projects like SDI or training psychic dolphins as pure research in the hopes that we might get lucky and make some sort of breakthrough.

It's like buying a lottery ticket when you have plenty of extra money - odds are it won't come to anything useful, but who knows.

The most expensive research project that I can think of the military ever undertaking is the Manhattan Project.  We undertook it at a time when we were quite busy fighting a conventional war and at a time when we were running the largest budget deficits in history.

Was the Manhattan Project a mistake?

The manhattan project was designed to create an offense against which our enemies would have no defense.  SDI is an attempt to create a defense against an offence which is unavailable to our enemies and could easily circumvented by easier, less expensive, and less tracable methods even if such technologies did happen to fall in their lap.

[The Duke]

With regards to the Manhattan Project, you are apparently not clear as to the point I was trying to make.  I had a simple point, and it was not to claim that NMD and the Manhattan Project are the same thing.  The only purpose of that statement was to show that, historically, there have been times where we faced a particular enemy and faced massive budget deficits yet found a way to pursue important military research.  And that point stands.

Second, I think you've gotten a bit of tunnel vision.  It is certainly true that terrorist groups are far more likely to try and smuggle a weapon into the United States covertly than to try and built complex missile systems to deliver WMD.

There is, however, one country that is furiously working on ballistic missile systems that can reach US territory and has nuclear weapons already that they could potentially deliver with those missiles.  North Korea is that country.  If there is one reason above all to support NMD research it is North Korea.

I reiterate, this is not to say that NMD research had ought to be pursued to the detriment of other kinds of defense.  I thinkyour mention of the Nunn-Lugar Program being cut is a good example of where current policies simply fall short.  But if we did fully fund Nunn-Lugar, but did not fully fund NMD research, we would still fall short.  That's just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, in my view because you've still left a key vulnerability unattended to.