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twotap
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Fire When Ready
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, March 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Strategic Defense: We don't know who might pick up that 3 a.m. phone call, but 25 years ago Ronald Reagan made sure that if it's about an incoming ballistic missile, the order will be: "Shoot it down."
Speaking at a Heritage Foundation dinner last week celebrating the 25th anniversary of the beginning of what Ted Kennedy derisively called "Star Wars," Vice President Dick Cheney touched on the debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as to who is better qualified to pick up that phone in the middle of the night.
"In the ongoing political campaign, there's been discussion recently about 3 a.m. phone calls," Cheney said. "We all hope that a commander in chief never has to pick up the line and be told that a ballistic missile is headed toward the United States."
On March 23, 1983, President Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), telling the nation that the days of mutual assured destruction, or MAD, were over, and that the U.S. would be defended by the ability to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, not merely retaliate in kind.
He asked: "What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?"
Today we can. In 2004, the Bush administration deployed 10 interceptors to launch sites at Vandenberg AFB in California and Fort Greely in Alaska. More are being deployed. Aegis missile cruisers and destroyers are being added to our fleet and the fleets of allies such as Japan. By 2011 we will have 11 Aegis-capable ships in the Atlantic and 16 in the Pacific.
Last month, the Aegis missile cruiser USS Lake Erie succeeded in shooting down a dying U.S. spy satellite, the National Reconnaissance Office's NROL-21 Radarsat, before it could strike the earth with its deadly hydrazine fuel tank nearly full. It could just as easily shoot down an incoming nuclear warhead.
Vice President Cheney told the Heritage audience that President Bush had kept his promise of building a national missile defense. That defense will expand to Europe with the installation of interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic.
Former Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone ballistic, no pun intended, over the proposal and warns us of dire consequences if we proceed. When Reagan and Soviet Secretary-General Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, Gorbachev, similarly agitated, demanded we drop SDI. Reagan refused. In a few short years, the Cold War would be over. We won, they lost.
We no longer face what Reagan had labeled the "Evil Empire" on March 8, 1983, just two weeks before unveiling SDI, but we do face a resurgent Russia flush with oil revenues and a China arming to the teeth.
The vice president noted that in 1972 only nine countries had ballistic missiles. Today at least 27 countries do, including those with hostile intent and those that actively support terrorist groups.
Cheney specifically mentioned North Korea and Iran as nations that could one day strike the U.S. with a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile. He mentioned Syria's acquisition of missiles and technology from North Korea and its support of the Iranian puppet terrorist group Hezbollah, which recently rained missiles on Israeli cities.
Cheney advised that we proceed with the continued robust development and deployment of our active national missile defense in case that early morning call is about an incoming nuke. But thanks to Reagan, the next president will be able to give the order, in Cheney's words, to "blow that missile out of the sky."
Happy anniversary, Ronnie.
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© Copyright 2008 Investor's Business Daily. All Rights Reserved. |
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Fri Mar 21, 2008 9:20 am |
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Demeralda
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Yeah, right.
The only thing he managed to "fire when ready" was the air traffic controllers.
We'll all be dead before any ballistic missles are ever launched. Besides which, they should worry about the 3 am call for, oh, I don't know, some really bizarre possibility, like FLOODING IN NEW ORLEANS.
PS - they couldn't even successfully scramble the fighter jets on 9/11!! However, Cheney did manage to get his ass in a secret, bomb-proof location.
Or perhaps it depends on where the missile is headed. After all, hasn't Arizona and all those pesky illegal immigrants been a big problem? Hell with it, no one will miss it. Why waste one of OUR missiles? |
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Fri Mar 21, 2008 3:03 pm |
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twotap
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I figured you would like that one.   But the hatred whoa baby.  |
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Fri Mar 21, 2008 3:29 pm |
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Demeralda
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Sorry, it's a not-very-good attempt at sarcasm.
And yes, I took the bait. LOL |
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Fri Mar 21, 2008 3:41 pm |
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twotap
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| Did your avatar ever have any Nintendo Wiis available? |
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Fri Mar 21, 2008 3:44 pm |
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squash
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Got one last week from Sears, not JC. Didn't want to get my kids into video games but.......... I caved.
sorry OT |
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Fri Mar 21, 2008 5:17 pm |
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twotap
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| At least the Wii gets em off the couch and moving around. We bought one on Ebay just after christmas,paid $100 over retail but sure have had fun with it. We bet a quarter a hole on the golf game. At the rate im going ill have that new zo6 vette by 2056. |
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Fri Mar 21, 2008 8:46 pm |
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tricky mutha
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| And hope the phone doesn't ring between now and next Jan. 20th if Crawford's village idiot is reading "My Pet Goat" |
_________________
"Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there"- John Steinbeck |
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Fri Mar 21, 2008 8:51 pm |
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twotap
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And after the 20th no worrys since instead of the Koran all our enemies will be reading this.
And tuning in to the Rev Wright spirtual revival and "how to make whitey pay"program on sunday mornings. |
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Sat Mar 22, 2008 7:52 am |
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