Merry Christmas to all Defense Contractors
In a move surprising to no one, the Bush White House today ordered up the Missile Defense Shield. Despite the fact that it only succeeds in either rigged tests, or by pure luck, we as taxpayers, are about to fund a really really really stupid program. I would rather see the money going to folks in our society who actually need it, to the junior enlisted personnel in the military who actually need it (yes, they do live on Food Stamps and serve our country...shame on us).

Even the program's staunchest supporters acknowledged today that the Pentagon would be fielding a research-and-development program that had many kinks to work out.

For example, the radar for the system has not yet been built and the booster rockets that lift the interceptors into space are unreliable. Pentagon officials said today that they would upgrade existing radars for now and try to work out problems with the booster rockets by next fall.

So once again, we get to toss good money after bad. When Clinton killed this thing in the 90's I truly believe that he was not being "weak" on a National Security issue, he just was fiscally responsible enough to see that there were other places to spend tax money. Our school system in this country could sure use an infusion of capital from our "Education President" that would make a hell of a lot more sense than building a "missile defense" system to defend against a non-existant enemy.

Oh, and help me out here. Why do we need a Missile Defense System and this so-called Doctrine of Preemption? Why should we need a defense against a foreign government whose ass we have/will kick anyway, just because we think they are a threat for some reason (not shared with us, the public)?