Pointless may be the wrong word since the point of it was to give taxpayer money to defense contractors.
U.S. President Barack Obama has told east European states he is backing away from plans for an anti-missile shield there, in a move that may ease Russian-U.S. ties but fuel fears of resurgent Kremlin influence.
Russia said it would welcome abandonment of the plans, which have been a major source of Russian-U.S. tensions.
Poland said Obama would announce a final decision later on Thursday (1400 GMT) on a project that has raised the prospect of multi-billion dollar contracts for U.S. defense giants.
The shield, involving interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar complex in the Czech republic, was promoted by Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush to defend against any missile launches from “rogue” states such as Iran and North Korea.
Who needs a shield if you use preemptive strikes?
Cue the Dick Cheney on Fox…
Maybe the reality that the US is broke and can’t afford it, has finally sunk in.
I’m all for pulling us back, building our own defenses, and letting the EU Nations actually have to defend themselves for a change. Once that budget item hits them, they’ll not be looking nearly as successfull.
This was never intended to be a “shield” type system. Once these launching platforms are in place, either defensive or offensive missile systems can be housed in them. I’m sure that Cheney and the Zionazi/Neocons had full intention of outfitting these sites with offensive systems.
My favorite line about the Shield System?
“It’s to protect us from countries with the technology to build a nuclear bomb, but without the technology to make a suitcase to hide it in.”
President Obama is turning into another Jimmy Cater, it took the entire 1980s to rebuild our military after that dumbass gutted it, and lookie here Obama is doing the exact same thing.
Russia is Rattling its sabres and what does our Presidnet do backs down and runs and hides and apologizes for possibly making them unhappy
you liberals are the biggest bunch of fuking idiots and you never learn from your mistakes
Now I’m confused as heck by this article.
The article says this is enhancement and revision of the old Bush Plan. What do you bet is that it’s just changing Republican leaning contractor and Democrat leaning contractors?
We should pull back from having permanent military bases in Europe and East Asia too.
If we have to fight a war let’s do it on our own soil!
There is nothing the world would appreciate more than having the US protect only it’s own borders. But you can’t stop there, they’ll have to stop proping up dictators that favour US foreign policy too. I gotta stop dreaming, that’ll never happen, the real powers that be will never allow it. Keeping the third world down is top priority for them. In a world of competing nations, some have less so that others have more. I’m looking forward to the day that the US becomes a third world nation. The way things are going it won’t be long now.
#8 Pmitchell, thanks for providing the raving wingnut perspective on the situation.
#7 Great line! Hey Pmitchell, read that line and ponder, grasshopper… 🙂
Since Obama has kept us safer in his starting days as President, than Bush did, there is no necessity for this boondoggle that Bush wanted.
How does it help America’s image to break your word to Poland and the Czech Republic? They’ve also hurt Honduras, and Colombia so far.
If this results in Russian support for destroying Iran, it’s worth it. But the Russians know Obama is a weak man, who will give them what they want.
#16 Specially those lefty caviar-eating Europeans. Nothing more smug in this world than that type.
Coming from a cluelessly smug wingnut, that’s pretty darn funny. 🙂
You can cry weakness all you want, but the bottom line is that it didnt work, and wasn’t likely to.
Why pick a fight with Russia over a boondoggle?
#17 Wingnuts… so obsessed about appearing “strong”, so weak in reality. Dubya was obssessed about looking “strong” and look what we have. Because of our bogus war in Iraq, Iran is looking stronger than ever. Dubya’s “strength” obsession has left us a MUCH WEAKER NATION, ya friggin’ idiots.
Obama adminisitration picked very bad date to let Poland down Sept 17 marks 70th anniversary of Russian backstabbing attack.
#16 Pedro, You really ought to stop interpreting the world through political terms. Left, right, center, it makes no difference – just three different lies to explain how you’re screwed. You really ought to get out more, your cultural generalizations, make you sound like you’ve never ventured far from the place you were born.
#20, how about looking honest? Or not abandoning a missile defense shield on the 70th anniversary of a country’s invasion?
At least they are offering a bit of a difference between the two parties.
I wonder if this is in part, a token effort meant to passify (or squelch) the Czech President during the upcoming climate change talks in Copenhagen.
He has openly stated his opinion that countries supporting climate change only interests are in business and profit. (which is quite obvious, tbh)
*shrug*
-s
>“It’s to protect us from countries with the technology to build a nuclear bomb, but without the technology to make a suitcase to hide it in.”
So has the US or any other countries used missiles? Why didn’t they just use a suitcase?
Why didn’t Harry Truman do that?
Phydeau if you a single brain cell working you would know there is no such thing as a true suitcase nuke the smallest either of the super powers ever got them was to about the size of a large steamer trunk. Iran has no chance of building one that small for years their nukes will be very rudimentary and large but when they have a missile that can carry 2000lb war head it doesn’t matter and a nut case like their leader it is more likely to happen every day.
Also this “boondoggle” all you stupid moronic libs speak of is operational now with a 100% kill rate for over 2 years with about a dozen successful kills under its belt.
I also guess you stupid ignorant libs think Reagan dint win the cold war with his military build up , it was Jimmy Carters weakness that made those evil Soviets fall apart
#27 Pmitchell, let me explain something to your feeble little wingnut brain. Obviously there are no nukes small enough to fit into a suitcase. But the point of that joke is, you don’t need a missile to deliver a bomb. You can put it in a truck and drive it to the Washington Monument, or put it on a ship and sail it right up to Manhattan. Any country that can obtain a nuke DOESN’T NEED A ROCKET to blow it up in America somewhere. OK? You got that thru your thick skull now?
I know you wingnuts don’t believe in science, so I won’t bother pointing out all the scientific evidence that “missile shields” don’t work.
Pmitchell…IIRC, the collapse of the USSR was largely economic, their quest to keep up with us hastened the inevitable and Reagan tripled the deficit just for that? I’m asking, because they sure didn’t collapse because we beat them in a war.
Geeeee… what a concept… canceling weapons systems that don’t work or cause more troubles than they solve… what’s next… solve the fleecing of American people by health insurance companies?
In this case the system being canceled neither works and also causes extra trouble… a double whammy of stupidity.
Remember the Gulf War, when Saddam was firing off all those Scuds and we were proclaiming that we were shooting them all down? That turned out to be a big lie, with maybe 2 incomings ‘influenced’ by the defensive ‘Patriot’ system. Thus stuff just does not work under combat conditions.
Systems like this sometimes work under extremely well choreographed test conditions, when you know when, where and what the target exactly looks like. There has never been a test where the defensive side was given a window of several days of possible launch and the aggressive side did not have to disclose either source or flight parameters.
From a geopolitical perspective, what this really amounted to was basing American ballistic capable missiles in Poland, and not expecting Russia to react… any conservative here ever hear the story of what happened when the Russians tried to do something similar in Cuba? Some people never learn from history.
Pmitchell –
Sorry to have to correct you YET AGAIN.
The smallest nuclear weapon the US produced was the “Davy Crockett” – a recoilless rifle round. It weighed about 51 pounds, was 16 inches long and 11 inches in diameter. It produced a variable yield of up to 1 kiloton.
It fits in a checkable suitcase in an airplane, although you have to pay extra for being over 50 pounds.
“if you [had] a single brain cell working you would know … [insert obscure piece of information here]
I love these types of arguments.
#31 Oh how cute… pedro’s doing that wingnut thing of pretending he never really liked Dubya. That’s cute — spineless, cowardly, but cute.
#4, I’m all for pulling us back, building our own defenses, and letting the EU Nations actually have to defend themselves for a change. Once that budget item hits them, they’ll not be looking nearly as successfull.
BINGO!