June 20, 2006
Reporting Fiction
Report: U.S. activates missile defense system
North Korea seems headed 'towards a launch'
Tuesday, June 20, 2006; Posted: 2:50 p.m. EDT (18:50 GMT)
SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) -- The United States has moved its ground-based interceptor missile defense system from test mode to operational amid concerns over an expected North Korean missile launch, a U.S. defense official said Tuesday.South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday that North Korea had put its long-range Taepodong-2 missile on a launching pad, but it was unclear if the missile was fully fueled.
Meanwhile, Pyongyang said it would not be bound by a 2002 treaty prohibiting launches of ballistic missiles.
"They seem to be moving forward towards a launch, but the intelligence is not conclusive at this point," White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters traveling with President Bush to Austria aboard Air Force One.
The U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a Washington Times report that the Pentagon has activated its missile defense system, which has been in the developmental stage for years.
"It's good to be ready," the official said.
There's just one problem: it doesn't work. This has been widely reported in the news for a couple of years, but it appears that CNN didn't get the memo.
Posted by Melanie at June 20, 2006 04:13 PM | TrackBackPredictably, some conservative blogs have tried to argue that this means the administration was correct to try to pursue a Star Wars plan. In fact, this just shows that our best chance to keep North Korea from launching at all probably has passed us by. Henceforth, all our stuff has to work right 100% of the time. All their stuff only has to work right once. I'm pretty sure that Thucydides or Sun-Tzu or somebody said that getting yourself into this situation is a bad idea.
So what kind of world power do we look like if we take the shot and miss or blow up on the pad or just plain fizzle?
Not worth the shot, if you ask me.
And if we have the kick-ass system that we paid for, we shouldn't tip our hand on how it works over some punk test.
I guess the clock is running down on the W Admin (and the Bush dynasty, unless, as I suspect, there is an utterly insane George H. Bush locked up in the attic who will escape in '07 and have to be acknowledged and given some kind of job - maybe that Prez gig) so they want to get out there and be historical. But losing a nuclear war against a country that doesn't have the bomb is lame even by Republican standards.
