Australia to participate in US missile defence program

"John Ewing" none@needed wrote in message
u...


Well, even if I totally disagreed with his assessment I see more value in
debating the issue than a moronic personal attack.

I am still waiting for Howard to say 'no' just once to a Bush proposal.
And
I am not holding my breath.

and what would that achieve?

Bush and Howard are both conservatives, in general terms they believe in the
same things.

Should Howard tell Bush to get stuffed just so people who haven't thought
the subject through, are placated?

Perhaps Cardinal Pell should tell the Pope to FOAD on the issue of gay
marriges on the same basis?

"L'acrobat" wrote in message
...

"John Ewing" none@needed wrote in message
u...


Well, even if I totally disagreed with his assessment I see more value
in
debating the issue than a moronic personal attack.

I am still waiting for Howard to say 'no' just once to a Bush proposal.
And
I am not holding my breath.

and what would that achieve?

Bush and Howard are both conservatives, in general terms they believe in
the
same things.

I'd have to say your statement is generally true!

Should Howard tell Bush to get stuffed just so people who haven't thought
the subject through, are placated?

No - you've lost me with that one. I just believe Howard should not feel
obligated to follow every proposal put forward by the US. Perhaps you are
more confident than me that Howard has always placed Australia's interests
ahead of keeping the US on side. Missile defence as an effective strategy
has been challenged by more brilliant minds than yours or mine. Be
interesting to know whose technical advice Mr Howard sought? Or did the US
conveniently provide that for us as well.

Perhaps Cardinal Pell should tell the Pope to FOAD on the issue of gay
marriges on the same basis?

By all means - if that suits your argument. I certainly wouldn't look to
the church for examples of moral leadership or freedom of speech. Never had
a good record for tolerance of other people's views.

Cheers,
John

i think the whole missile defence thing is a crock

theres not the slightest bit of evidence it'd work

besides

seems like its something you need to rely on much better intelligence to see
know when/where a missile might actually be launched to get your assets in
place to shoot it down.


the money wasted on this white elephant would be better spent on either
something like a couple of airbus multirole tanker transports to support our
strategic strike force of f111s or a couple of recon sattelites to get some
independent sattelite capability

besides

we've got our own nuclear reactor, and soon to get a new one.

ANSTO, the australian nuclear science and technology organisation employs
about 150 scientists. they dont build bombs, but they DO do research into
the nuclear bomb designs of foriegn countries.

We have a network of seismic stations around australia that monitor the
global test ban treaty.

Any bombs that go off anywhere around the world register on those stations
equipment. - Our scientists at ANSTO learn a great deal about the bombs
design, yeild etc from those signatures.

we could easily (from a technical/engineering) point of view go nuclear if
we so desired. - politically however we might find it difficult
internationally.

Lesson is if anyone drops a bomb on us, and we know who it is, we could sure
as hell drop a couple back - quite easily.

and im sure that we could "out produce" some of these threshold states.

and we've got the nuclear capable plane to do it.
the f111

point is however ....

you need the range
and intelligence

multirole tanker
(dont expect the yanks to lend us one if we we gonna use it on a nuke
mission because someone exploded a bomb in sydney harbour)
sattelite imagery
(dont expect them or anyone else to provide us with up to date intel either)





missile defence is an absolute waste of taxpayer monies imho



its a typically ammerhicun approach of trying to solve a problem, without
bothering to remove the problem in the first intance.

by the way ....
read in the news today
germanys selling nuclear reactors to china ....