Joint Missile Defence.

[Enzo]

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/01/15/missile040115

"In light of the growing threat involving the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction, we should explore extending this partnership to include co-operation in missile defence, as an appropriate response to these new threats and as a useful complement to our non-proliferation efforts," he said in the letter.

Again with the WMD‘s. Any evidence to support that statement? I know I don‘t have access to CSIS‘s information but toss me a bone eh. This is going to cost a lot of money and the proposed effectiveness is dubious.

Are we participating due to our belief in this system as vital to our defence? Or is this a function of staying in the loop, having access to the contracts that will be announced and maintaining good graces with our big cousin?

Thoughts?

 

[kaspacanada]

It is a mixture of capitalizing on the potential of the program if it does work...maintaining close North American Defence ties with the US, and potential bidding contracts. If we don‘t get involved, we risk having the to enter at any later date on entirely US terms should we ever need this service in the future (if it does work). At least that is my general take on it. We never know if there is going to be another arms race - this time including China - and we will end up having to take our place beside our neighbor out of necessity in any event of threat against them. If we don‘t, and we side with another nation, the US would view us as a potential stepping stone for invasion and thus a threat. IF we are neutral, we risk being invaded to become a stepping stone, and will become a battlefield much like Belgium in WW2 when the Germans wanted to go after France. I don‘t think that we can never be a neutral country in the event of a direct threat against the US.

 

[Infanteer]

Again with the WMD‘s. Any evidence to support that statement?

Gee, look at the Kurd....

Those things had to go somewhere, and we sure aren‘t finding them in Iraq.

 

[nULL]

yeah, i hear they‘re *this close* to converting shells containing chemical weapons into gigantic underground ICBM silos.

won‘t the missiles just be fiendishly expensive for canada, and like the Bomarc, never be used? no nation is going to attack us...its a doomsday scenario the likes are used by electronics salesmen trying to con you into getting a 50 dollar warranty on that 10 dollar battery charger you just bought.

 

[Infanteer]

1) The post above serves as an example of proliferation, wise@ss. If you think all Iraq had was 122mm rounds, I‘ve got some premium marshland in Florida to sell you.

2) Did your house burn down yesterday?

3) Kaspacanada has a good point with the political neccesity of joining the program.

 

[nULL]

political necessity yes, perhaps, but practicality...? it would be in the billions of dollars for canada (or many hundreds of millions) and there is no real NEED for it right now...no nation WOULD attack. you can‘t cover up a launch like that, the entire world would then attack you, and what self serving dictator would want to lose power, and his/her life, over something as trivial as that? countries goto war because they think they can WIN, not because they want their leader to be mentioned in worldly newspapers.

canada has survived the rise and fall of the soviet union, countless wars, and still managed to come out ok. if things do manage to escalate to the point that CANADA is a target for rogue nations, and people are launching nukes at toronto, then i‘d think a ring of missiles (that kind of work) wouldn‘t be that great of insurance.

i got the point of your last point, i just wanted to make a quip sorry. good question as to where they went though. syria? chechnya? back to the united states?

 

[Infanteer]

political necessity yes, perhaps, but practicality...? it would be in the billions of dollars for canada (or many hundreds of millions) and there is no real NEED for it right now...no nation WOULD attack. you can‘t cover up a launch like that, the entire world would then attack you, and what self serving dictator would want to lose power, and his/her life, over something as trivial as that? countries goto war because they think they can WIN, not because they want their leader to be mentioned in worldly newspapers.

I wouldn‘t consider Kim Jong Il to be the most stable of world leaders...and what if a leader (like Saddam) realizes he is going to lose and decides to go out with a bang?

canada has survived the rise and fall of the soviet union, countless wars, and still managed to come out ok. if things do manage to escalate to the point that CANADA is a target for rogue nations, and people are launching nukes at toronto, then i‘d think a ring of missiles (that kind of work) wouldn‘t be that great of insurance.

Granted, I am sure our cities will be low on the target list, but hey....

did your house burn down yesterday?

i got the point of your last point, i just wanted to make a quip sorry. good question as to where they went though. syria? chechnya? back to the united states?

I know, and I actually laughed at it too.
My money is on Syria.

 

[Korus]

I wouldn‘t consider Kim Jong Il to be the most stable of world leaders...and what if a leader (like Saddam) realizes he is going to lose and decides to go out with a bang?

Adding on to Infanteer‘s post, Saddam was launching scuds into Israel during the first Gulf War.. what if he had something more potent (he *DID* have chem and bio warheads), and the coalition HADN‘T stopped?

 

[xFusilier]

Why spend the money on something that is so easily defeated:

Take one every day ordinary sea-can

Add one ordinay everyday nuclear device

Take said sea-can to a third world port were 100 USD or less will get a sea-can on a ship without inspection.

There is probably more likelyhood that one of Friedmans "super-empowered angry individuals" is going to get his hands on a nuclear device and use it than a rogue state. States that threaten the use of nuclear weapons have a disadvantage in that they present an easy target. Individuals on the other hand. If you are concerned about nuclear weapons being used as a weapon of mass terror (arguably that is what they always have been used as), then the money is better off being spent on securing sources of fissionable material, and ensuring that Soviet Block physicists are kept in the style to which they are acustomed. But wait that won‘t work, all of those guys in the US Military Industrial Complex won‘t make any money off my plan!

Detonate said nuclear device as the ship pulls into a US port.
So we are to believe that all of these WMD‘s slipped past the notice of American surviellance into Syria.

Sorry, I just don‘t beleive the US Intellegence gathering system is that incompetent, or that they just simply weren‘t watching.

 

[Korus]

I don‘t beleive that the US Intelligence system likes to release to the public all the information it does gather.

Nor do I beleive that they see everything.

 

[Infanteer]

So we are to believe that all of these WMD‘s slipped past the notice of American surviellance into Syria.

Sorry, I just don‘t beleive the US Intellegence gathering system is that incompetent, or that they just simply weren‘t watching.

Have we found Osama bin Ladin yet? These little things are hard to find, especially without adequete personel assets on the ground (which your vaunted CIA has admitted to being short on)

A spy-satellite can read a license plate number from space, which is great if you are being attacked by a license plate.

 

[xFusilier]

Korus,

The US Administration has spent so much political capital on convincing the world that the War on Iraq was about WMD‘s, Blair is taking considerable heat in the UK with refernce to WMD‘s, that if the US had any clear proof of the existance of WMD‘s in Iraq or the traffick of WMD‘s to another state, they would have released it by now.

Infanteer,

No the US hasn‘t found Bin Laden. There‘s a big difference between 1 person and a lot more trucks than usual moving between Iraq and Syria in and around the time that the US was threatening to invade.

 

[nULL]

it just seems that the answer to rogue states can‘t be as "simple" as surrounding yourself with missiles and then acting with impunity. as a complementary defence, of course it can‘t hurt, but you‘d think spending a trillion dollars in on-the-ground-in-the-area assets NOW would be a better idea.

kind of like, spend billions of dollars to pay people to go in and root through caves to find individual X NOW, as opposed to spending billions to build a system which MIGHT work when individual X attacks years in the future.

I‘m not sure if that made any sense at all....i‘m gonna go to work now.

 

[Enzo]

Null - I hear you. It‘s a proposed system of defence. Period. There is no guarantee about its effectiveness and there are alternatives to missile defence that do not cost as much. But at the end of the day, missile defence is aimed to counter "rogue states." There are many tools in the arsenal to deal with them. As we‘ve seen in the past, it is the individual attack that carried out the most bang for the buck. To counter them requires personnel on the ground now rooting them out and the support to do so without being compromised to politics.

As for the evidence. It is sadly lacking. I‘m sorry for those Kurds in the past, but that isn‘t enough to justify such a massive program as this. And honestly, it just is an added incentive. As I see it, a few dedicated terrorists have been able to allow a government to use fear as a means to enable an agenda which is quite costly. Score another point for the terrorists.

The cost in civil freedoms and rights is becoming too high. This is not the first time that the security of a nation has taken precedent over such. It won‘t be the last. It‘s a sad time in many ways. I had more hopes for our civilization as the 90‘s neared to an end. This path cannot lead to a happy conclusion. The resumption of the international arms race, how can that be a good thing?