What Would Reagan Do?

[medicinal]

BTW I googled the success rate of anti missles and got my own post, so maybe I'm the expert,~LOL~>

BTW here's one opinion, 1% success.Missle Defense to Stop N. Korean & Iran Nukes. Right.
With apologies to Mark Twain, letâ??s assume you were Dubya. Then assume you were a pin head. But I repeat myself.

The subject is North Korea and Iran. As I wrote in a recent MoJo Blog, the folly of refusing to have bilateral negotiations with North Korea or sign a nonaggression pact in return for stopping Iranâ??s nuclear enrichment and future possible bomb-making is that the US cannot effectively project forces into either country in any event.

We are fighting the Iraq war with repeated call-ups of the National Guard and reserves, which were not designed for this use. The US Army, perforce, is almost broken. Now the Taliban is challenging our forces anew in Afghanistan, Our Fearless Leader is about to militarize the US-Mexican border withâ??surprise!â??more National Guardsmen, and the next Gulf Coast hurricane season is almost upon usâ??a certain, future drain on guard and reserve resources.

If we really want an Islamic bomb to worry about, look to Pakistan. Our dirty little secret here is that the Musharraf regime HAS a bomb, and is barely managing to stay one step ahead of increasingly powerful fundamentalist opponents (who are enraged about the American invasion of Iraq) and would inherit the â??Islamic Bombâ?� if Musharraf falls. Outside North Korea, Pakistan is likely to present the most immediate Islamic nuclear threat to the US than Iran, and Bush & Co. stumbles along, refusing to talk to Tehran, ignoring the causes of the Pakistan danger, acting like a person stumbling along with a brown paper bag over its head.

Minutes after my post, news arrived that Bush now wants to use missile defense to guard against future North Korean and Iranian nuclear missiles. Great. Heâ??s already deployed a system in Alaska before it worksâ??to a tune of $122 billion. Now he wants to build another one, based in Europe, against Iran and another in Asia against North Korea.


How bad is the Bush National Missile â??Defenseâ?� program? The folks in charge have lowered the bar to success in tests scheduled later this year. Only one intercepter will go up against a target using countermeasures. In other words, hereâ??s a weapon system that depends on an â??enemyâ?� who would cooperate with us by echewing decoys and other measures. And Dubya will not, cannot estimate the cost of our own anti-missile program, much less the proposed new one.


Thatâ??s not the half of it. I studied anti-missile missles as a member of the House defense approrpriations committee, and found it foolhardy.


Even if the Pentagon could deploy an anti-missile missile that was even 80 percent effective the system would be unlikely to prevent a successful enemy attack. I repeat, the system would be unlikely to prevent as successful attack.


The explanation lies in probability theory:

Letâ??s be generous and assume an 80 percent success rate for a U.S. missile interceptor matched against an incoming warhead (the equivalent of trying to hit a gnat with a b-b gun). Letâ??s further assume an enemy has launched eight ICBM warheads against us.

Probability theory teaches that the U.S. missile interceptor attacking the first warhead takes an 80 percent bite out of its (the interceptorâ??s) probability of success, leaving a 20 percent probability that the attack will succeed and the defense will fail.

The Pentagonâ??s second interceptor takes an 80 percent bite out of the second warheadâ??s probability of success.
But in terms of totally defeating the attack, 20 percent of the attack is now beyond the ability of the second interceptor to change. That is, thereâ??s a 20 percent probability that the attack has already succeeded with the first warhead, and the defense has failed in its mission of total protection.

Therefore, the second interceptor can only take an 80 percent bite out of the remaining 80 percent, which means the best you can do with two interceptors against two warheads is 80 percent of 80 percent, or 64 percent.
Run through the declining success rates to the eighth incoming warhead, and youâ??ll discover that U.S. interceptors boasting â??80 percent reliabilityâ?� will collectively achieve only a 17 percent probability of success against the eight-missile attack.

If the enemy launched 20 missiles instead of eight (more likely), the national missile defense systemâ??s probability of success falls to 1 percent - meaning there is a 99 percent chance that the attack will succeed.

Bushâ??s anti-missile missile system gives new meaning to a â??faith based initiative.â?�


UPDATE FROM TOMPAINE.COM (5/23/06): â??Meetings scheduled for Friday over Iranâ??s nuclear status between the â??EU-3â?� (Germany, France, and the United Kingdom), the U.S., Russia and China have been postponed. Itâ??s not just that the Iranians have rejected the latest European â??carrots and sticksâ?� proposal: U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton stated that the U.S. reserves the right to reject the proposal as well. The U.S. already rejects negotiating with the Iranians, either directly or by joining the Europeans at the tableâ??a course of action former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has recommended, as have European governments and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Why on earth would Iran accept a proposal when it knows the U.S. is waiting in the wings to up the ante? The EU negotiations track is completely useless unless and until the U.S. joins for face-to-face comprehensive negotiations with the Iranians, including a discussion of security guarantees

[medicinal]

So it seems I was being generous with the 25% success rate. Well there goes a hundred billion or so that could have been used to help humanity! Insanity abounds!

[Psycho4Bud]

Dude, that's on our old anti-missle system. NOT the new laser system.

LMAO! Good to see your the google expert on weapon technology....Classic!:thumbsup:

Have a good one!:s4:

[medicinal]

Dude, that's on our old anti-missle system. NOT the new laser system.
I don't think so, they called it Bushs' missle system I'm pretty sure they were talking about that one. See this laser thingy has to build up a charge and then when it fires, it takes time to build back up the charge and the other 19 missles just cruise on by. It's a total waste of money and energy that could be put to use helping humanity instead of trying to destroy it.

[JohnnyWrath]

What would Reagan do?

Reagan's policies in the "War on Drugs" emphasized imprisonment for drug offenders while cutting funding for addiction treatment. This resulted in a dramatic increase in the U.S. prison population for victimless drug crimes.

Reagan's first official act was to terminate oil price controls

he managed to push across-the-board tax cuts in 1981, although in 1982 and 1983 he signed tax increases

In order to cover the federal budget deficit, the United States borrowed heavily both domestically and abroad, and by the end of Reagan's second term the national debt held by the public rose from 26% of Gross Domestic Product in 1980 to 41% in 1989, the highest level since 1963. By 1988, the debt totaled $2.6 trillion. The country owed more to foreigners than it was owed, and the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the world's largest debtor nation.

Reagan did make some good speeches, and I givce him credit for creating a national unity we simply do NOT see anymore, but he had many faults...I left out all the countries he sold weapons to...LOL, but Reagan is a guy I liked anyway for the fact he inspired when he spoke, and he brought about a unity I wish we still had. RIP president Reagan.