The United States is seeking to make space a new arena of war—but you wouldn't know that from mainstream media that limit coverage to U.S. plans for "missile defense." The wider space military program is laid out in publicly available documents—easily accessible to media—such as the recent report of the "Space Commission" chaired by new U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "In the coming period the U.S. will conduct operations to, from, in and through space in support of its national interests both on the earth and in space," the 13-member panel declared in its January 2001 report. It urged that [...]
Search Results for: Michelle Ciarrocca
Nov
01
2000
Holes in the Coverage
What's left out of reporting on missile defense
Even as skepticism over the proposed $60 billion national missile defense (NMD) system emerges in the headlines, the general assumption continues to be that sooner or later missile defenses will work. Just days after President Clinton's decision to defer a decision on deployment to the next administration, the New York Times (9/4/00) was quick to promote theater missile defenses, or what they called "lesser-known antimissile weapons." The article claims that the theater systems have been "extensively tested," but fails to mention the results of those tests, which have been neither extensive nor successful. The PAC-3 system has achieved three intercepts [...]
