I'll confess that I have mixed feelings about this. Like Doug, I feel that the President's number one job is to ensure that there is an adequate national defense, and that it is a good idea to advance the technology of defense whenever we have the opportunity to do so. This isn't a question that can be answered with a party game about "where would you spend your dollar?"; it's an important priority, notwithstanding the fact that we would all prefer to spend money on pretty, happy things rather than on the implements of war. I also agree that the 1972 ABM treaty is outdated, and that our military needs to move beyond the age-old trap of "fighting the last war" and update both its weaponry and its strategic thinking.

The arguments against missile defense seem curious to me. On the one hand, it'll never work; on the other hand, it will allow us to scrap the old "mutual assured destruction" doctrine and engage in nuclear blackmail. I don't see how both can be true. If the Russians and Chinese are really scared about this, it must be because they are more confident in the prospects of success than many of our domestic critics are.

No, a single successful test (under tightly controlled conditions) does not equate to a successful defense system; Doug's initial posting was more confident than the circumstances warranted. By the same token, we should not assume that a new technology is doomed to failure just because we haven't completed the development process. We also should not be so naive as to think that anyone could rely on this as their only line of defense against nuclear weapons -- and to be fair, I don't think the President, Secretary Rumsfeld, Doug, or anyone else ever suggested that we should.

However, I do think that both Reagan and Bush fell into the same trap of pushing for public acceptance of a missile defense program before any of us had much to go on; contrast that with the secrecy of the Manhattan Project, which we did not announce until we had accomplished our goal. They also neglected the essential diplomatic work that should have preceded their policy announcements, thereby hardening international opposition before they had anything to counter it with. Reagan put the cart before the horse when he announced his SDI intentions in the mid-1980's, and Bush has repeated his mistake.

No clear position on this one, but I just wanted to make a few points that I thought should be considered. I'll continue to follow this discussion with interest.