[ox] Die obersten Verarscher vom Pentagon
- From: KXX4493553 aol.com
- Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:26:42 EDT
Keine Kunst, ne Rakete abzuschießen, die ein Satellitenpeilgerät mit sich
führt...
Thema: NP - Pentagon Fraud
Datum: 31.07.01 17:53:54 (MEZ) - Mitteleurop. Sommerzeit
From: fqmorris hotmail.com (David Morris)
Sender: owner-pynchon-l waste.org
To: pynchon-l waste.org
http://www.salon.com/news/col/cona/2001/07/31/test/index.html
The rigged missile defense test
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By Joe Conason
July 31, 2001 | The Pentagon and the Bush administration are determined to
sell the American people a national missile defense system that will
probably increase tensions with allies and adversaries and will surely cost
more than $100 billion. Their latest marketing exercise took place on the
evening of July 14, when a "kill vehicle" launched from the Kwajalein Atoll
in the Pacific smashed into a rocket sent up from Vandenberg Air Force Base
in California.
Precisely according to plan, the target was instantly vaporized on impact --
and along with it, or so the Pentagon's uniformed salesmen hoped, the
perennial concern that missile defense won't work. With the cooperation of
major news organizations and conservative pundits, that test provided an
enormous propaganda boost to the Bush proposal, which conveniently enough
had been brought up to Capitol Hill by Defense Department officials just two
days earlier.
There was only one thing that all the happy salesmen forgot to mention about
their latest test drive. The rocket fired from Vandenberg was carrying a
global positioning satellite beacon that guided the kill vehicle toward it.
In other words, it would be fair to say that the $100 million test was
rigged.
No wonder, then, that Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, the Air Force officer who
oversees the NMD program, told the Washington Post on the eve of the test
that he was "quietly confident" about the outcome. The general knew about
the GPS beacon, while the reporters didn't.
This rather significant aspect of the July 14 mission remained hidden in the
fine print until a few days ago, when the Pentagon confirmed the role of the
GPS device to a reporter for Defense Week magazine. But of course most
Americans still don't know why the test functioned so smoothly, because the
Defense Week scoop was either buried or ignored by the mainstream media,
which had so obediently celebrated the technological breakthrough two weeks
earlier.
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Kurt-Werner Pörtner
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