INDEFENSIBLE.(The Talk of the Town)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 04-OCT-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

In July, the first interceptor for a national missile-defense system was installed at Fort Greely, Alaska. A few weeks later, President Bush announced that the first components of that system would soon "become operational." Speaking at a Boeing aerospace plant in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, on August 17th, he praised the efforts of those who are making the deployment possible, and declared, "We say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world, 'You fire, we're going to shoot it down.' " It will come as a surprise to Americans and tyrants alike that the controversial system is ready to shoot anything down--not much has been heard about it since the attacks of September 11, 2001, redefined the national notion of defense. Yet Bush promised to develop the system in his last campaign, and in December, 2002, a year after the Administration announced that it would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, he ordered that deployment take place in 2004. The due date became October...

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