Because the First Cold War was So Much Fun

Hussein and "Defense" Secretary Robert Gates have decided to scrap plans for a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe that Bush had put in motion. Their rationale was that Iran is a bigger current threat, and there is more danger from short and medium range missiles as opposed to the long-range types the shield was developed to counter.

Sounds to me like a cop-out on several levels. First of all, everything possible should be done to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability, even if we have to send in a couple of Hellfires to make a few key buildings go all splodey. Instead, it sounds like Hussein has resigned himself to the fact that Iran is going to get them eventually, completely ignoring the fact that the Israelis might have objections to that and decide to act accordingly, which they are already talking about. Secondly, unless the Russkies have had a garage sale lately, I'm pretty sure they're in control of a fair amount of those old nukes the Soviet Onion had laying around. And the Putin gang aren't exactly what you would call buddies of ours, so it might be better to be safe than sorry in that aspect. Additionally, for the folks that are our friends, like the Poles and the Czechs, not to mention the Lithuanians, Georgians, and Ukrainians, nixing the missile shield is a sign of bad faith, and could leave them open to future depridations at the hands of the Russians. Again.

And would someone explain to me why this system couldn't be adapted to handle missiles of every range capability? Seems to me if you can hit something far away, you should be able to hit things up close as well. I realize the physics might pose a problem initially, but how hard could that be to overcome?

And what about the fact that Iran launched a satellite in February? Isn't that an indication that long-range missiles might be a part of their future as well, if the West is foolish enough to allow them to progress that far? Seems to me it is. So now we're back to a need for a long-range missile shield, kinda like the one Bammy just scrapped.

Ever get the feeling that Hussein has no fucking idea what he's doing? Yes, I thought so...

Story here.