I hate to be in the position of defending the Chinese but based on the behavior of the Bush administration over the last six years, what other conclusion can they draw except that the United States only understands and responds to hard power?

I hate to agree with you but I do.

Can Presidents be impeached for plain old stupid decision making ?

My first reaction was: which side will Walmart be on?

My second reaction was the only real threat China poses to the United States is that it might sell U.S T-bills precipitously.

My third reaction is: there should be no weaponization of space by anyone. The next arms race, in the face of peak oil, would probably bankrupt everyone.

Hypocrisy thy name is bush.

"My first reaction was: which side will Walmart be on?"----Love It.

The US obviously knew this was coming that's why Bush issued his statement several months ago.

Personally I believe that our work on the space station (which makes no scientific sense) and our proposal to have a base on the moon are both covers for new military programs. A base on the moon would be impossible to attack (at least for several days) and would thus be the ideal command and control post for space-based weapons.

The US is already thinking about such weapons, just look up "Rods from God" to see about a program for dropping heavy metal rods from space onto terrestrial targets. There is no practical way to defend against this. Just having them in orbit could be used to intimidate regimes without having to threaten the use of nuclear weapons.

The US is on a runaway militaristic course which has been in place since WWII. Nothing has been able to stop it and it now distorts the entire economy and makes us less competitive as everything is sacrificed to feed the war machine. Spending $450 billion a year for the destruction industries and over a trillion dollars on Iraq is not going to be without damage to the US for years to come.

"A base on the moon would be impossible to attack (at least for several days) and would thus be the ideal command and control post for space-based weapons."

Why would it be impossible to attack for several days? Distance? I think an attack on a moon base would be way too obvious to pull off in a surprise attack but wouldn't the same problems of distance and communication make it unsuitable for a command and control center?

Hmm as long as the lasers were based on US soil and shot well, I guess up in the space above the US I could understand it....

...especially because lasers are so frickin' cool!

dr. evil

I thought you were going to say this:

"You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!"

Water on Mars .. sharks .. think about it.

Militaries should not be allowed to pollute space the same way they have polluted the rest of the planet. One only has to look at the nuke contamination in the US (Hanford, etc) and the nerve gas that is costing millions for disposal to see that many military programs are more threat to their own people than to other countries. The FSU has even worse contamination.

certainly the easist way to remove the funding for space based wapons is in the hands of the Chinese, they stop financing our debt

What the Chinese demonstrated is the abillity to place mines in orbit, right next to Pentagon spy satellites. We attack some hapless country (why does Iran come to mind?), the Chinese blow up the satellites we depend on. We then use our mines to blow up theirs & all of a sudden we're back to ground-based radars.

A lunar base is just as easily attacked by short-range missiles in lunar orbit. Isnt' this fun!!

Okay folks. Time for the AMLO approach: A million angry citizens encircling the White House, day after day, week after week, until Pres & VP resign unconditionally.

"Let China sleep
for when she awakes,
she will shake the world"
Napoleon Bonaparte

Sorry for the cross posting, but glad that Josh picked this up.

The Washington Post has an article on this today, friday -1-19-07, at which this comment was posted:

Mellow out about China, already. We are too intertwined economically with China for them to initiate strife. The IMMEDIATE threat is by having Israel expand the war into Iran, in the worst case scenario, crossing the nuclear divide and using tactical nuclear weapons. I think we all including the US Congress now understand the extent to which this war as most wars are the result of lies to justify hidden agendas. China is indeed sending a message, albeit a peaceful one. What I hope readers to the comments of this column I have read them all and hope Marc Kaufman and Dafna Linzer do the same do, is to educate themselves and what the U.S. is doing at Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs here in northern New Mexico to militarize space, and develop new space based weapons. In addition, we are attempting to develop NEW nuclear weapons, under the guise of the Reliable Replacement Warhead RWW program. As it currently stands, the current Nuclear Posture Review NPR grants the president the right to use existing nuclear weapons to initiate a pre-emptive war, purely on his say-so. Anyone willing to educate themselves might begin with the Los Alamos Study Group, and their website at lasg dot org. Our Senators from both parties are finally wakening up, and recognizing how dangerous the current US policy is. Please support your state Senators in developing a rational policy, not based on the assumption that we can win a nuclear war, if we start it now. THAT, has ALWAYS been the driving force behind what is now called the neocon view, which actually dates back to the Democrats, under Scoop Jackson, after WWII. Joe Nitze, Ed Teller, and Albert Wohlstetter were the mentors of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, David Pipes. And many of the other “neocons” Pushing for WWII. THAT is the issue to which this Chinese missile threat is responding, and I, for one, am grateful to the Chinese for doing that.

Viewed from far enough away, land and air war can be enjoyed as fireworks; likewise, we hold forth hope that space wars will make lovely meteor showers.

The only thing to fear about a rising China is the USA's response to it.

This silliness is straight out of Bill Gertz and the Washington Times. What surprises me is that Richard Haas, the Council on foreign relations, was on the Today Show this morning bringing this up. I thought he was supposed to be a "moderate"?

As the Iraq debacle unwinds, it appears neocons and the powers that be in the military-industrial complex are page to square one: cold war with China. But don't they understand how inextricably intertwined we are? And what a way to treat your number two creditor (thank goodness we still have Japan under our thumb!).

It has been said that it is only necessary to launch a barrelful of nails into orbit to destroy space-based weapons. Nothing needs to be "blown up." This reveals the ultimate futility of spending billions of dollars on their development, or on the development of countermeasures. Perhaps it is this truth that the Chinese are demonstrating.

I am of the opinion that if the US were to attack Iran, and if Iran were to counter-attack, that the Iranians would be largely dependent on Russian and/or Chinese GPM satellite data, which I presume they get under contract. So, as was mentioned elsewhere, the Chinese action, at this particular moment, was a shot across the bow.

All a space-mine is, or needs to be, is a simple stick of dynamite, floating a few dozen feet from its intended target.

This is the same argument put forth for the development of a nuclear program, whether for energy production or otherwise. Bush insists upon the right of the U.S. to do it while doing everything possible to prevent others from doing likewise. In the process we trample the rights of other sovereign nations and then wonder why they are pissed at us. This is the kind of policy that brought us 9/11.

Chimp logic. Don't leave home without it.

Since the Chinese shot down a weather satellite I'd hate to see what they did to the weatherman.

The chinese have shown once again that they want to be treated as the world class power they are becomming. Again it is demonstrated to us that the US reliance on military power to try to leverage our position on the geo-economic-political stage is a failed policy.

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