Missile defense: part 1 of 3 on Defense spending

Missile defense development to cost $62.9 billion through 2009

Let us suppose that the system works perfectly (this is a big supposition).

Does it protect us?

Can you say "Maginot Line"?

The Maginot Line worked perfectly. It was never broached. The Germans went around it.

A primitive V1-style cruise missile - powered by ramjet engine - launched from an inconspicuous freighter parked off the California or Virginia coast could carry a warhead that would devastate San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, or Washington, D.C.

Today's threat is not a nuclear ICBM. What country would launch such an attack? Our retaliatory strike would obliterate whoever was so foolish... anyone remember MAD: Mutual Assured Destruction? We still have all those warheads in our arsenal!

The placement of the currently deployed missile defense system in Alaska is supposedly chosen to counter a North Korean threat. Now, I'm not particularly sanguine regarding the rationality of the current North Korean regime - but I am confident that they aren't sufficiently crazy to launch an ICBM attack on the U.S.

China? Well, I guess it's possible... but why? - their new-found economic vitality wouldn't survive a strike against us.

How were we attacked on 9/11? With low-tech weapons: commercial airliners flown into buildings... by non-state actors.

Why are we spending billions of $ on this technology?... even if it works like a charm (again, a highly questionable assumption), it doesn't protect us.

Again, the Maginot Line worked perfectly, but France fell to Germany in WWII in a matter of weeks.

An argument can be made that the existence of the Maginot Line enabled Germany's success by lulling the French into a false sense of security.

Stop the madness.