Plan to Build Missile Shield

Re “Proponents of Missile Shield Split on Bush Plan,” Feb. 5: What’s it going to be, President Bush? Sixty billion-plus on an ill-advised, “Star Wars,” pie-in-the sky, Cold War, yet-to-be-effective (even marginally) technology at the price of prescriptions for seniors, schools and teachers for our children, shelter for the homeless, pay raises for the military and Social Security checks for our elders?

The CIA predicts a major terrorist assault on American shores (non-nuclear) in the next 25 years, which we are ill-equipped to handle (“U.S. Falls Short Hunting Terrorists,” Feb. 6). If only we had spent the money on food for the starving in Africa, medicine for those with AIDS, textbooks for those yearning to learn--the real defense against those who could threaten our democracy. Is this the new compassionate conservatism--rockets for [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld? The Emperor of Missile Defense has no clothes except those stolen from the American public and the rest of the world!

ARTHUR STRAUSS

Irvine

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On Feb. 3, at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, Rumsfeld presented his delusional plan to begin implementation of an American missile defense shield. This multibillion-dollar boondoggle disregards the scientific evidence, the numerous failed attempts to demonstrate any successful interception of a missile and the serious implications for the rest of the world. To consider that our country will somehow be safer with this pretense at defense is to close our eyes to the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Over 60 years ago, France spent millions of dollars building an impregnable line to preclude an attack by the Germans. Today, the Republican administration would attempt to duplicate the failed Maginot Line in space.

Have we learned nothing from the World Trade Center bombing, Timothy McVeigh’s destruction of the federal building in Oklahoma or the recent bomb attacks upon our embassies in Africa and the attack on the Cole? The threat to America does not reside with some as-yet-to-be-constructed missile, but rather with our very porous borders and the ease with which some terrorist or rogue nation may utilize a rental truck to deliver destruction to our cities.

SEAN HOLLAND

Los Angeles