Missile Defense: Arms Race in Space

* Re “Bush Makes His Case for a U.S. Missile Defense,” May 2: By moving the arms race into space, the Bush administration is making sure that its friends in the aerospace industry will make hundreds of billions of dollars at the expense of further militarizing our fragile planet while dumping the bill on unknowing taxpayers.

How can you “maintain peace” through domination? Haven’t we learned yet from our sordid military past that more nuclear weapons only mean more instability and a greater chance for nuclear annihilation? President Bush’s rejection of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and reentry into nuclear weapons proliferation is a prescription for disaster.

JULIA DASHE

San Diego

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President Bush’s “rogue state” argument for justifying the deployment of an ABM is a red herring. Why would a rogue state launch a nuclear missile at an American city when it could FedEx a suitcase bomb to the same city for $49.95? And FedEx is a lot more accurate than any ICBM Saddam Hussein’s engineers could ever build.

STEPHEN HARVEY

Laguna Niguel

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Re “Wrong Defense, Wrong Time,” editorial, May 2: The Times’ opinion of a missile defense system is as archaic as the belief that the Earth is flat. Ever since man first saw birds in flight he was obsessed with the desire to fly. Ever since man gazed at the stars he has tried to reach them. The technology of flight and space exploration was developed due to military research and we have all benefited from it.

The ultimate goal of “Star Wars” is to render nuclear warfare obsolete by destroying enemy missiles on enemy territory, thereby eliminating them as strategic weapons. Perhaps spending money on such a lofty goal and reaping the rewards of scientific advances that will be the byproduct of the development of such a system is too high a price to pay for The Times.

ERIC E. DRESSER

Burbank

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I’m confused about Bush’s use of science. There is not enough credible science to affirm the existence of global warming, yet the science in support of missile defense is sufficient to warrant its accelerated development?

SARA THAVES

Manhattan Beach

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Instead of wasting billions of dollars, why not have a faith-based missile defense system? Just imagine, if everybody got together and prayed really hard, nothing could get through to harm us. I’m sure nobody has proposed this idea to the president yet, but I anticipate the announcement any day now.

ROY DICKINSON

Bishop