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Statement
by Alise Frye, Director of the National Security Project at
Taxpayers for Common Sense in response to President Bush's
speech on Missile Defense
President
Bush's announcement today is old news. The United States has
been
pursuing a missile defense system for close to fifty years,
with no system
to show for it. Many presidents have come and gone with their
own visions
of a defensive shield for American soil, yet each of them
have left
taxpayers with nothing but a multi-billion dollar tab.
There
is no guarantee that the enthusiasm of missile defense supporters
will
make missile defense work. Combining an accelerated target
deployment date
with difficult technology will result in poor and incomplete
testing and
leave taxpayers less secure under a shield that no one can
promise will
work. Missile defense technologies are extremely complex,
and no amount of
money, regardless of how large, will make their development
any easier or
faster - only more expensive.
Even the
limited land based system supported by the Clinton Administration
was going to cost at least $60 billion to develop. A much
larger layered
system as anticipated by the current Bush Administration will
multiply that
cost many times over, without increasing the likelihood that
it will ever in
fact work.
Whether
national or global, missile defense shields are not a near
term
reality, regardless of what the true believers may say. While
research and
development efforts will continue, the confidence of missile
defense
cheerleaders will not put the elusive shield in our grasp.
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