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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Taxpayers for Common Sense Statement In Response to Bush's Speech on NMD |
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by Taxpayers for Common Sense
(No verified email address) |
03 May 2001
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WASHINGTON - May 1 - 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: |
Statement by Alise Frye:
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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http://www.taxpayer.net/
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