America persists in militarizing space

Orbiting weapons not ruled out

Uncle Sam needs to consolidate and fine-tune its military forays into outer space for the good of all mankind, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters during a Washington press conference Tuesday.

The US Department of Defense is "merging disparate space activities and adjusting chains of command....re-aligning Air Force headquarters and field commands to more effectively organize, train and equip for space operations," Rumsfeld explained.

When asked whether the USA would actually put weapons into orbit, Rumsfeld, who has spent the past several years slickly pimping for Big Pharma, shifted into his finest non-answer answer mode.

"These proposals have nothing to do" with offensive capabilities, Rumsfeld said bluntly.

And then he told everyone what they wanted to hear. "Consistent with treaty obligations, the United States will develop, operate and maintain space control capabilities to ensure freedom of action in space, and if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries," he read from a prepared script.

Which is another way of saying 'absolutely not, but of course.'

Reading from his script again, Rumsfeld added that "the United States is committed to the exploration and use of outer space by all nations for peaceful purposes for the benefit of all humanity. Peaceful purposes allow defense and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national security and other goals."

Which means that if the USA approves of your government, you can hang as many freaky satellites in orbit as you please. If not, well, forget it.

The danger, obviously, is that if Uncle Sam pioneers space as some new battlefield -- because it can -- then everyone and his brother will want to stake it out for their own defense, and a preposterous flotilla of deadly orbiting space-junk will eventually envelop the planet.

The Knucklehead-in-Chief has already made it a personal mission to revive Reagan's old "Star Wars" missile defense system, which if successful would only serve to give the USA first-strike capability in a nuclear exchange. Once deployed, it would, of course, have to be matched by the Russians, and possibly the Chinese if they can steal enough top secret data to make it work.

The last thing Little Bush needs is a couple of dangerous morons like Rumsfeld and Veep Cheney telling him what a stud he'll be if he succeeds.

Meanwhile, US Senator Thomas Daschle (Democrat, South Dakota) characterized Rumsfeld's announcement as "the dumbest thing I've heard so far in this administration."

Nice to see someone in Washington using his head for a change. ®