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[keasy]

Who would trust a space craft with ' MADE IN CHINA' on it ? 

[corroded]

we trust made in taiwan, already i should imagine.

[Nivlac]

Missiles don't mean shit and the Russians and Americans know it. If your talking nukes even a few getting through would be devastating and if your talking normal high explosives then big deal. Russia's true power lies in its armored tank divisions which would be unstoppable with anything less than tactical nukes - which is exactly what is in NATOs play book should Russia try that stunt. The whole situation is political chest banging and dick pulling.

[Wooster]

Well, GWB put the kaibosh on extending the use of the shuttle right enough, so unless the next administration overturns the decision the USA won't have any presence on the ISS after 2010.

In a leaked Email, the boss of NASA isn't a happy bunny at all..

The rational approach didn't happen, primarily because for OSTP and OMB [The Presidents Office of Science and Technology Policy/Office of Management and Budget], retiring the Shuttle is a jihad rather than an engineering and program management decision. Further, they actively do not want the ISS to be sustained, and have done everything possible to ensure that it would not be.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=29133

[keasy]

Missiles don't mean shit and the Russians and Americans know it. If your talking nukes even a few getting through would be devastating and if your talking normal high explosives then big deal. Russia's true power lies in its armored tank divisions which would be unstoppable with anything less than tactical nukes - which is exactly what is in NATOs play book should Russia try that stunt. The whole situation is political chest banging and dick pulling.

Have to disagree.

It's more than chest banging it's real time renders of aquiring physical land in both miltraily strategic and politicaly strategic land.
The missiles are the manifestation of it, be it nukes or defensive conventional weaponry.
There to be a representation of the actual power motivated idealology behind it.
Russian tanks (and planes for that matter) have always been great and equally disreputed as result of their success, negative propaganda from our end is the proof in the pudding.

Russia wouldn't dare enter soil that held American missiles be that ex U.S.S.R. land or not. Regardless of the odds being in favour statstisticaly the way of the russians as they have tanks that can do.

That to me is the point, it's beyond chest banging and dick pulling, that only ever results in wars of words.
The difference being this is real and happening.

[Wooster]

NATO needs to be looked at again..the world has changed in the 60 years since it was formed. (And it certainly wasn't formed to conduct operations in the likes of Afghanistan)
Allowing old eastern bloc countries to join it is going to cause a shitstorm.
Russia were mostly playing ball until Poland agreed to host US missiles and NATO made assurances to Georgia and the Ukraine.

We wouldn't put up with in on our doorsteps and neither will they.
We could be looking at another Cuban crisis in reverse here, if we aren't careful.

[keasy]

I think it's as serious as that as well, why I think it's beyond political one up manship.

real as it gets IMO.

Cold war over with a nice settling period but new cold war begins and we (being the west) do not hold the moral trumphs on the political stage.

[Nivlac]

There was a verbal tit for tat between Russia and the US over the effectiveness of those missiles. The US claiming it could shoot down anything and the Russians saying their new tech was good enough to beat the missile defense systems. - basicly Bush and Putin arguing over who has the bigger dick. (I think it's Bush myself....considering he has fucked the whole world  )

Another example of the dick pulling would be Putins staged showing of how strong he is or the best one would be his "saving the camera crew" stunt. He is old school KGB and it shows in his mentality.

Pull up a map on google and you will see why missiles in Poland is a political ploy. There is nothing in the south to stop them and the far north is also open (Finland)

[Wooster]

They'll have a pretty big umbrella though and I don't the US is bothered too much about protecting the south.
East to West is what they'll be trying to protect.
I'm no rocket scientist but I don't think ICBM's can deviate much once they're launched, it's a controlled burn into the upper atmosphere and then a drop.
Draw a line between Russia and the USA and Poland is pretty much slap bang in the middle of it.

Ukraine could cover any launches from the Caucasus region that Poland couldn't catch...probably why they've been given some assurances about joining NATO.

[Thermalsig]

The thing is, Russia has been shown as a real threat. They are taking territory back they once held from a people who for the most don't want to be under Russia's control. The people of Georgia understand that they will lose control of their govt. and therefore their markets. Russia is very good at using markets under their control to enrich themselves while ignoring the markets they plunder. The US is not much better, but we eventually(under Bush's plan) have the intentions of returning their countries to them fully. We have to stand the middle ground and figure a settling point where no one is fecked, just like we should be doing with the Islamic culture. We have a different society with a different ideology and wiil never agree fully.

[Wooster]

Russia didn't start to get aggressive again until the issue of the surrounding states joining NATO came up. Cause and Effect.

Ex Soviet states were, and still are, joining the European Union. Russia didn't mind this since it's primarily an economic union.
Even though the member states would eventually adopt common laws and policies of all the other member states, removing them even further from Russian influence, the Russians still didn't have any real issue with it (trade = wealth)
It was only once they started to see a military threat from those areas that they began to come down hard.