Thomas Christie, the Pentagon's Director of Operational Testing, who has always defended--sometimes staunchly--US missile defense plans, yesterday announced in a Bloomberg.com article by Tony Cappacio that the GMD (the ground-based midcourse defense system with its main interceptors based in Alaska) system must pass two flight tests in the next three months before it's deemed reliable.
This comes after months, if not years, of critics, both in and out of government stating over and over that the path the Pentagon has taken has eschewed rigorous testing and replaced it with a faith-based approach. The last intercept test occured a week before President Bush announced the deployment decision back in 2002. And it failed. Since then, there have been zero intercept tests.
As recently as in Congressional testimony last year, Christie announced his confidence in the missile defense deployment decision and has shrugged off concerns over the decimated testing schedule, stating that he had high confidence in the effectiveness of the system. Now that it comes down to it, though, now--he wants proof.
What was Governor Bush's only foreign policy plank in his platform in 2000? Deploying missile defense.
After years of opportunities, when does President Bush's top missile defense overseer first announce any concerns over the deployment? Election day, 2004.
God bless America.
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