Catching Crabs v. Missile Defense

Henny penny, the sky is falling!

Whether it's WMDs in Iraq or the threat from terrorist missiles, Don Rumsfeld and his doomsayer posse are sure at their best presenting grim faces and dire predictions--whether it's the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that necessitates preemptively invading a foreign country, or the threat of rogue nations developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that forces through a missile defense system hobbled by decades of technical problems and spiraling funding levels (So that's what "spiral development" means!).

But you know what? We've concluded there were no WMD in Iraq prior to the 2002 invasion.

We've found no evidence of a nuclear weapons development program in Iraq past 1992.

And as of today's news, we have reassessed our chemical weapons threat assessment of pre-invasion Iraq, admitting they had no chemical weapons program after 1991.

Should we be so surprised if we now find out that the missile threat isn't quite the bogeyman we've been told it is?

Today, it seems as though the Alaska cod and crab season are more pressing than developing missile defense. That's quite a change of heart from the President Bush who pledged to deploy missile defenses by the end of his first term (that's still as "Mission Accomplished" as Iraq is), in large part by gutting the testing program because the threat was so urgent we could brook no delay.

Now that's a whale of a fishing expedition.


Here's the story from the Feb. 1 edition of the Global Security Newswire:

U.S. Missile Defense Test Schedule to Work Around Alaska Cod, Crab Season,
Official Says

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s next target test launch from the Kodiak
Launch Complex in Alaska is expected to be scheduled around cod and tanner
crab fishing season, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan.
13).

Officials previously had said the next test would occur in mid-February, but
that timing “is being adjusted to accommodate the needs of the cod and
tanner crab fishermen,” according to agency commander Lt. Gen. Henry
Obering.

The Gulf of Alaska cod season began Jan. 1 and is likely to close by
mid-February, according to AP. The tanner crab season could last until March
31, though none are presently being caught due to a dispute between
fishermen and processors (Associated Press/Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Jan.
31).