Star Wars' Is A Gold-Plated Turkey

In his most spectacular and stupid reversal in years, President Clinton has now endorsed "Star Wars," the old Reagan-era scheme to build an anti-missile system that would protect us from an all-out attack by the Soviet Union.

It was a terrible idea then, and as you may have noticed, the Soviet Union has been seriously defunct for seven years. The history of this turkey is so fantastic and so ridiculous that it would be hilarious if it weren't so expensive. We have already spent $55 billion on this pathetic piece of leftover Cold War lunacy, and absolutely none of it works, at any level, not to mention the rather glaring fact that we don't need it.

Star Wars is the perfect case study for what's wrong with both American government and the American military. It has everything: special interests, campaign contributions, the military-industrial complex, supine politicians, lazy media, decisions being made solely for political calculation, decisions having nothing to do with national security, and a public to whom no one has bothered to tell the truth.

This is one of those hideous deals, like the savings-and-loan scandal, where you can see the disaster coming and they still won't stop it.

We don't have the Soviet Union to kick around anymore, so we are preparing to stop a missile attack by a "rogue nation" such as North Korea, Libya or Iran. Of course, none of them has the capacity to send up a missile that can actually reach the United States from their turf.

Congress, with the new blessing from the White House, has approved building this missile defense system as soon as it is "technologically possible." Right.

Here's where we are so far:

• A study by strategic experts John Pike, Bruce Blair and Stephen Schwartz, "Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons since 1940," concludes: "The greatest accomplishment of the first four years of the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) program consisted in learning what technology did not work." Among the failures: rail guns, space-based lasers and particle beams.

• The military is not focused on a "hit-to-kill" vehicle designed to intercept incoming missiles before they reach U.S. territory. The vehicle has failed seven of its nine tests in this decade, according to an article by William Hartung in the fall 1998 World Policy Journal.

• Lockheed Martin's "Theater High Altitude Area Defense" - a kind of super-Patriot missile designed to defend against medium-range missiles - has flunked its fifth straight test. Lockheed, by the way, gave $2.3 million in campaign contributions during the '96 elections.

• According to Hartung, a panel of independent experts appointed by the Pentagon and headed by former Air Force Chief of Staff Larry Welch reviewed the program and reported in February of '98 that the entire ballistic missile defense effort was riddled with waste and on a headlong "rush to failure."

• High point so far: In 1984, the Army rigged a key Star Wars test by planting a remote-controlled explosive in the target missile that would cause it to blow up whether it was hit by the defensive missile or not! When the New York Times revealed this lunacy in '93, the officials involved said it was more important for the Soviet Union to believe we could shoot down missiles than it was to actually have the capacity to do so. (!!!)

Republican strategists plan to make missile defense "the most important issue of the 2000 election," according to Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson.

Where is the rest of the Pentagon on this gold-plated folly? The money it really needs for personnel and readiness is going into this black hole, and they'll never see a nickel of it.

(Article by Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate, Inc.)