| March 26, 2004 | - Forty-nine retired U.S. generals and admirals signed a letter begging President Bush to delay spending billions of dollars on his untested and unnecessary missile defense shield and to spend the money instead to protect likely targets of terrorism such as U.S. ports and nuclear-weapons depots.
| Source:
Reuters
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| December 4, 2003 | -
Australia resolved to join the American missile-defense program, a decision that pleased the Pentagon and President Bush but puzzled many Australians who wondered from whose missiles the expensive system was supposed to protect them.
| Source:
Sydney Morning Herald
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| June 5, 2003 | - The General Accounting Office warned that government is using "immature technology" in its missile defense shield, which is scheduled to be deployed by 2004.
| Source:
Reuters
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| September 18, 2001 | - White House spokesman Ari Fleischer noted that missile defense and the terrorist
attacks were unconnected: “The United States still faces risks of many natures. This was a terrorist risk that was carried out in a different form of delivery, within our borders. But that does not mean there are not other threats out there that also need to be addressed, per missile defense.”
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| September 4, 2001 | - The Pentagon admitted that its missile defense scheme probably would be unable to hit the wobbly, primitive missiles that “rogue states” would be most likely to fire.
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| June 12, 2001 | - Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said that the White House was willing to deploy anti-missile defense
technology before it was proved to work.
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| May 8, 2001 | -
President George W. Bush again called for a national missile defense system, renouncing the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty, even though the technology needed to implement such a system has yet to be invented.
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| March 6, 2001 | -
South Korean president Kim Dae Jung pleased Russian president Vladimir Putin by declaring his opposition to the United States' plan to build a national missile defense system that would violate the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty.
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| March 6, 2001 | - A few days later, after American officials asked for a “clarification” of his statement, President Kim said that he wasn't really opposed to national missile defense and that the whole thing was a big misunderstanding.
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| February 13, 2001 | -
United States Secretary of State Colin Powell defended President George W. Bush's plans to deploy the national missile defense system despite its technical and political flaws: “I don't consider it as being an arrogant position,” he said. “Or one where we are trying to force anything on the rest of the world.” Russian
defense minister Igor Sergeyev warned that Russia still had “three mighty programs to asymmetrically counteract U.S. national missile defense forces,” which were developed to defeat President Ronald Reagan's pie-in-the-sky Star Wars program.
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| January 30, 2001 | - The new government symbolized by George W. Bush continued to insist that it would deploy a national missile defense system despite the fact that the program, developed with equal parts fraud and wishful thinking, would upset the balance of terror with Russia—not to mention the world-historical irony that it might easily drive China to sell missile technology to the very “rogue” nations the program seeks to neutralize.
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| January 9, 2001 | -
Russian president Vladimir Putin was in Germany to discuss debt repayment with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder; Putin was also seeking German support for a multinational missile defense system as an alternative to the American scheme, which would violate the Treaty on the Limitation of Antiballistic Missile Systems and destabilize the world strategic order.
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| September 5, 2000 | -
President Clinton said he would not authorize the National Missile Defense program, which would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and destabilize the international strategic order.
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| August 15, 2000 | - A National Academy of Sciences report found that most U.S. nuclear bomb-making facilities, including the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, will be contaminated “in perpetuity.” Defense Secretary William S. Cohen delayed making his recommendation to President Clinton concerning the wisdom of building a national missile defense program.
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| July 25, 2000 | -
Russia and China again warned that America's proposed national missile defense system would cause a new arms race.
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