Theres been censorship at college forever. Even a good science student like myself has been exposed to it.
Oregon State 1992 - History of Western Civ "no blasphemy" on the midterms or finals. That was tough, the instructor was a hardcore Catholic, how can one talk about the Reformation without it being blasphemy?
There is academic censorship everywhere.
Gee, I though College was about learning, not about downloading music without fetters.
I'm not there for downloading or going to parties, I'm there to get a degree.
The United States has moved a force to within 50-60 miles of Bagdhad and lost a platoon worth of combat soldiers in fighting.
When the 173rd airborne can appear out of no where and take important airfields without anyone thinking that was possible is a sign of a well organized and carried out operation.
On slashdot, K5 and in the local and national press the words disaster, quagmire and miscalculation are thrown around less than 2 weeks after this war started.
Well alot of people need to look at modern military history to see how fast armies move and how long it takes to eliminate enemy opposition.
February and March 1945 the Marines attacked an island 2 miles by 4 miles in the Pacific. In 36 days 6,800 Marines died and 19,000 were wounded.
21,000 Japanese soldiers were killed.
For 70 days the island was bombed and for 3 days it was shelled by battleships.
On 1 April 1945 the Marines and Navy attack Okinawa. The fighting for the most part ended on 30 June 1945. In 90 days of fighting 12,000 Americans died and more than 38,000 were wounded. 34 ships were sunk, 368 damaged and 763 aircraft lost. 26,000 American soldiers left the battle because of combat fatigue and other non-battle causes.
And lets remeber how long the last wars took.
Gulf War '91 - 44 days of bombing before a 3 day ground war.
Serbia - 77 days of bombing before Milosevic threw in the towel.
And something similar to this happened when the first Bin Laden video came out in '01.
A US geologist who'd been in on the project to do a geo survey and atlas in the 70s said "I know exactly where those rocks are."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1608272.stm
"An American geologist who spent years in Afghanistan believes he has narrowed down the location of terror suspect Osama Bin Laden to sandstone caves south of Kabul.
Jack Shroder, from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, reported his conclusions to US security agencies after assessing a cave that featured in a Bin Laden video released after the first US bombs fell on the Afghanistan on 7 October."
Or as soon as an embed makes the comment along the lines of "These Marines have left thier NBC gear behind so they can carry more food and ammo..." Someone decides it'd be a good idea to slam some mustard gas in thier direction.
While that is the good kneejerk response, it's not based in fact.
By US military estimates the US has destroyed perhaps a Brigade worth of Iraqi soldiers. I'd guess it's closer to an Iraqi Division or 6-9,000. It's in the "thousands" but it's thousands of combatants who are using tactics that lead to large number of combatant deaths. Assaulting superior equipment, house to house fighting and not having capable air defense to attrit the American and British bombers and strike aircraft.
The Iraqi government has tossed out numbers in the hundreds and the International Red Cross says an average of about 100 people are killed or wounded every day in Baghdad because of bombing by U.S. and British forces. Iraqi AAA and SAMs falling back into the city aren't helping matters much either I suspect.
Less are dying this time than the last time because the Allies aren't carpet bombing Iraqi units in the field.
This ban on these comm devices isn't censorship in a war gone bad, its called lowering the emissions of the units in the field.
If anyone here really thought a military operation to defeat a large army in the field in a country the size of Oregon and Washington was going to happen in 3-10 days is an idiot. If Rummy thought that, he is an idiot as well.
There is a list as long as my arm of tiny cutoff islands in Japan whos capture cost the Americans a 100 times more casualties an hour than Iraq and many of them had been shelled and bombed for days before the first soldiers set foot there.
The current campaign on Iraqi isn't an "arrogant miscalculation" it's a remarkably well organized and carried out operation to this point.
And the Iraqi regime killed more in Kuwait, Iran and Iraq than the US killed in the First Gulf War, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Somalia, Serbia, Bosnia, Granada, Panama, Central America and the list goes on.
American companies and American forces will be there.
I'm sure the forces currently based in Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will rebase to Iraq, so why not use the same standards as used in the US?
Maybe it's because of all the computer games where every side has to be balanced, that people think war has to be an even fight.
The more powerful a side is, the harder is for the enemy to gain a victory and often the less inclinded to start something.
Somalia was like that until the USMC pulled out. They feared the Marines because the Marines didn't mess around when they were shot at, it took a handful of attacks on Marines and forceful Marine responses to settle things down. The US Army and Pak didn't have the same respect by the locals...so when the Marines left, the attacks escalated.
Unless Iraq uses chemical and bio weapons, I predict this will be a quick and light casualty war, with the exception of today's bombing, I reckon that all the casualties on both sides is probably under 750 up to now. I can't speculate, nor can anyone else, as to casualties from this bombing because no one knows what the targets were.
Remeber when Clinton chucked cruise missiles into the Iraqi Intelligence building at night and only a janitor was killed.
Yep, the fact that many American soldiers are carring thier own little Garmins, and walkie-talkie/gps combos would make it a serious tactical error for the DoD to degrade the civilian GPS signal.
I've read that the DoD issues GPS at the rate of one per squad and one per armored vehicle and most soldiers carry thier own.
If they've not degraded the signal after the NYC-DC attacks and Afghanistan, I don't see why they would now.
Half the stories are about Iraq jamming all the GPS and now the other half are about the US degrading the signal.
The United States government implemented Prohibition only after the Temperance Movement had worked for nearly 150 years to push for it.
By the 1830s the idea had spread, the movement had it's ups and downs, but large segments of the population were behind it, first the women's rights movements, then anti-immigrant and finally pro-business organizations.
The 18th Amendment to the Constitution--passed by Congress in 1917, and ratified by 3/4 off states by 1919 was then suplemented by the Volstead Act which defined what an alcoholic beverage was.
It's common to think that Prohibition was like a war on drugs, just shoved down the people's throats by the Feds, but it was voted on by Federal and State Senates twice to get to the Amendment point, then again at the Federal level with the House and Senate to enact the Volstead act.
The doors have to be open when the Shuttle is in space for cooling.
When Shuttle does a controled entry like Columbia did, things are tucked away, doors closed and it's put on a proper flight path under human and computer control.
If the crew were to leave, they'd not be able to close the doors, nor would anyone be able to put it on the right course/heading/atitiude/speed. So it would do a much less controlled entry than say Mir did. Instead of a hollow modified fuel tank like Skylab was, Shuttle would be 100 tons of mostly reentry-protected metal and ceramics. Columbia didn't kill anyone because it was on the "skip-across-the-sky" flight path. Would 100 tons of flaming Shuttle coming in at a city be a better proposition than 7 astronaunts bringing it in on a flight path that wouldn't kill anyone?
The Russian Soyuz are cheap enought, but there you can only load 3 people into a capsule.
You can't refuel in space for a number of reasons, the main being the OMS and RCS fuel are hypergolic and they just can't deal with that crap with current procedures and equipment.
The Oxygen systems on shuttle are all CO2 removal scrubbers.
All the "older" launchers use liquid fuel and say a Delta is the size of the old Saturn I-B.
Say you get the crew off, what does one do with 100 tons of Shuttle in an uncontroled degrading orbit?
Columbia was a best case situation, it was a very controled re-entry, say a Shuttle came barreling in nose first and huge chucks survived?
Unless Shuttle is going to the ISS, they can't go there for an emergency without alot of things all working out.
This was covered here at the time of the accident.
It needs to carry the orbiter docking system. In a bind, however, transfers via EVA (space suits) mightbe possible. The station has 2 Russian suits and 2 US suits. Shuttles typically have 2 US suits.
Shuttle and ISS aren't on the same orbit unless Shuttle is expressly going there, and for a mission like Columbia's there wasn't enough fuel to make the orbit change.
Columbia launched to a 39 degree inclination. The Space station is at a 51.6 degree inclination.
Only the OMS and RCS engines are available in orbit, and their capability is roughly 1250 feet per second, or about 1400 km/h speed change (delta v).
There isn't enough infrastructure to move it around efficently.
And in some cases the leadership of a nation will do things that cause starvation - Robert Mugabe
Or sometimes it's a mix of the two, like in the DPRK, where food shipments wait on the docks until the Army can rebag the food so the people don't know it's from the US, RoK or Japan.
I've had TiBooks for two years (a 400 and a 550) and they've both stood up fine in travel and mobile use.
In fact after 1 year of using the 400 everyday at home and work and transporting it back and forth, and taking it back and forth across 1,500 miles in MR-2s and United Airlines 737s the person I sold it too thought it was brand new.
I've always used either a Burton DJ bag - http://www.burton.com/gear/pr_bags.asp?productID=6 51
Or an Oakley Computer Bag - http://www.oakley.com/ostore/apparel/spring_02_com puter_bag/
I also use a piece of foam between the keyboard and screen.
After two years my laptops have gotten a few little scratches.
At least 3,000 Japanese Americans from the Hiroshima bomb?
http://whyfiles.org/020radiation/hiroshima1.html
"It's worth noting that among about 52,000 survivors who received at least.005 sieverts (0.5 rem) of radiation, 420 excess cancer deaths have been blamed on radiation, while about 7,600 other cancer deaths were due to other causes."
http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/lssrepor/tr01-86.htm
"The present study extends the previous report on cancer mortality among atomic bomb survivors by adding data from four additional years of follow-up (1979-1982) and by expanding the cohort (now designated LSS-E85) to include 11,393 Nagasaki survivors located between 2,500-9,999 m from the hypocenter at the time of the bombing (ATB). Among 91,231 exposed survivors with tentative 1965 (T65DR) dose estimates, there were 6,270 cancer deaths during 1950-1982. Among the 54,058 persons with T65DR dose estimates greater than 0.5 rad, there were 3,832 cancer deaths during 1950-1982, an estimated 8% of which are excess deaths attributable to A-bomb radiation. "
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/09/06/st or ies/08060003.htm
"Long term study of the survivors of the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed that high radiation exposures cause excess cancer in the exposed individuals. Till 1990, RERF recorded 7827 cancer deaths in the survivor population of just over 86,000. Radiation exposure might have caused 421 excess cancers."
I doubt 3,000 American citizens died from Hiroshima radiation when there are around 8,000 total cancer deaths in Hiroshima.
Based on the actions of European nation-states since the fall of Rome through 1945, I would say that the fact that both NATO and the WP were equally armed with armies of roughly the same capability kept peace in Europe.
Disarmament as illustrated by the Washington Naval Treaties and the disarmament of Germany did nothing to stave the outbreak of war in Europe. Proxy fighting started within 18 years of the War to End All Wars and contient-wide fighting broke-out partially because of the French defensive stance and the thought that disarming would lead to peace.
Likewise American scrapping of Battleships and Crusiers lead the Imperial Japanese Navy to think a quick strike at Pearl Harbor would lead to quick victory and dominance in Asia.
It's pretty obvious that Mutually Assured Distruction works, and both sides being equally armed works as a way to keep the peace.
Conventional parity as a way to keep the peace can be seen in the post Camp David relations between Israel and Egypt and Israel's relationship with Jordan. War became too costly with the weapons at hand, so the fighting ended.
How many times has war broken out in Western Europe since the advent and proliferation of jet aircraft, missiles, nuclear weapons and ICBMs?
Since the massive armament of Israel and Egypt following the 1973 war, how many times have they fought? How many times did they fight before the US armed the crap out of both of them?
How many times since the United Kingdom and Russia got nukes and horribly dangerous arms have they fought over Central Asia? How many times before 1914 did the Russians and United Kingdom squable over Central Asia?
How many times since France got nuclear weapons have the Germans invaded them? How many times before that did the Germans invade them?
Since the United States and the Soviet Union got nuclear weapons how many citizens of either country have died from the use of those weapons in a war?
The United States and Soviet Union along with Egypt and Isreal since 1973 have illustrated that having the ability to destroy your enemy along with leaders that care for thier people and thier nation makes for a more stable and lasting peace than disarming or waging a defensive strategy.
Military aircraft like E-4, ABL, AWACS, E-8s have jammers up the ass. Serious pieces of kit that will make a bad guy's radar console spark and smoke like when the Enterprise takes a hit from a Romulan crusier. Automagic things that will set the local cop's radar gun on fire if he points it at the plane when it's taking off.
In the case of the DPRK, if you look at a map of it's facilities, they are all pretty close to the ocean, the ABL will have the ability to shoot at it if it can see it, so it can sit out in a protective sphere of F-15s or F-22s out of SAM and fighter range.
ABL and the Navy Area Defense are one piece of the puzzle, then the ABMs in Alaska form another piece.
If ABL works out, it might be alot more flexable and capable than other anti-missile systems for situations where the opfor can't blanket the US or whomever.
Slashdot Mirror
Censorship at college?
Theres been censorship at college forever. Even a good science student like myself has been exposed to it.
Oregon State 1992 - History of Western Civ "no blasphemy" on the midterms or finals. That was tough, the instructor was a hardcore Catholic, how can one talk about the Reformation without it being blasphemy?
There is academic censorship everywhere.
Gee, I though College was about learning, not about downloading music without fetters.
I'm not there for downloading or going to parties, I'm there to get a degree.
The United States has moved a force to within 50-60 miles of Bagdhad and lost a platoon worth of combat soldiers in fighting.
When the 173rd airborne can appear out of no where and take important airfields without anyone thinking that was possible is a sign of a well organized and carried out operation.
On slashdot, K5 and in the local and national press the words disaster, quagmire and miscalculation are thrown around less than 2 weeks after this war started.
Well alot of people need to look at modern military history to see how fast armies move and how long it takes to eliminate enemy opposition.
February and March 1945 the Marines attacked an island 2 miles by 4 miles in the Pacific. In 36 days 6,800 Marines died and 19,000 were wounded.
21,000 Japanese soldiers were killed.
For 70 days the island was bombed and for 3 days it was shelled by battleships.
On 1 April 1945 the Marines and Navy attack Okinawa. The fighting for the most part ended on 30 June 1945. In 90 days of fighting 12,000 Americans died and more than 38,000 were wounded. 34 ships were sunk, 368 damaged and 763 aircraft lost. 26,000 American soldiers left the battle because of combat fatigue and other non-battle causes.
And lets remeber how long the last wars took.
Gulf War '91 - 44 days of bombing before a 3 day ground war.
Serbia - 77 days of bombing before Milosevic threw in the towel.
And something similar to this happened when the first Bin Laden video came out in '01.
A US geologist who'd been in on the project to do a geo survey and atlas in the 70s said "I know exactly where those rocks are."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1608272.stm
"An American geologist who spent years in Afghanistan believes he has narrowed down the location of terror suspect Osama Bin Laden to sandstone caves south of Kabul.
Jack Shroder, from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, reported his conclusions to US security agencies after assessing a cave that featured in a Bin Laden video released after the first US bombs fell on the Afghanistan on 7 October."
Or as soon as an embed makes the comment along the lines of "These Marines have left thier NBC gear behind so they can carry more food and ammo..." Someone decides it'd be a good idea to slam some mustard gas in thier direction.
While that is the good kneejerk response, it's not based in fact.
By US military estimates the US has destroyed perhaps a Brigade worth of Iraqi soldiers. I'd guess it's closer to an Iraqi Division or 6-9,000. It's in the "thousands" but it's thousands of combatants who are using tactics that lead to large number of combatant deaths. Assaulting superior equipment, house to house fighting and not having capable air defense to attrit the American and British bombers and strike aircraft.
The Iraqi government has tossed out numbers in the hundreds and the International Red Cross says an average of about 100 people are killed or wounded every day in Baghdad because of bombing by U.S. and British forces. Iraqi AAA and SAMs falling back into the city aren't helping matters much either I suspect.
Less are dying this time than the last time because the Allies aren't carpet bombing Iraqi units in the field.
This ban on these comm devices isn't censorship in a war gone bad, its called lowering the emissions of the units in the field.
If anyone here really thought a military operation to defeat a large army in the field in a country the size of Oregon and Washington was going to happen in 3-10 days is an idiot. If Rummy thought that, he is an idiot as well.
There is a list as long as my arm of tiny cutoff islands in Japan whos capture cost the Americans a 100 times more casualties an hour than Iraq and many of them had been shelled and bombed for days before the first soldiers set foot there.
The current campaign on Iraqi isn't an "arrogant miscalculation" it's a remarkably well organized and carried out operation to this point.
And the Iraqi regime killed more in Kuwait, Iran and Iraq than the US killed in the First Gulf War, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Somalia, Serbia, Bosnia, Granada, Panama, Central America and the list goes on.
Peace. As Shalom.
American companies and American forces will be there.
I'm sure the forces currently based in Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will rebase to Iraq, so why not use the same standards as used in the US?
If Dvorak says something will happen in reguards to Apple that is proof that it will not happen.
This is sort of on and off topic at the same time.
Anyone know of any good books about the history of measurement?
Like what came when and how things like horsepower or slugs and pounds came into use and how they originated?
I know about how stuff works type webpages, but I'm looking for a book with indepth info about English-Metric and whatever systems there used to be.
Thanks!
Maybe it's because of all the computer games where every side has to be balanced, that people think war has to be an even fight.
The more powerful a side is, the harder is for the enemy to gain a victory and often the less inclinded to start something.
Somalia was like that until the USMC pulled out. They feared the Marines because the Marines didn't mess around when they were shot at, it took a handful of attacks on Marines and forceful Marine responses to settle things down. The US Army and Pak didn't have the same respect by the locals...so when the Marines left, the attacks escalated.
Unless Iraq uses chemical and bio weapons, I predict this will be a quick and light casualty war, with the exception of today's bombing, I reckon that all the casualties on both sides is probably under 750 up to now. I can't speculate, nor can anyone else, as to casualties from this bombing because no one knows what the targets were.
Remeber when Clinton chucked cruise missiles into the Iraqi Intelligence building at night and only a janitor was killed.
Look at how different American English and British English are.
Or european Spanish and Mexican Spanish.
Yep, the fact that many American soldiers are carring thier own little Garmins, and walkie-talkie/gps combos would make it a serious tactical error for the DoD to degrade the civilian GPS signal.
I've read that the DoD issues GPS at the rate of one per squad and one per armored vehicle and most soldiers carry thier own.
If they've not degraded the signal after the NYC-DC attacks and Afghanistan, I don't see why they would now.
Half the stories are about Iraq jamming all the GPS and now the other half are about the US degrading the signal.
Actually, the majority did support it.
The United States government implemented Prohibition only after the Temperance Movement had worked for nearly 150 years to push for it.
By the 1830s the idea had spread, the movement had it's ups and downs, but large segments of the population were behind it, first the women's rights movements, then anti-immigrant and finally pro-business organizations.
The 18th Amendment to the Constitution--passed by Congress in 1917, and ratified by 3/4 off states by 1919 was then suplemented by the Volstead Act which defined what an alcoholic beverage was.
It's common to think that Prohibition was like a war on drugs, just shoved down the people's throats by the Feds, but it was voted on by Federal and State Senates twice to get to the Amendment point, then again at the Federal level with the House and Senate to enact the Volstead act.
Just 5, 10 and 20 for now.
I hear the 5 gigs are in short supply. Toshiba has 30 and 40s in the 1.8 form factor on the way.
The doors have to be open when the Shuttle is in space for cooling.
When Shuttle does a controled entry like Columbia did, things are tucked away, doors closed and it's put on a proper flight path under human and computer control.
If the crew were to leave, they'd not be able to close the doors, nor would anyone be able to put it on the right course/heading/atitiude/speed. So it would do a much less controlled entry than say Mir did. Instead of a hollow modified fuel tank like Skylab was, Shuttle would be 100 tons of mostly reentry-protected metal and ceramics. Columbia didn't kill anyone because it was on the "skip-across-the-sky" flight path. Would 100 tons of flaming Shuttle coming in at a city be a better proposition than 7 astronaunts bringing it in on a flight path that wouldn't kill anyone?
The Russian Soyuz are cheap enought, but there you can only load 3 people into a capsule.
You can't refuel in space for a number of reasons, the main being the OMS and RCS fuel are hypergolic and they just can't deal with that crap with current procedures and equipment.
The Oxygen systems on shuttle are all CO2 removal scrubbers.
All the "older" launchers use liquid fuel and say a Delta is the size of the old Saturn I-B.
Say you get the crew off, what does one do with 100 tons of Shuttle in an uncontroled degrading orbit?
Columbia was a best case situation, it was a very controled re-entry, say a Shuttle came barreling in nose first and huge chucks survived?
Nope.
There are alot of systems on Shuttle that can't just hang out for however long.
Plus the long term effects of space exposure to Shuttle isn't known*. For long term I mean months at a time instead of a couple weeks.
* I don't know if the 1980s LDEF had Shuttle components on it for it's multi-year stay.
Unless Shuttle is going to the ISS, they can't go there for an emergency without alot of things all working out.
This was covered here at the time of the accident.
It needs to carry the orbiter docking system. In a bind, however, transfers via EVA (space suits) mightbe possible. The station has 2 Russian suits and 2 US suits. Shuttles typically have 2 US suits.
Shuttle and ISS aren't on the same orbit unless Shuttle is expressly going there, and for a mission like Columbia's there wasn't enough fuel to make the orbit change.
Columbia launched to a 39 degree inclination. The Space station is at a 51.6 degree inclination.
Only the OMS and RCS engines are available in orbit, and their capability is roughly 1250 feet per second, or about 1400 km/h speed change (delta v).
There is enough food for everyone to eat.
There isn't enough infrastructure to move it around efficently.
And in some cases the leadership of a nation will do things that cause starvation - Robert Mugabe
Or sometimes it's a mix of the two, like in the DPRK, where food shipments wait on the docks until the Army can rebag the food so the people don't know it's from the US, RoK or Japan.
I've had TiBooks for two years (a 400 and a 550) and they've both stood up fine in travel and mobile use.
6 51
m puter_bag/
In fact after 1 year of using the 400 everyday at home and work and transporting it back and forth, and taking it back and forth across 1,500 miles in MR-2s and United Airlines 737s the person I sold it too thought it was brand new.
I've always used either a Burton DJ bag - http://www.burton.com/gear/pr_bags.asp?productID=
Or an Oakley Computer Bag - http://www.oakley.com/ostore/apparel/spring_02_co
I also use a piece of foam between the keyboard and screen.
After two years my laptops have gotten a few little scratches.
Iraq is a desert, so is Arizona.
If a TiBook will work in Arizona or Israel or Egypt or the middle of Australia, it'll work in Iraq.
Besides, right now it's not bad in the KTO, my Widget for Kuwait City says it's 68 there right.
At least 3,000 Japanese Americans from the Hiroshima bomb?
l
.005 sieverts (0.5 rem) of radiation, 420 excess cancer deaths have been blamed on radiation, while about 7,600 other cancer deaths were due to other causes."
t or ies/08060003.htm
http://whyfiles.org/020radiation/hiroshima1.htm
"It's worth noting that among about 52,000 survivors who received at least
http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/lssrepor/tr01-86.htm
"The present study extends the previous report on cancer mortality among atomic bomb survivors by adding data from four additional years of follow-up (1979-1982) and by expanding the cohort (now designated LSS-E85) to include 11,393 Nagasaki survivors located between 2,500-9,999 m from the hypocenter at the time of the bombing (ATB). Among 91,231 exposed survivors with tentative 1965 (T65DR) dose estimates, there were 6,270 cancer deaths during 1950-1982. Among the 54,058 persons with T65DR dose estimates greater than 0.5 rad, there were 3,832 cancer deaths during 1950-1982, an estimated 8% of which are excess deaths attributable to A-bomb radiation. "
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/09/06/s
"Long term study of the survivors of the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed that high radiation exposures cause excess cancer in the exposed individuals. Till 1990, RERF recorded 7827 cancer deaths in the survivor population of just over 86,000. Radiation exposure might have caused 421 excess cancers."
I doubt 3,000 American citizens died from Hiroshima radiation when there are around 8,000 total cancer deaths in Hiroshima.
Based on the actions of European nation-states since the fall of Rome through 1945, I would say that the fact that both NATO and the WP were equally armed with armies of roughly the same capability kept peace in Europe.
Disarmament as illustrated by the Washington Naval Treaties and the disarmament of Germany did nothing to stave the outbreak of war in Europe. Proxy fighting started within 18 years of the War to End All Wars and contient-wide fighting broke-out partially because of the French defensive stance and the thought that disarming would lead to peace.
Likewise American scrapping of Battleships and Crusiers lead the Imperial Japanese Navy to think a quick strike at Pearl Harbor would lead to quick victory and dominance in Asia.
It's pretty obvious that Mutually Assured Distruction works, and both sides being equally armed works as a way to keep the peace.
Conventional parity as a way to keep the peace can be seen in the post Camp David relations between Israel and Egypt and Israel's relationship with Jordan. War became too costly with the weapons at hand, so the fighting ended.
How many times has war broken out in Western Europe since the advent and proliferation of jet aircraft, missiles, nuclear weapons and ICBMs?
Since the massive armament of Israel and Egypt following the 1973 war, how many times have they fought? How many times did they fight before the US armed the crap out of both of them?
How many times since the United Kingdom and Russia got nukes and horribly dangerous arms have they fought over Central Asia? How many times before 1914 did the Russians and United Kingdom squable over Central Asia?
How many times since France got nuclear weapons have the Germans invaded them? How many times before that did the Germans invade them?
Since the United States and the Soviet Union got nuclear weapons how many citizens of either country have died from the use of those weapons in a war?
The United States and Soviet Union along with Egypt and Isreal since 1973 have illustrated that having the ability to destroy your enemy along with leaders that care for thier people and thier nation makes for a more stable and lasting peace than disarming or waging a defensive strategy.
Two points.
Military aircraft like E-4, ABL, AWACS, E-8s have jammers up the ass. Serious pieces of kit that will make a bad guy's radar console spark and smoke like when the Enterprise takes a hit from a Romulan crusier. Automagic things that will set the local cop's radar gun on fire if he points it at the plane when it's taking off.
In the case of the DPRK, if you look at a map of it's facilities, they are all pretty close to the ocean, the ABL will have the ability to shoot at it if it can see it, so it can sit out in a protective sphere of F-15s or F-22s out of SAM and fighter range.
ABL and the Navy Area Defense are one piece of the puzzle, then the ABMs in Alaska form another piece.
If ABL works out, it might be alot more flexable and capable than other anti-missile systems for situations where the opfor can't blanket the US or whomever.