[CTRL] Heaven Is A Battlefield

[William Shannon]

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/Chin051101/chin051101.html Heaven is a battlefield: Bush's space war plan By Larry Chin   May 11, 2001—America is set to become the world's space warmonger. The illegitimate White House occupant, George W. Bush, has placed the future of U.S. foreign policy and the balance of world power, into the hands of his fellow right wing zealots, Pentagon/intelligence hawks, Bush/Cheney-linked Star Wars weapons manufacturers, and other Bush/Cheney-linked corporations seeking to benefit from the control of the skies above Earth. In rejecting the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Bush-Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have vowed to undo a policy that has governed the world's nuclear balance for 30 years. Lost in all the mainstream media coverage, and missing from pitiful congressional debates (which dwell on debates over the "effectiveness" and "cost" of a "security" and "defense" shield) is the true long-term agenda behind the missile program. Better Globalization Through Space Militarization The Star Wars drum beating is more than simply Bush/Cheney propaganda designed to pump up Pentagon budgets and line the balance sheets of corporate Star Wars cronies such as Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon and TRW. It is space manifest destiny. Rumsfeld, a leading architect of the program, has spent the bulk of his extreme hawk/right-wing political career pushing a provocative Cold War agenda and the aggressive interests of the Star Wars Industry. In a recently issued report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization, a body Rumsfeld heads, the Bush administration plan for space militarization, and the deployment of laser and missile weapons from space, is made clear. The commission pushes for the development of technologies that can "project power through and from space in response to events anywhere in the world." The commission encourages the creation of a military "Space Corps" and also scoffs at prior international laws (such as the Outer Space Treaty of 1967) that discourage military activities in space. As reported by State University of New York journalism professor Karl Grossman in CovertAction (April-May 2001), the report follows other space military manifestos issued in recent years by the U.S. Space Command. Various reports, chillingly, call for the dominance of space in order to "protect and enhance commercial interests." The true objective of the so-called "missile defense shield" is the next-generation policing of geopolitical "markets"—from the skies. With the installation of Bush in the White House, heading a corporate right-wing Republican-controlled government, the forces committted to "space manifest destiny" have found their most fervent salesman and bully. "Terrorist Threat?" In attempting to sell Star Wars as a defense shield against intercontinental missiles from "states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life" (North Korea, Iran, Iraq, etc.), Bush does not mention the fact that those countries do not possess weapons capable of threatening the continental U.S.—and are more than a decade from developing such capability. Meanwhile, the U.S. has some 7,200 nuclear warheads trained on various targets around the world. Who is the real "terrorist nation"? Stop, Drop and Cover The Bush administration and defense hawks view the battle field of the heavens as the "next frontier." They are hell bent on winning a new global space arms race, which they have now begun to precipitate.  "Dangerous criminal tyrants seize world power, seek domination of earth through space" is no breathless headline from a comic book or science fiction novel. It is the Bush foreign policy agenda, in cold, clear fact. Prepare yourselves. Military officials are calling for a missile defense system to be in place by 2004.