Star Wars Revisited

Many of our younger generation grew up playing these games. It seemed for many it takes their mind away. I suspect some of the real bright game-players went to college and took up science and engineering and went on to jobs in the defense industry and at the Pentagon or other military positions. Unfortunately, many got snookered into believing these electronic-game-addicts were really cleaver individuals. They were certainly clever enough to sell our politicians a bill of goods that kept them in the high-tech playpen at top salaries for a long time.

Their first con-job was a magnificently complex and expensive electronic-game they called Star Wars. It was said to be an umbrella that was supposed to protect us from nuclear disaster when, I suspect, these scientists didn't even know when to come in out of the rain. Star Wars required Buck-Rogers technology that was far beyond our present capabilities and demanded an exceptionally complex computer system of unequaled reliability with millions of lines of code -- without bugs. And, to top it all off, it could only be tested if we had a nuclear war. Isn't that a fantastic proposal! What a game!

Of course, after playing around and spending billions the con-job was exposed. We only learned recently that our trusted officials faked a missile intercept test -- a very important milestone in the program -- only to have them tell us much later the "faking" was done to scare the Russians. All of know the Russians knew what we were doing and of our progress!

When it was finally revealed that Star Wars was just a wild-assed dream of these electronic-game-addicts, after spending 30 billions or more, they exposed some more of their brilliance. They came-up with the idea of "Brilliant Pebbles!" Now listen to this as this is really brilliant. They planned to position thousands of satellite weapon systems in the skies, all of them waiting for a nuclear missile to appear. Of course, with Russia able to send up thousands of decoys along with a missile, they had a problem with this concept. So they had another hair-brained idea which they called "Brilliant Eyes." These were more satellites that were able to see the difference between the decoys and real missiles. And again all of the Brilliant Pebbles and Brilliant Eyes communicated with one another by an ever-so-clever computer. Does it sound like these boys are still at the arcade?

On top of all of this, we spent millions building a facility in Colorado Springs, and millions more each year to man it, to keep track of space junk. The Space Station that NASA wants to build is claimed now to be significantly more expensive to build and maintain because of potential damage from even the tiniest of space debris. Then we have these "brilliant?" people wanting to put into orbit thousands of additional satellites and the debris resulting from launching. I think we need people to man the store who haven't been addicted to these electronic-game machines. What do you think?

It reminded me of someone addicted to playing the "games" at the pizza parlor. Some will say anything, do anything, to get more quarters for the machine. And, that is exactly what many individuals have been doing in the Star Wars program -- although I understand they have changed the name because of their failures. They overtly lied to us. A society of concerned scientists spoke about the impossibility of developing a system controlled by a computer needing million lines of code that couldn't be tested without having a nuclear war -- no one listened. The Star Wars propagana was filled with falsehoods, wild-assed dreams, and concepts that only mentally deranged "pin-ball machine players" could concieve of. Yet, many were led to believe this propaganda.

As far as the Patriot missile situation is concerned. Reports during the Desert Storm war first claimed 76% accuracy of shooting down scud missles. Later we learned that it is questionable whether even it shot down one scud. Lies. Then we learned that a Star Wars "test" where a incoming missle was shot down by one of ours was fabricated -- we blew it up ourselves. Then officials claimed they let this report out so the Russians would think we were progressing in our Star Wars program. The Soviet Union had many spies that knew of our foolishness.

The reason I am so upset, besides being lied to, is that there are other more important problems that need funds that would help our country, the citizens and possibly others in our world. We don't need to fund "pin-ball" addicts.