Your analogy is faulty, Dax. Handguns are ALWAYS offensive weapons because they are specifically purpose designed to project power outwardly. That they can be described as "defensive" falls in the same category as ICBMs were used in the strategy of M.A.D.D. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union wanted to engage each other with their offesive weapons, therefore a defacto "defense" was achieved.

However, modern missiles systems are very purpose specific. Just as you wouldn't try to use an ICBM in a short-range attack or a short ranged missile to strike a target on the other side of the world, so you cannot adapt them for a radically different purpose.

Rather than with a hand gun, a missile defense shield would more accurately be equated with a bullet proof vest. You cannot use a Kevlar vest offensively unless, I suppose, you wanted to try to hit someone over the head with it. Not likely, though.

Dax...again, tell me how this missile shield can be used offensively? Are we going to shoot the interceptor missiles at other countries in an effort to blow something up? You are aware that interceptor missiles typically carry a very small warhead...would not be very efficient to expend them in that fashion.

Aus22...you wrote: LOL...do you seriously mean to suggest that Israel took away some of Iran? Or that the US took away some of Iran? You style yourself a historian...surely you know enough history to know how absurd such a suggestion would be.

Lawmage, I never said that Israel or even the USA was responsible for the lost of the Persian Empire.

This was caused by Europeans and Arabs centuries ago.

All I was saying that Iran like Israel looks back to the past to justify its actions today how right or wrong that might be.

I am inclined to disagree with you, Aus. I would argue Israel is looking not to the past but to the present. it is looking at the behavior of its enemies and taking action on the basis of those activities. One might also argue israel is looking to the future actions of its enemies and making plans to deal with those actions or prevent them if possible.

If I trusted and believed the administration, I would concede your point happily, but my past experience tells me that what you are told is not always what you get.

Could there be other, offensive weapons at the location? Preventing an attack on us/Europe but then not firing back doesn't seem like a reasonable military solution. And since these defensive missiles are close to the country we're shielding ourselves from, we'd be idiots to not at least try to get some nukes in there.

Back in the Cuban Missile Crisis days some Boeing engineers spent a frantic few days removing the telemetry packages from Minuteman missiles that were at Cape Canaveral (now Kennedy Space Center) being readied for flight tests so that they could be fired at Cuba if necessary. Whether or not they were then fitted with some type or warhead (nuclear or just explosive) I never heard. Hitting Cuba with a dud ICBM fired from Florida must have been considered doable, I guess. Most missiles are easily retargetted. Maybe it was just to demonstrate to the USSR that we had some sort of capability. Dunno.

So, BB, you are in agreement with me that a defensive system can easily accommodate, or be easily refitted to be offensive?

Yeah, go ahead, Bad Bird. I want to hear you agree with Dax that the Minuteman Missile System was designed as a "defensive" weapons system. Go ahead. I'm waiting.

Why do you put words in my mouth, and BB's for that matter?

Why don't you eeal with what I said instead of the crummy neocon spin you've put on it? Either delusional and just seeing what you want to see, or you're intentionally distorting.

Really cheap. Really typical neocon talking head.

Thats rich, Dax...why don't you try doing the same damn thing. You have yet to answer how a defensive shield comprised of tracking radars and missile interceptors constitutes an offensive weapon. You prattled on about not trusting us not to sneak some real offensive weapons in but that would be an offensive weapon snuck in not a defensive shield used offensively. Why don't you just admit it, Dax. You are opposed to anything we do that does not amount to collective suicide.