Star Wars Boondoggle

Even in the strange world of Washington, $55,000,000,000 is serious money. That's the approximate amount of Pentagon budget that's been wasted on ballistic missile defense. This is a blackhole of military spending and it'll never produce a workable system.

But, hogs at the Pentagon trough respond, there was recently a successful test of this technology. Of course, as Alexander Cockburn points out, this recent test was totally rigged. It proves nothing.

Next July, Clinton will be faced with what should be an easy decision. He has promised to announce at that time whether or not to proceed with full scale star wars deployment, which a nervous Pentagon say they might be able to get underway by 2005. The correct answer from the Oval Office should be a resounding "No". But it would be folly to expect such courage from the present incumbent.