by Kingston Reif On March 11, 2008, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke at a Heritage Foundation dinner commemorating the 25th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), labeled by critics as “Star Wars.” Cheney used the occasion to reiterate five Bush administration talking points about the need for missile defense: In 1972, […]
Lieutenant General Robert Gard Sets the Record Straight on the Surge
by Robert G. Gard Transcript of remarks delivered on April 1, 2008 When President George W. Bush announced in January 2007 that the United States would “surge” 30,000 additional soldiers into Iraq, he said that the expected security gains would give Iraqis “confidence in their leaders” and provide the Iraqi government with “the breathing space […]
Star Wars Turns 25 Years Old, but Effective and Capable Missile Defense Still Elusive
by Robert G. Gard and John Isaacs On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan revived the effort, first launched in the 1950s, to defend the United States against an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack by producing a “shield that could protect us from nuclear missiles just as a roof protects a family from rain.” He called […]
The Expanding Range of Biowarfare Threats
In this analysis, Alan Pearson participates in a roundtable discussion, hosted by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, about the impact of scientific advances at the intersection of chemistry and biology and ways to discourage their application for the development of new substances designed to incapacitate or kill.
Why Missile Defense Upsets Russia
by Kingston Reif Published in the Washington Post on March 18, 2008 In the March 13 op-ed “Moscow’s Missile Gambit,” Robert Joseph and J.D. Crouch II said the United States should proceed with plans to place missile interceptors and their supporting radar systems in Europe regardless of Russian opposition. A fundamental assumption underlying their argument […]
