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From: res@ihuxn.UUCP (Rich Strebendt)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.politics
Subject: Re: Star Wars Defense Plan
Message-ID: <804@ihuxn.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-Aug-84 18:35:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihuxn.804
Posted: Wed Aug 22 18:35:40 1984
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| ... for saying
| that a far cheaper (and the only practical) solution, namely arms
| control agreements, isn't feasable?

Unfortunately, it is not clear that arms control agreements are really
practical.  Certainly, with the Soviet opposition to on-site
inspections, such agreements are not practicable today.

| Reagan wants to build Star Wars because he's been an utter failure at
| arms control. No other reason.

I will not presume to KNOW what Reagan WANTS ... the previous poster's
psi abilities are far greater than mine :-).  It is interesting to me,
however, that as soon as we demonstrated an ability to destroy orbital
warheads, then the Soviets were anxious to discuss banning the kinds of
weapons which we now had but that they lacked.  Reagan agreed to
discuss this, but wanted to include in the arms limitation discussion
the topic of other nuclear weapons.  Since the Soviets have an edge on
us in that kind of weaponry, they have refused to discuss it.  As I
said, I will not presume to guess the President's desires, but I
surmise from his statements that he is willing to discuss any arms
limitation agreements that hold promise of being both practical and
practicable.

					Rich Strebendt
					...!ihnp4!ihuxn!res

Phil