WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! It's the return of the Cold War!

Does this means we've gone back in time to the eighties and i can get all those G1 Transformers, GI Joe, and other toys i wanted for cheap?

Cuz seriously, that would be the only silver lining to this.

You can check out the US Missile Defense presentation here.

Compare the proposed solution (including Poland/Baltic system) on page 31 against the apparent problem (Iran) on page 7.

This is so screwed. They think we're so stupid, like we wouldn't notice how largely ineffective this is going to be. Bloody hell Poland! Why Poland? Which of course is exactly what the Russians are asking.

Ah yes, then there is the point about these missiles being "kinetic" weapons. That is: no warheads. Yes folks, that is one hell of a 4th of July show.

Wow, I guess Bush figured that since he has just a little over 151 days in office, he's going to have to skip right over the cold and just get the shooting started.

Did I read that right? This phony, broken defense system comprises of 10 missiles? It's a good thing the Russian military only has ten missiles.

Yeah, I was wondering exactly how 10 missiles are going to be a deterrent. At that point you just launch 20 and call it a day.

Maybe they're special missiles.

With lasers.

Wait..............so are you saying that dragons don't exist?

For some reason this makes me more uneasy than I feel like it should. I mean, this feels like it could be one of those major moments that determines which direction things will go. Either this is all just bluster from Russia, and they really won't do anything and likely never will, or we really have pushed them too far. I'm not really nervous, but I'm not blindly assuming there will be no consequences for this, either.

W's stupidity never ceases to amaze me. Can we have Eisenhower back? How about Zombie Kennedy? I could go for a zombie president right now; it couldn't be much worse than what we already have.

Besides the total stupidity of this whole thing, being the aforementioned problems like North Korea shooting from the Pacific or Iran not having the weapons (or not having so many and sophisticated ones) this is biggest step backwards in history. Not only mr Vladimir "KGB Man" Putin will finally have a reason to back his "everybody hates us so let's get ready to kick their ass" policies and achieve the control of his Soviet predecessors, but also the USA will have the big villain they missed so much in the last few years. After all, despite the horror of 9/11, not all americans where that stupid to give away their freedom because of the threat of some third world country that had a lucky shot (I don't care if there was a conspiracy or Murphy and his laws where chilling in Hawaii that day), but bringing out the wrath of good ol' big Russia will probably spark enough patriotic fire to let any internal witch hunt or strategicaly influential external coup d'etat go unpunished or, even worse, justified.
But since I feel like a selfish prick now I would also point out that what pisses me off the most is that I live in europe and most likely, after almost 20 years, we'll become the potential battleground between those two big boys...and that sucks a whole lot. After all where are the residues of those threatening nuclear missiles going to fall?

Alright I'll be the first person to acknowledge the udder stupidity of Bush, we have all accepted it, long ago, and i feel most have made peace. But what frustrates me is that whenever he's mentioned and does another idiotic thing everyone goes blog crazy and rips him apart as if this was 2001, get over it, i mean have you forgotten who our president is? Now this doesn't mean that i feel that we should let him off the hook for shit like this but, i just wish everyone would stop acting so suprised ? Come on after 7 years i feel like we should stop trying to dice apart his outlandish actions and just laugh at the impending doom George W. Bush has brought upon the world. And hope that one of these two can put shit back in order.

So the answer is apathy? I beg to differ...

This move was nothing but another push for worldwide American hegemony. Bush and Co. see nations like Russia and China growing in strength (economically and militarily) and he is using NATO and Poland as a veil to push US dominance in the region. My question is: how would the Bush administration feel if Russia began cuddling up to Cuba or even Mexico with the possibility of installing a missile "deterrance" site? My guess is that they would likely freak out and argue that Russia is doing nothing but trying to push its agenda into the Western world and concurrently pose a threat to innocent Americans. Sort of hypocritical, don't you think?

I'm not sure the comparison to the Cuban missle crisis is a good one. The missles placed in Cuba in 1962 where armed with nuclear warheads, while the missle systems in Poland are missle interceptors, which are designed to destroy other missles.

More over, I'm not sure why people think Poland doesn't have a right to defend itself and it's neighbors from Nuclear attack.

The missiles wouldn't be under Polish control, would they? They would be American staffed.

That's true, but the missles would be protecting Poland, and it's their call. Really, they'd be protecting us too, because the best time to shoot down an ICBM is shortly after it's initial launch, while it's still accelerating and hasn't achieved maximum velocity.