Cato Daily Dispatch for December 18, 2002
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Bush Announces Missile Defense PlanBush Likely to Find Iraq in Violation
2002: Second Warmest Year on Record
Bush Announces Missile Defense Plan
The Associated Press reports, "President Bush's plan to deploy a limited missile defense system by 2004 is unlikely to provoke the fierce Democratic opposition that President Reagan's plan encountered almost two decades ago.
"But some Democrats say the technology behind the plan is unproven and they doubt it will offer much protection in the next few years.
"Bush on Tuesday ordered the Pentagon to have ready within two years a bare-bones system for defending American territory, troops and allies against attack by ballistic missiles."
Charles Peņa, Cato Institute's senior defense policy analyst, had to say regarding Bush's announcement: "The planned missile deployment is more a test bed than a real missile defense system. Although some of the rhetoric may suggest otherwise, the truth is that this initial deployment will not provide any meaningful protection of the American public. There is still more realistic testing to be done (particularly against decoys and other countermeasures) before an operationally effective missile defense can be proven viable and affordable. If such a system can be demonstrated, a truly national limited land-based missile defense designed to protect the U.S. homeland is the appropriate system against the potential limited threat of rogue states armed with ballistic missiles. But the United States should avoid pursuing an exorbitantly expensive global system to defend U.S. friends and allies overseas. The United States should not be the world's policeman (or armed social worker). Its friends and allies are wealthy enough to pay for their own missile defense. They spend too little on their own defense and already benefit from U.S. security guarantees."
Bush Likely to Find Iraq in Violation
"President Bush's national security advisers are recommending that he declare Iraq in violation of a United Nations disarmament order, administration officials say, but they do not consider the indictment an immediate trigger for war," according to The Associated Press.
"Instead, advisers expect Bush to chart a slightly more patient course that would push the prospects for military action into the new year.
"At issue is a weapons declaration required under the U.S.-backed U.N. disarmament resolution. Administration officials have privately said for days that Bush considers the declaration laughably inadequate."
"Iraq's submission of a massive 12,000-page declaration concerning its chemical, biological, and nuclear programs may slow but will not halt Washington's drive to war," writes Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, in "Back Off Tough Iraq Policy", an op-ed printed in USA Today last week. In the article Carpenter lists three major reasons why the "war option...remains unwise."
2002: Second Warmest Year on Record
The Financial Times reports, "This year is expected to be the second warmest since records began and the rate of increase in global temperatures appears to be accelerating, the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organisation said on Tuesday in a preview of its annual climate report."
"The 10 warmest years - the record was 1998 - have all occurred since 1987, nine of them since 1990, and 'the trend for the period since 1976 is roughly three times that for the past 100 years as a whole', the United Nations agency said. The rise in global average surface temperatures since 1900 now exceeds 0.6 degrees Celsius.
"Is this all so bad?" asks Patrick Michaels, Cato Institute senior fellow in environmental studies, in "Brave New Climate", a recent Cato Daily Commentary. "I sincerely doubt that a panel of the most esteemed ecologists would argue that we should bring planetary temperature down. Perhaps the most logical temperature would be the average since the last big ice age, 11,000 years ago, about a degree warmer than today. The flowering of human civilization and its co-evolution with the earth's biota are the hallmark of the post-ice age regime. Consequently, it's a pretty good argument that the mean temperature during this period is a salubrious one."
"One could hone it a bit more," he writes. "The actual dawn of civilization occurred in a period climatologists used to call the 'climatic optimum' (before the current era of 'climatic hysteria') when the mean surface temperature was 1-2ēC warmer than today."
Wyatt Dubois, editor, wdubois@cato.org