NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/alt/conspira/14728

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-28 | 4.0 KB

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Subject: Quayle's Latest Star Wars Scheme
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Date: 27 Jan 93 04:48:00 GMT
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Nf-From: nyxfer.uucp!ww    Jan 26 20:48:00 1993


Subject: Quayle's Latest Star Wars Scheme
From: nyxfer!ww (Workers World Service)


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit


ZAP! QUAYLE'S LATEST STAR WARS SCHEME

By John Catalinotto

Just before bowing out as lame-duck vice president, Dan Quayle
made a pitch for the latest version of Star Wars. In a report to
Bush, Quayle said the U.S. should develop space weapons to knock
other countries' communications, navigation, weather and spy
satellites out of the skies. In other words, he is advocating a
U.S. monopoly on the control of space.

Does this sound crazy? Other countries, even Washington's
imperialist allies, are taking the threat quite seriously.

Because Quayle has a reputation as an intellectual lightweight,
there is a tendency to underestimate his role at the cutting edge
of the official right wing. But he issued this report as director
of the National Space Council. This group can boast of 12 members
from the executive branch, including the secretaries of Defense
and State, the NASA administrator, the president's national
security adviser and the director of Central Intelligence.

The recommendations in Quayle's report amount to another
multibillion-dollar giveaway to big business, especially that
high-tech sector of the arms industry that has benefited the most
from the cockamamie Star Wars boondoggle. And while, like all the
Pentagon's moves these days, the report is of course a threat to
Third World countries, it may be directed even more against
so-called allies of the U.S.

According to the Jan. 15 New York Times, "Quayle raises the
specter of American foes' using spacecraft to help wage
conventional warfare on earth, and he calls on the United States
to develop the ability to block such moves. In effect, it
articulates a new rationale for space arms, calling for offensive
military action rather than the defense of a broad territory in
the Star Wars plan."

Quayle cited Iraq by name as an enemy that could have inflicted
greater casualties on invading U.S. forces had it possessed
satellites.

Then, without naming them, Quayle referred to 16 nations that now
have "some indigenous capability to use space to support military
operations." Presumably, France, Britain and Russia--currently
U.S. allies in the anti-Iraq aggression--are on the top of that
list. Does the military establishment represented on Quayle's
council foresee a deterioration in the political relationship
among these capitalist competitors?

The Times says the report is intended as a policy guide for
President-elect Bill Clinton. It certainly is fully consistent
with U.S. military opinion, as shown by the Pentagon position
paper leaked last March to the New York Times.

That paper argued for continued high military spending instead of
the now nearly forgotten "peace dividend." It called for U.S.
military dominance over enemies and allies alike in the post-Cold
War era. It not only threatened Cuba, north Korea, Iraq, Iran and
Libya, but it also warned other powers (read Germany, Japan,
France) not to challenge U.S. supremacy.

Now, with Quayle's report, the Pentagon is dropping the other
shoe.

                               -30-

Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 West 21st
Street, New York, NY 10010; e-mail: [e-mail] or
[e-mail].


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