From: ww@nyxfer.UUCP
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Quayle's Latest Star Wars Scheme
Date: 27 Jan 93 04:48:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:B7H1XB20w165w@nyxfer.uucp:1882643074:000:3639
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: ww%nyxfer@igc.apc.org or
workers@mcimail.com.


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