Breaking News: Senate officially ratifies START!

[mrjarrell]

Here's a novel idea. We can all take a few minutes over our morning coffee and donuts to actually read the whole 17 pages. That way we can speak knowledgeably about a proposed topic without sounding completely unreasonable. Just a thought anyway.

There is no mention of any limitations whatsoever in the preamble.

http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/140035.pdf

Good find, garlic! After reading it, I'm even more convinced it wasn't a bad deal. The only thing that even refers to missile defence is that neither side can disguise an ICMB as an interceptor and vice versa. Not a bad treaty, all in all and it's in simple language that anyone can understand.

 

[garlic_b]

Did I just kill this thread with a rational thought?

 

[JoshuaW]

Why have the Democrats always been against us trying to build a defensive shield? (rhetorical) Do they had this country or something?(rhetorical) Besides Russia, we have to worry about that nut Chavez, the nuts in NKoria, the non-nutty but dangerous Chinese (who probably shot a missile up from the west coast, surfaced a sub in the middle of a carrier group).

They arent against defense, they are against excessive defense. Do we really need that much firepower? Sure, its not a bad thing, but we dont NEED it. It is bad for diplomacy though. If we can make an agreement that says "Okay, we trust you (sort of, that is why we still do want inspections after all)" then that is a victory that can be touted by both sides. It is like an ice breaker the next time we are at each others throats.

"Remember that time we both threw away part of nukes? Those were happy times, lets go back to that!"
"Haha, yes, we really had you guys with that one, we got rid of all of our old ones!"
"Haha well yeah, we didnt really get rid of any of them, we just gave the extras to [STRIKE]our allied countries[/STRIKE] Israel and let our intelligence agencies falsify the records suggesting they were properly disposed of! And that stuff you inspected, nuclear power waste!"
"Oh, we sold ours to less stable countries for top dollar!"
"Looks like we both made huge mistakes! Lets never fight again!"