This is my first post on this forum. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss.

With the intensity of the last US electoral campaign, it is understandable that some issues were not perceived as priorities. Here is one that concerns Canada's progressives. The US anti-missile program with it's projected deployment in Canada has rised a strong opposition here. Our rationale is that to defend against such a threat is a political failure. We are not targets of the world's malcontents and do not wish to stand alongside a policy that says from the onset that non-proliferation under the watchful eye of the world community is impossible.

The Bush administration does not care much for any reservation we could have about being integrated into a continental defense grid. Petitions with hundred of thousands signatures have been sent to the Canadian federal government in which we state clearly that we want to prepare for peace not for war and surely not for this kind of war.

Our government is under pressure. Since it is a minority government with 3 opposition parties that share an almost equal balance of power, any unilateral action by our government will bring it down through a motion in parliament. This is not our wish. In these precarious times, we feel more comfortable with not having a majority government with no checks and balances.

Your support and critical views are needed so your neighbour won't be buffaloed into accepting what we perceive as a defeat : preparing for the worst instead of preventing it.

I hope that you Canadians stand firm. And god bless The CBC and HNIC (if only there was any).

TODAY IN IRAQ MANY INNOCENT LIVES ARE BEING TAKEN AWAY FROM THEM BY THE USA. THIS IS DIRECTLY BECAUSE PEOPLE IN THE USA PUT ISSUES THAT HAVE BEEN AROUND THOUSANDS OF YEARS BEFORE THE MISTAKE OF THE WAR IN IRAQ.

AAAAHHHHHRRRRRGGGGG!!!!

i bet the same peole fighting against a missle defense system were fighting against Reagan's build up in the eighties. Wrong then, wrong now.

A missle defense system is a nice idea, but a 'boost phase intersept' is the only solution that works with our current technology. Spending billions for a outer space intersept by a missle system is a waste of money. Deploying decoys in space is easily done. Orbiting Laser or particle beam intersept are possible but are very expensive and could be viewed as offensive weapons systems. The USA has been working on this idea since 1956. Check out the history, http://www.pilotfriend.com/century-of-flig...%20Missiles.htm .

The USSR bankrupted itself trying to do what we couldn't do then or now. The USA could bankrupt itself under the leadership of a comic book president.

If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war. -- George Washington

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. -- John Stuart Mill

All that is essential for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others. -- Alexander Hamilton

Spending all of that money on a system that does not work is worse than being defenseless.

Not necessarily, Dave. Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, a.k.a. “Star Wars”) was no where near being able to stop a full Soviet nuclear barrage, but their fear of its deployment caused them to implode their economy building enough missiles to overwhelm its potential capability.