Editor: With the release of the RAND Corporation’s report that the $40 billion cost over 20 years to equip commercial airliners with laser-guided anti-missile defense capability is too costly, one has to question the priorities of our government.
The $11 billion initial cost and the claimed $2.1 billion annual maintenance, which seems overstated, would nevertheless address the truly imminent threat of shoulder-fired missiles targeting these airliners.
Meanwhile, President Bush has just made another $80 billion request for the wars and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushing the record budget deficit to new heights. Let’s do the math. $1.5 billion per week for the wars, but we can’t have $2 billion a year to protect our own citizenry and industry.
The other aspect of this that our wimpy media has not questioned is the tactic of getting a budget passed and only then requesting nearly 25 percent more. Surely, administration officials were aware of the need before now. Had the supplemental request been included in the original budget proposal, it may have encountered more resistance in Congress. We’ll never know.
Daniel Wells, Tracy