Just An Excuse?

...the Good Old Days when men were real men, and warheads were Real Bombs and aliens weren't Mexicans....

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Dominic.html#StarfishPrime

There is only ever one enemy, and that is the military. It doesn't matter which side they purport to be on.

I think this is just part of a very quiet parley between the U.S. and China. I wonder what the Pentagon has been doing with war plans for China the past few years?

McClatchy Washington Bureau

Posted on Thu, Feb. 21, 2008
Fuel tank was shattered by missile, officials believe
Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: February 21, 2008 08:51:11 AM

WASHINGTON _ The U.S. military has a “high degree of confidence” that a missile fired at a crippled spy satellite struck the satellite's fuel tank that was carrying 1,000 pounds of toxic hydrazine rocket fuel, Pentagon officials said Thursday.

A video released by the military shows a fireball and vapor cloud erupt as the missile strikes the satellite. The military believes the vapor cloud is eveidence that the missile destroyed the tank, releasing the hydrazine, an ammonia-like chemical that can be harmful if inhaled or swallowed. U.S. officials ordered the missile strike on the satellite out of concern the tank would survive re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere and land in a populated area.

“We are not proceeding as if we are going to take another shot,” said Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It will still be several days before the military can confirm it struck the tank, Cartwright said, as it studies data and several videos _ including one on the missile.

Debris has already begun falling over both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, but nothing has reached the Earth’s surface, the military said. The remaining debris will re-enter the atmosphere in the next 40 days.

So far, the military has not seen any debris larger than a football, Cartwright said.

Shortly after the military announced late last night that it had struck the satellite, China said it was on alert for falling debris and demanded details from the U.S. about its mission.

China’s concerns were as much about politics as safety. Last year, U.S. officials expressed concern about falling debris after China shot down one of its own satellites.

Wednesday’s strike was the first time the United States had attempted to strike a satellite with a missile.

In a statement, the military said that at 10:26 p.m. Eastern time, the USS Lake Erie, an Aegis class missile cruiser, which was 600 miles west of Hawaii launched an SM-3 tactical missile toward the satellite. The missile struck the satellite at 153 nautical miles above the Earth's surface.

Cartwright said the military confirmed it hit the tank at 10:50 p.m.

The mission was considered a major, if unplanned, test of America 's anti-ballistic missile program.

U.S. officials announced last week that the Navy would try to down the satellite out of concern that the hydrazine would fall over a populated area. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an alert about the substance and the Federal Emergency Management Agency provided local officials with guidelines for dealing with debris from the satellite.

The decision to shoot down the satellite was controversial. Some experts have suggested that the attempt is really an effort to expand the capabilities of the anti-ballistic missile system to include satellites and to counter China 's destruction of an aged weather satellite last year.

Others interpreted the mission as the military’s effort to find new uses for its controversial missile defense plan.

But Cartwright insisted the mission was only “to preserve life,” adding that there is little the military can learn from Wednesday’s launch that could apply to missile defense.

“We had to modify [the missile] away from missile defense,” Cartwright said. “It doesn’t cross over.”

Still, military personnel were clearly overjoyed that the mission had succeeded, noting that a miss would have raised new questions about the missile defense program.

“There were a few cheers” on the ship, Cartwright said.

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... of multiple rockets, or which one hit the target. Did the first one miss? The second?

They claim to have hit it. Independently verified?

here at that nerd site :) I found, scroll a little. it appears BBC interviewed this guy.

http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2008/01/usa-193-imminent-decay-in-news.html

China accuses US of 'hypocrisy', 'dangerous space ambitions'

David Edwards
Published: Thursday February 21, 2008

China asked the U.S. to release data on the shootdown of an ailing spy satellite, while the Communist Party's newspaper blasted what it called Washington's callous attitude toward the weaponization of space.

China registered its objections well before the satellite's destruction by a missile launched from a Navy cruiser on Wednesday, which likely accounted for a mild response Thursday from the Foreign Ministry.

"China is continuously following closely the possible harm caused by the U.S. action to outer space security and relevant countries," spokesman Liu Jianchao said at a regularly scheduled news conference.

"China requests the U.S. ... provide to the international community necessary information and relevant data in a timely and prompt way," Liu said.

The ruling Communist Party's newspaper, the People's Daily, went further, accusing the U.S. of dangerous space ambitions and double-standards, for opposing a recent Russian-Chinese proposal on demilitarizing space.

"The United States will not easily abandon its military advantage based on space technology, and it is striving to expand and fully exploit this advantage," said the front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the paper, which came out before Washington announced one of its missiles had hit the satellite.

"One cannot but worry for the future of space when a great nation with such a massive advantage in space military technology categorically refuses a measure to prevent the militarization of space," the paper added.

Washington has rejected the Russian-Chinese proposal for a global ban on space arms because it would prohibit an American missile interceptor system in the Czech Republic and Poland, while exempting Chinese and Russian ground-based missiles that can fire into space.

China's official Xinhua News Agency on Thursday reported the satellite downing without comment, while a Defense Ministry spokesman, who identified himself only by his surname, Ji, said no statement on the issue would be forthcoming.

China's objections signal its skepticism over whether the satellite downing was truly necessary and unease over apparent U.S. mastery of a key military technology that Beijing is also pursuing. They also appear aimed at turning the tables on U.S. criticism of Beijing's own shootdown of a defunct Chinese satellite last year.

"The concern is whether the U.S. version of the story is true: Whether that satellite is indeed failing and out of control and if this kind of missile shooting is the best way to remove the threat," said Shen Dingli, an America watcher at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Or, he said, the reasons could be a pretext for an anti-satellite weapons test

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Experts fear debris isn't the only fallout from satellite shoot-down

McClatchy, By Nancy A. Youssef, February 21

WASHINGTON — A U.S. missile strike that appeared Thursday to have shattered a crippled spy satellite and vaporized its hazardous hydrazine fuel sent up cheers among Pentagon planners, who for three weeks had worked feverishly to turn an anti-missile system into one that could track and kill an object orbiting the Earth.

But even as debris from the shattered satellite began raining down over the Pacific Ocean, there were worries that the U.S. achievement might spur other nations to advance their own anti-satellite programs and turn outer space into a potential battlefield.

"I don't see how other nations don't see this as an anti-satellite test," said Theresa Hitchens, the director of the Washington D.C.-based Center for Defense Information, a centrist national security policy institute. "They'll see it as the weaponization of space."

China, which last year came under harsh U.S. criticism for using a missile to destroy an aged weather satellite hundreds of miles in space, was the first to react.