Correction, Please!

Shooting Down Defense

ITEM: Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge, under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said the Defense Department on December 14, announced that "the Navy Area Missile Defense Program has been cancelled due to poor performance and projected future costs and schedules."

CORRECTION: Cancellation of this program, formerly known as Navy Area-Wide ballistic missile defense, killed testing scheduled to begin in February of 2002. And the Pentagon will still have to pay $300 million in termination costs, reports Aviation Week & Space Technology.

In August, the current chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, called the Navy Area program "essential to national security" and indicated to the under secretary that the chief of naval operations and commandant of the Marine Corps considered it "the number one priority among theater missile defense systems." There are, wrote Myers, "no alternatives to this program that would provide equal or greater value at less cost."

This decision essentially wrote off the $2 billion already spent. The problem was not technical. As described by former Strategic Defense Initiative Director Henry Cooper, "it employs on a ship the same technology used by the Patriot ten years ago in the Gulf War, and by the Israeli Arrow program that became operational" in 2000.

Cold-Blooded Customers

ITEM: The Associated Press on December 28th reported that China "reacted coolly to the end of American policy linking its trade status to human rights, saying President Bush only did 'what he ought to have done.'"

CORRECTION: Beijing is getting what it wants, while the U.S. is giving up its leverage. Communist China continues "to supply rogue regimes and state sponsors [of terrorism], such as Cuba, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, [and] the former Yugoslavia," wrote Senator Bob Smith (R-N.H.) and Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) not long ago.

A senior U.S. official revealed to Bill Gertz of the Washington Times that, even after the September 11 attacks, China continued to supply the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists with weapons, including shoulder-fired SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles.

Harry Wu, a human-rights activist who spent two decades in China's slave labor camps, says that Beijing is doing more than supporting U.S. enemies. Interviewed by WorldNetDaily, Wu noted that the Chinese military "is using our money to buy weapons -- submarines, ICBMs and fighter jets."

One Dossier Each

ITEM: In "National ID Card Gaining Support," the Washington Post for December 17th reported: "Almost from the day the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, members of Congress, security experts and high-tech executives have endorsed the idea of some new form of identification system as the critical weapon in the fight against terrorism."

The "new consciousness of terrorism" has "markedly changed the way Americans think about security. surveillance and their civil liberties. For many people, the trade-off of less privacy for more security now seems reasonable."

CORRECTION: The siren song of trading freedom and privacy for security is nothing new. Would-be government snoops have tried to implement their designs before, under the guise of gun control, Social Security reform and national health care. Now, these same schemers, using terrorism as the proverbial foot in the door, are trying to institute what amounts to a domestic passport. One technology publication, for instance, has detailed how a de facto national ID card could be implemented by enlisting the help of state departments of motor vehicles.

This ominous trend is putting the Fourth Amendment in serious jeopardy. New York Times columnist William Safire observes: "Police unconcerned with the sanctity of an individual's home have already developed heat sensors to let them look inside people's houses. The federal 'Carnivore' surveillance system feeds on your meatiest e-mail. Think you can encrypt your way to privacy? The Justice Department is proud of its new 'Magic Lantern': all attempts by computer owners to encode their messages can now be overwhelmed by an electronic bug the F.B.I. can plant on your keyboard to read every stroke."

This is much more than merely a desire for greater efficiency or to protect us from suicide bombers, reflects Safire. "A national ID card would be a ticket to the loss of much of your personal freedom."

"Peace" Prize

ITEM: In the Chicago Tribune for December 13th, Don Wycliff regretted that more attention hadn't been paid to the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony for the United Nations and Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "With its strong and repeated emphasis on the rights of the individual," he wrote, "[Annan's] speech resonated with ideas and values enshrined in America's founding documents --

the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights."

CORRECTION: Actually, Annan's comments were in direct opposition to American independence -- attacking the very sovereignty of nations. The "mission of the United Nations," he said, will "require us to look beyond the framework of States."

Alleged human-rights violations may serve as a lever for UN intervention. This can happen, as Pat Buchanan said not long ago, only if the UN creates its own army or conscripts the armies of its members. "The notion of a world government to defend our rights would have sent the Founding Fathers running for their muskets," observed Buchanan.

These efforts are supposedly needed for "peace." Some folks have a different idea of what that means. Consider the last "International Day of Peace," so declared by the United Nations, for world citizens to "imagine a world free of conflict and violence." Perhaps you missed the celebration: It was on September 11th.