On Wednesday, Jan. 31, the Glenbard Parent Series: Navigating Healthy Families will present “Beautiful Boy: Everything A Father Learned From His Son’s Addiction” with best-selling author David S.
In February 1998, almost seven years after a Scud missile killed 29 U.S. soldiers in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, the United States was poised to go to war once again against Iraq but without a missile defense that could insure such tragedies did not recur. The Iraqi missile that fell on Dharan in 1991 killed and wounded more U.S. soldiers than any other episode during the Persian Gulf War. And yet, despite the demonstration of the need for effective missile defenses, U.S.
President Bill Clinton and other opponents of national missile defenses charge it will cost too much to defend Americans against missile attack. 1 As evidence Clinton points to a May 15 estimate by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that a missile defense system required by the Defend America Act of 1996 would cost as much as $60 billion.2 Both the President and the CBO are wrong. Defending America from nuclear attack will not cost as much as the CBO thinks. The U.S. could deploy a missile defense system for as little as $8 billion. The CBO estimate is wrong because it is based on a flawed assumption that a ground-based sys- tem is the best option for ballistic missile defense (BMD). It is not. A sea-based option would not only be more effective, it would cost much less. Besides, the CBO report has been mischaracterized by critics of missile defense. All the critics say is that such a defense will cost $60 billion. What these critics ignore is that in the CBO estimate the initial de