Here's a strange bit of logic from the White House spokesman (who never really understood missile defense in the first place):
Gibbs said the Polish, Czech and Romanian governments support Obama's decision, which he said would deploy "a missile defense system that protects a greater geographic area and addresses much more directly the threat that exists in the here and now rather than something that was technologically a ways off."
I would be most interested to hear how stripping the ground based mid-course interceptor from Poland protects a "greater geographic area." Properly deployed, the GBI was designed cover an enormous swath of territory, from southeastern Europe all the way to the east coast of the United States.
Gibbs' spin makes so little sense it boggles the mind. Why not just admit that European missile defense was too politically hot for the administration, rather than spit out these blatant inaccuracies about how killing a deeply critical aspect of our layered, redundant defensive strategy actually makes the system better? Eastern European nations have clearly stated that their concerns are wholly centered around Obama's proclivity to cave to the Russians (accurate, btw) and have little to do with actual missile defense. It's downright insulting to these critical allies to offer up tepid, affected talking points about how great one-dimensional missile defense is, instead of providing sound answers to their legitimate questions about Russia's westward-creeping sphere of influence.
Last point: Gibbs makes a reference to technology that is a "ways off." That's code for Iranian ICBMs, which are projected to deploy in approximately five years. So we're not talking about flying cars and lightspeed engines here -- this is technology that we've employed since the 1950s. Once the Iranians have long range missiles in their inventory, coupled with a small arsenal of nuclear weapons, I wonder if Gibbs will be talking about what a great idea single-shooter missile defense was...
