missile defence is just the dumbest thing ever

Bush claims he got the idea for the missile
defence shield from "this awesome game".

Well, the US has performed another test of Bush's ten-billion-dollars-a-year Missile Defence Shield. The only other tests had been performed two years ago, and those had not been overly successful: they'd only hit five out of the eight target missiles.

The funniest part of that is the fact that these tests were nothing at all like real-world situations. See, the missile defence shield is supposed to detect missiles flying toward the US and launch other missiles to intercept them in mid-air, but when they tested the system, they knew exactly where they would come from and when they would arrive. So even if the offending country called beforehand to let everyone know the exact time, date and trajectory of their next anti-US missile launch (a courtesy made mandatory under the Geneva "Can't We All Just Get Along" Accords), the missile shield would be about as useful as a moderately-sized flyswatter.

Anyway, this latest test was even more of a flop: after sending out the target missile, the interceptor missile just totally failed to launch. Aside from encouraging a new global arms race (link) and being another step toward the weaponization of space (link), this system doesn't work despite the billions and billions of dollars sunk into it.

You can read about the latest hyjinx here.